India tests nuclear bombs
The British Gelogological Survey registered Monday’s hydrogen explosion at 4.7 on the Richter scale – similar to a light earthquake. But the failure of seismograph stations to register tod...
The biggest bang since the big bang
The 50 second burst, known as GRB971214, was detected by the two satellites. The Italian/Dutch BeppoSAX satellite gave the precise position of the blast, while NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observato...
Changes to PhysicsWeb
New features will be added to PhysicsWeb over the next few months to enhance the service offered to users.
Wanted: a bible for science
Future archaeologists who come across books from our era would, he says, find it difficult to tell the difference between ‘new age’ science books full of “junk science” or thos...
Nanotransistors at room temperature
The biggest challenge in making a single-molecule device is achieving electrical contact between individual molecules. Now new techniques that vaporize carbon to form nanotubes, and deposit material o...
Sampling micrometeorites at the South Pole
The middle of Antarctica is an ideal place to look for ‘survivors’ of the burn-up because material in the region suffer little, if any, chemical or physical weathering and there is very li...
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory opens
Neutrinos travel at the speed of light and only interact very weakly with matter, which makes them very difficult to detect. This is why neutrino detectors need to be large and built underground ̵...
Tackling current limits in superconductors
Superconductors lose their unique properties above a critical current density of about 105 A cm-2. The best candidates for high-current applications – silver sheathed tapes of the bismuth-lead-s...
Bureaucracy blocks R&D
The sum is substantial – domestic spending on basic research is about IR£2m each year; the country also receives IR£20m from the EU. “If the money is not released very soon, ther...
New look for Foresight
The Foresight programme was launched in 1994 to improve wealth creation and the quality of life in the UK. It has been led by 16 panels of business executives, scientists and government officials, who...
