Magnetic media: faster and smaller
Conventional magnetic recording works by changing the magnetisation states of different domains. An in-plane applied magnetic field takes a few nanoseconds to ‘switch’ the domain state. Bu...
Clouds gather on Titan
Titan’s atmosphere has much in common with our own: it consists mainly of nitrogen, contains organic material, and exerts a pressure one-and-a half times what we feel on Earth. But Titan receive...
Molecular fingerprints in sonoluminescence
Although researchers have proposed a wide variety of explanations for sonoluminescence, they are in broad agreement that the oscillating bubbles reach very high temperatures. Until now, however, singl...
Read article: ESA space missions: the next generation
ESA space missions: the next generation
The Bepi-Colombo mission will begin its trip to Mercury, the solar system’s innermost planet, in 2009. The spacecraft is expected to solve some long-standing puzzles about Mercury and provide in...
Radiation check for airlines
“We know that cosmic radiation at aircraft altitudes is several orders of magnitude more intense than that experienced at ground level because there is less protection from our atmosphere”...
Physicist shares Nobel prize for chemistry
Heeger, MacDiarmid and Shirakawa made their breakthrough in the late 1970s, when they discovered that the electrical conductivity of a certain form of polyacetylene increased by a factor of ten millio...
Joseph Weber 1919 – 2000
In the late 1950s, Weber became intrigued by the relationship between gravitational theory and laboratory experiments. His book, General Relativity and Gravitational Radiation, was published in 1961, ...
Nobel prize goes to semiconductor pioneers
Kroemer and Alferov share the prize for their work on semiconductor heterostructures – devices that contain thin layers of different semiconductors, usually based on gallium arsenide, stacked on...
Read article: Shadow cast on dark matter
Shadow cast on dark matter
During the rapid expansion of the universe after the big bang, the ‘outward’ kinetic energy of the explosion fought against the ‘inward’ gravitational pull of matter. The evolu...
Defects boost optical communications
In a photonic crystal the periodic variation of the dielectric constant results in a range of ‘forbidden’ frequencies called a photonic bandgap (PBG). Electromagnetic waves with a ‘f...
