How to predict solar flares
Richard Canfield and David McKenzie from Montana State University in the US, and Hugh Hudson from the Solar Physics Research Corporation in Japan, analysed two years worth of images from the X-ray sat...
New director for Fermilab
Witherell received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1973 and became an assistant professor at Princeton University in 1975. He moved to Santa Barbara in 1981 and in 1990 won the American Ph...
CERN and Fermilab argue over “new” discovery
Last Monday Fermilab issued a press release titled “Fermilab physicists find new matter-antimatter asymmetry”. On Thursday CERN replied with a statement which read: “The CERN physics...
Physics highlights the randomness of fashion
In Fink and Mao’s method the space surrounding the tie is split into three sections: left, centre and right. To begin the wide end of the tie is passed either over or under the narrow part. The ...
Sunlight moves asteroids
Some asteroids are pulled into near-Earth orbits by gravitational resonance effects created by the combined pulls of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. However, it has been known for many years that another me...
Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg dies
Seaborg shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with the physicist Edwin McMillan. In addition to a long career at the University of California and the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, both in Berkele...
Heavy nuclei start to shape up
The existence of superheavy elements was predicted about 30 years ago on the basis of the nuclear shell model, which was originally developed in 1949. The model explains why nuclei with certain “...
Hubble upsets star-formation theories
The stellar history of local galaxies is calculated by plotting the different size and brightness of stars in the target galaxy. However, when viewed from Earth, star systems and star clusters can som...
Laser accelerators receive a boost
Physicists hope to develop new ways of accelerating particles because of the high cost and large size of traditional accelerators. Electrons in standard accelerators gain energy by surfing large elect...
