Lasers fuel path to fusion
The clusters were produced by expanding a deuterium gas jet into a vacuum. A laser beam focussed near the top of the plume heats the clusters, causing them to explode. This creates a small plasma of h...
Telescopes on the cheap?
This is not the first time that astronomers have considered using rotating platters of liquid – usually mercury – for a central mirror. For example, a mercury-based telescope would cost on...
Nuclear monitoring network passes first test
Governments that have signed the CTBT – which will come into force this September – are concerned that countries such as Iran, India and Iraq might try to develop so called ‘sub-crit...
New look for PhysicsWeb
As part of the redesign we have also moved the In Depth and Patent News services to the News section, and moved WebWatch to a new expanded Reviews section. We have also put the 1997 and 1998 indexes f...
New light on sonoluminescence
Sascha Hilgenfeldt, Siegfried Grossman and Detlef Lohse extended the model by making the bubble’s temperature dependent on its volume and by making an allowance of the small emissivity of the we...
String theory tops thebest-seller list
String theory is seen as a way of reconciling Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. According to the theory, the fundamental particles and their interactions are generated by t...
DNA is a semiconductor
Fink and Schönenberger made their measurements by placing discrete amounts of DNA molecules in a water-based solution. A tiny droplet of the solution was then placed onto a gold-coated carbon foi...
Neutrinos may decay
According to the Standard Model of particle physics, the three types of neutrinos – electron, muon and tau neutrinos – have zero mass. But the number of atmospheric neutrinos – muon ...
Phosphors help switch on xenon
The glass tube in a conventional fluorescent light is coated on the inside with a phosphor layer and filled with a discharge material, usually mercury. Electrons excite the mercury atoms from the grou...
Read article: Phosphors help switch on xenon
Scientists illuminate gamma-ray burst
Although scientists have known about gamma-ray bursts since 1967, no one has come up with a feasible explanation of why they occur. The explosions may be caused by the collision of super-dense neutron...
