Field theorists win Dirac prize
The citation highlights Adler’s derivation of a sum rule for pion-nucleon scattering that marked a breakthrough in our understanding of the currents and broken symmetries of the strong interacti...
Making light work of gravity gradients
The interferometer was built by Mark Kasevich and colleagues at Yale University in the US and used individual atoms, rather than macroscopic man-made objects, to measure the gradient. By observing the...
Physicist named as Japan’s minister for education and science
Arima has long been a keen advocate for reforming Japanese science. Previously he helped shape the 1996 Basic Law for Science and Technology, which aimed to increase Japan’s spending on science....
Talking physics with the Dalai Lama
Zeilinger had invited the Dalai Lama to his laboratory following a meeting at Dharamsala in Northern India last October at which he and four other physicists had, over the course of five days, discuss...
Tiling theory could make DNA chips a reality
Previous attempts to use DNA as a molecular building block failed because its double helix structure is so flexible. However, Seeman and colleagues realized that if two synthetic DNA chains were place...
Atoms join in the race for lithography in the next century
The problem is that the features made by conventional optical lithography cannot be shrunk indefinitely. The laws of diffraction dictate that the only way to make feature sizes smaller is to shorten t...
Radar finds SOHO
Attempts to locate the satellite with NASA’s Deep Space Network had been unsuccessful. However, by bouncing radio waves from the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico off the satellite, and detecti...
Solving the plutonium problem
Russia and the US each have 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium to dispose of by either converting it into fuel, or mixing it in with radioactive waste. At the same time, France and the UK separate 20 ...
Strain doubles superconductor temperatures
Their technique works by growing single crystal films of the superconducting compound lanthanum-strontium-copper-oxide (La1.9Sr0.1CuO4) on top of a crystal with a smaller lattice spacing. Because the ...
UK ends ‘free’ Internet access
The charges are designed to help fund the soaring costs of international Internet access from the UK. Over the past four years access costs have risen from £1 million ($1.7 m) to £7 million ...
