Hints that the elusive Higgs boson – the holy grail of particle physics – had finally been sighted prompted CERN to extend LEP operation by five weeks. But in a race against time particle ...
Read article: End of the line for LEP
Ordinary experimental fluids are subject to effects like viscosity and can be difficult to manipulate. Durkin and Fajans therefore used a cylindrical column of magnetically confined electrons to simul...
Read article: Vortices get in a spin
Physics is well catered for within the week’s activities. A mock spaceship is part of an exhibition exploring the sun’s activity and how it affects us, and a film – Inspired by Natur...
Read article: A celebration of science
A supernova explosion marks the death of a certain type of star. During the evolution of these stars, nuclear reactions take place at their cores, creating light elements like hydrogen and helium. Hea...
Atoms move through the crystal lattice of a solid by a process called diffusion. The atoms migrate by swapping places with ‘point defects’ such as vacancies – empty spaces in the lat...
Superfluids are among the most peculiar and counterintuitive of all materials. They have no viscosity, which allows an object travelling in a pure superfluid to move without friction. Similarly, they ...
Read article: Liquid hydrogen turns superfluid
Space station commander Bill Shepherd (US), Soyuz commander Yuri Gidzenko and flight engineer Sergei Krikalev have trained for four years in both Russia and the US in preparation for the expedition, w...
Read article: No space like home
Southwood received his PhD from Imperial College, London, in 1966 and was appointed as lecturer in the physics department in 1971, where he rose to become head of department in 1984. He studied the pr...
Galindo-Uribarri and co-workers chose an isotope of neon with an energy structure that prevents it from emitting protons one at a time. This means that the two protons are certainly ejected simultaneo...
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...
