Physics loses out in UK budget
All of the other research councils will get increases of at least 3%, with the Medical Research Council receiving a rise of 6.8%. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) will ge...
Science chooses accelerating universe as “Breakthrough of the Year”
Astronomers have known for decades that the universe is expanding, based on measurements of the “red shift” of light emitted by galaxies. According to the standard cosmological model, ther...
Taking a closer look at “big G”
The gravitational constant was first measured by Lord Cavendish in 1798, who used a torsion-balance to measure the force between a pair of lead spheres. Cavendish measured G to be 6.754 x 10-11 metres...
Thomson scattering goes relativistic
Donald Umstadter and co-workers used a neodymium-glass laser to illuminate helium gas in a vacuum chamber. The team were able to focus 4 trillion watts of power on the gas. The electric field of the l...
Chaos and the arms race
In the early 1960s Lloyd Richardson had developed a dynamic model to foresee the outbreak of war. He believed that there were three processes that a nation responds to: the external threat (the enemy)...
Scientists wobble over Earth’s tilt
Geologists have known for some time that ice sheets existed at the equator between 2, 400 and 2, 200 million years ago and then again between 820 and 550 million years ago. Their favourite theory to e...
The force of acoustics
“The idea of using white noise to mimic zero-point fluctuations is clever, ” said Steve Lamoreaux of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US. “The fundamentals are quite different f...
UK schools to get robotic telescope
Faulkes was educated at Hinckley Grammar School and at an early age specialised in science. He obtained a degree from Hull University and then went to London University to do a PhD in general relativi...
Experiment sees the arrow of time – at last!
Everyday experience tells us that it is impossible to travel backwards in time, no matter what science-fiction writers and movie directors tell us. However, this seemingly natural impossibility...
All change at the top for US particle physics
Richter, 67, will remain on the faculty at Stanford University and will be the next president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. Richter’s main achievements at SLAC have bee...
