The topology of the Internet
There are already over 300 million documents on the Internet, and only 34% of them have been catalogued by the most popular search engines such as Hotbot. This has made the topology of the Internet ex...
UK university launches science fiction degree
“Most people in the UK receive their science education through science fiction so it makes sense to study the link between science fiction and science fact,” says Brake. The three year deg...
Dubna lab finds second isotope of element 114
Until the Dubna experiments all artificial superheavy nuclei had half-lives that were measured in milliseconds. However, the most stable nuclei on the island of stability are predicted to have half-li...
EPS high-energy prize goes to ‘t Hooft
‘t Hooft has made several crucial contributions to the Standard Model of particle physics. In 1967 Salam and Weinberg showed how to unify the weak and electromagnetic interactions – two of...
First for single-photon measurements
Photons are traditionally detected by converting their energy into an electric signal, which destroys the photon in the process. An additional problem in quantum measurements is that if one variable &...
Vortex look for lasers
Scheuer and Orenstein used so-called vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers. In these devices the light is emitted from the top of the active region of the laser, rather than from the edge as in conv...
New director for DESY
Wagner, who is 58, studied physics at the Technical University of Munich and the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg. After spells as a research associate at Heidelberg and the Lawrence Berk...
New generation of neutrino experiments begins
Neutrinos come in three flavours – electron, muon and tau neutrinos. According to the Standard Model of particle physics they have zero mass and only interact weakly with matter, which makes the...
New hope for the travelling salesman
Kirkpatrick and co-workers found that the computer algorithms used to solve NP-complete problems can undergo sudden phase transitions as the various criteria used to search for a solution are varied. ...
Century old mystery solved
Invar has a face-centred cubic structure and is composed of about 65% iron and 35% nickel. In addition to its anomalously low thermal expansion, the alloy also has unusual elastic, thermal and magneti...
