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Blog

New portrait of Peter Higgs unveiled

Posted on Jun 17, 2013 5:03 pm
Portrait of Peter Higgs

(Photo courtesy: Antonia Reeve)

By Tushna Commissariat

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) has just unveiled a portrait of famed physicist Peter Higgs, at the Society’s Fellows’ Summer Reception last week. The painting, which will hang on the walls of the Kelvin Room within the RSE’s premises in Edinburgh, was commissioned to one of Scotland’s leading artists, Victoria Crowe, “to honour the man whose outstanding research was instrumental in [the Higgs boson’s] discovery”. The professor seems distinctly unperturbed by the high-energy proton–proton collision taking place in the top right corner of the painting. I shall leave you to find and discern the other interesting imagery in the painting for yourselves – click on the thumbnail to view a larger picture of the portrait.

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In the coming decade, which industry sector will benefit the most from physics research?

Posted on Jun 13, 2013 4:45 pm

By Hamish Johnston

Illustration of some of the sectors that are benefiting from physics research

Illustration of some of the sectors that are benefiting from physics research.

What physics-related industry employs 30,000 people in the UK?

The answer, according to the Institute of Physics (IOP), is the country’s extremely successful space industry – which has been expanding steadily for decades and continues to develop an impressive array of satellite and related technologies. Indeed, the space sector has enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 7.5% since 2008. Not bad going when you consider that the rest of the UK (and much of the world) has been in an economic slump.

Space is just one of the applications of research covered in Physics: Transforming Lives – a 68-page report prepared by the IOP in partnership with EPSRC and the STFC, both of which fund physics research in the UK.

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The Physics World 2013 Focus on Nanotechnology is now out

Posted on Jun 10, 2013 11:32 am
Cover of 2013 PW Nanotechnology Focus Issue

New for 2013.

By Matin Durrani

There’s just one purpose to this blog entry – to get you to check out the latest Physics World focus issue on nanotechnology.

Created in collaboration with our sister website nanotechweb.org, the new focus issue, which you can read in digital-magazine format simply by clicking this link, is packed with great content including a feature by Nobel-prize winning physicist Kostya Novoselov, who shared the 2010 prize with Andre Geim for their work on graphene.

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Do you recognize this antique scientific instrument?

Posted on Jun 7, 2013 4:21 pm
Do you know what this is? Click on image for larger version. (Courtesy: Jean Barrette)

Do you know what this is? Click on image for larger version. (Courtesy: Jean Barrette)

By Hamish Johnston

Last week I promised readers a genuine mystery – and here it is. Do you know what this piece of apparatus was used for?

It currently resides in the McPherson Collection of physics instruments at McGill University in Montreal and its purpose has long puzzled curator Jean Barrette – who I spoke to when I was in Canada recently.

The device looks like it is designed for bench-top use and Barrette believes that it was used to study gases. Inside the cylindrical section with the half-moon window there is another small cylindrical part that can move. The small cylindrical extension to the right of the main component is an electrode input to bring high voltage inside the chamber.

“Any idea on the purpose of the instrument would be greatly appreciated,” said Barrette.

There must be a physicsworld.com reader out there who knows what this is. Please let Jean and I know by leaving a comment below.

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Quantum communication in the back of a pick-up

Posted on Jun 6, 2013 5:33 pm
Thomas Jennewein and his quantum receiver, which will soon hit the streets of Waterloo

Thomas Jennewein and his quantum receiver will soon hit the streets of Waterloo.

By Hamish Johnston

I’m back from my trip to Waterloo, Ontario – Canada’s “Quantum Valley” – but there is still so much to tell. The photograph above is of Thomas Jennewein of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), who took me on a tour of his lab earlier this week.

Jennewein is standing next to a quantum receiver that he and his colleagues will soon be bolting to a pick-up truck and driving around Waterloo. The plan is to receive quantum communications from a light source that’s on the roof of one of IQC’s buildings. The ultimate goal of the research is to deploy quantum receivers (and transmitters) in space to create a global quantum-communication network.

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Do “real scientists” take research trips instead of holidays?

Posted on Jun 6, 2013 5:15 pm

By Margaret Harris

Photo of beach-wear

Getting away from research for a while on a beach. (iStockphoto/David Franklin)

I’ve just started reading Letters to a Young Scientist, a new book by the eminent biologist Edward O Wilson. I picked it up as a possible subject for Physics World’s Between the Lines column of short book reviews because while Wilson is definitely not a physicist – he made his name studying the social systems of ant colonies – his book is written for scientists in all disciplines.

I haven’t finished it yet, but one bit of advice from the chapter “What it takes” grabbed my attention. After stating that academic scientists should expect to work 60-hour weeks, Wilson drops the real bombshell.  “Real scientists do not take vacations,” he writes. “They take field trips or temporary research fellowships in other institutions.”

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Bright spots in the Euro-gloom

Posted on Jun 5, 2013 9:47 am
European Parliament in Brussels

European Parliament in Brussels. (iStockphoto/Franky De Meyer)

By Margaret Harris in Brussels

For an event built around celebrating Europe’s best scientific spin-out companies, the Academic Enterprise Awards got off to a downbeat start. “Europe is lacking growth, lacking jobs and lacking entrepreneurial appetite,” declared Joanna Drake, director of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the European Commission. Such enterprises “have a difficult life, and this is getting worse, not improving” agreed the event’s second speaker, MEP Maria Da Graça Carvalho of Portugal.  Then there was Roland Siegwart, vice-president for research and corporate relations at ETH Zurich. In a splendid bit of understatement, he lamented the fact that many bright scientists at his university “have a somewhat not awake entrepreneurial spirit”.

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Life inside the Perimeter

Posted on Jun 4, 2013 8:36 pm
Blackboards and equations galore at the PI

Blackboards and equations galore at the PI.

By Hamish Johnston in Canada’s Quantum Valley

Today I am living the dream, at least for many theoretical physicists. I have my very own office at the Perimeter Institute (PI) for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. It comes complete with free coffee, a blackboard pre-loaded with equations and access to some of the world’s top physicists.

This morning I spoke to Daniel Gottesman, who if I am not mistaken was the first PI faculty member to work on quantum information after joining in 2002. His speciality is quantum error correction and we had a fantastic chat about the directions in which quantum computing could go in the future.

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Entering the quantum world

Posted on Jun 4, 2013 4:56 pm
Not a black hole in sight: Raymond Laflamme in one of the IQC labs. The machine behind him makes diamonds for quantum computing experiments

Not a black hole in sight: Raymond Laflamme in one of the IQC labs. The machine behind him makes diamonds for quantum-computing experiments.

By Hamish Johnston in Canada’s Quantum Valley

“We have entered the quantum world and we can control it” is how Raymond Laflamme characterizes the current quantum renaissance that is sweeping across many fields of physics. Laflamme is director of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at Canada’s University of Waterloo and he began his career at the University of Cambridge as a student of Stephen Hawking, working on cosmology.

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A ‘unique’ quantum research centre

Posted on Jun 3, 2013 11:24 pm
Vadim Makarov with a few old friends

Vadim Makarov with a few old friends.

By Hamish Johnston in Canada’s Quantum Valley

“There’s no place like this in the world,” said Vadim Makarov (above) as we walked up to his lab at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at Canada’s University of Waterloo. What’s unique about the place, according to Makarov and others I spoke to in Waterloo, is that it brings together a diverse group of researchers (physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, engineers, etc) in one place to develop quantum-information technology.

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