Humans are the cause of climate change
The team looked in particular for ‘lag time’ effects in the data. For example, the eruption of Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 lowered the global temperature by 0.3 C in the followi...
Laser emits multi-wavelength light
Semiconductor lasers are usually monocromatic because the electrons stored in energy bands do not emit any photons unless they move out of the semiconductor’s conduction band. Federico Capasso a...
Uniform universe
The 1995 image was taken in a small patch near the Big Dipper constellation, which astronomers previously thought was completely blank. This new image taken by the Space Telescope Science Institute an...
First module of international space station launched
The 24 ton Zarya (meaning “daybreak”) module is based on the long experience the Russian Space Agency has had with the Mir space station. Unlike the US space station Skylab, which was unti...
New look for optical fibres
Fibre-optic cables usually consist of an inner core of highly refractive glass sheathed inside glass with a lower refractive index. Light travels along the inner core fibre by total internal reflectio...
Time’s arrow seen in particle decays
The CPLEAR collaboration studied the decays of neutral kaons produced in proton- antiproton collisions. The collisions produce both neutral kaons – which contain a down quark and an anti-strange...
Measuring the conductivity of blood
Doctors need to measure blood conductivity to calculate the internal pump volume of the heart and the blood circulation rate. However, when patients receive additional fluids – for example, wate...
Microlasers get even smaller
Attempts to scale down current laser designs have been made before, but the devices were not efficient enough for real applications. Now a group of researchers from Darmstadt University of Technology,...
Hawking and Rotblat choose their favourites
Hawking was one of ten famous names asked by the National Portrait Galley to pick photographs that defined the 20th century. He was the only scientist in a group that included the film producer David ...
How the Nobel prize was won
The Nobel Foundation chooses Nobel prize winners with the utmost secrecy. But in 1974 it agreed to allow historians access to any of its archives over fifty year old. Since then Crawford has documente...
