Multi-planet system startles astronomers
Upsilon Andromedae is a yellow G-type star similar to the Sun. In 1996 Geoffrey Marcy from San Francisco State University, together with Butler, discovered one planet by observing a ‘wobble̵...
The most distant object in theuniverse
Galaxies with extremely large redshifts are hard to detect as the radiation they emit shifts to longer wavelengths that are easily absorbed by giant intergalactic hydrogen clouds. Another problem is t...
Physics looks to thefuture
The three-day workshop was held in Debreccen in Hungary last month and involved physicists from both eastern and western Europe. Delegates were concerned about a number of ‘serious problems̵...
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...
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...
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...
