RHIC makes its debut
One of RHIC’s main goals is to produce a quark-gluon plasma – the state of matter that is thought to have existed just millionths of a second after the big bang. Quarks are normally confin...
Imaging antiferromagnets at the atomic scale
S Heinze and co-workers from the University of Hamburg and X Nie and colleagues from the Forschungszentrum Jülich have used “spin-polarized scanning tunelling microscopy” to image an ...
Nanoplotter draws multiple patterns
The researchers used eight ceramic tips that were connected via a cantilever array to an atomic-force microscope. The tips were coated with a molecular ink such as 1-octadecanethiol that diffused from...
Surface features on Europa explained?
Gaidos and Nimmo say that the tidal forces from Jupiter can cause regions of ice near a fault or defect to move relative to one another. This relative motion causes frictional heating that increases t...
Physics goes inside the ear
In 1960 von Bekesy published the results of his classic measurements on the cochlea, which suggested that the ear was essentially a linear device. However, von Bekesy conducted his experiments on cada...
Changes at PhysicsWeb
The new Buyer’s Guide contains information on a wide range of physics equipment: cryogenics, lab electronics, lasers, magnets, microscopy, power supplies, test & measurement and vacuum are j...
Read article: Boomerang backs flat universe
Boomerang backs flat universe
The geometry of the universe is Euclidean and space is flat. This has now been confirmed from detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background – the radiation left over from the big bang...
Could Maxwell have deciphered quantum mechanics?
There is no doubt that quantum theory has been remarkably successful and has passed every experimental test it has been subject to. But the interpretation of quantum theory – in particular the m...
New insights into surfaces
Berndt and co-workers prepared gold, silver and copper surfaces with standard techniques and then used a scanning tunnelling microscope with a specially prepared tungsten tip to identify regions on th...
Not all clusters are the same
Smaller clusters tend to have elongated shapes, and the energy of formation is essentially independent of the number of atoms in the cluster. Larger clusters are spherical and the formation energy is ...
