Posts by: Matin Durrani

Transit of Venus 2012 from Lightcurve Films on Vimeo.

By Matin Durrani

You could be forgiven for thinking that we here at Physics World have a slightly obsession with that astronomical phenomenon known as the transit of Venus.

First we published a great feature by Jay Pasachoff that explained the science and history of this rare astronomical event, in which the planet Venus passes across the face of the Sun, as seen from the Earth. Pasachoff’s article appeared just before this year’s transit, which took place on 5 and 6 June, but the transits are so rare that the next one won’t occur until December 2117.

Then Physics World columnist Robert P Crease examined the question of whether the great Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov did – or did not – see the atmosphere of Venus during the 1761 transit. This piece was followed a few months later by Crease’s account of various attempts this summer to carry out historical recreations of Lomonosov’s work. (Crease’s conclusion: yes Lomonosov probably did see Venus’s atmosphere.)

We also ran a photo challenge on Flickr, where we invited you to send us your images of this year’s transit. You can see a selection of the best in this article here.

Anyway, now we’re happy to bring you the above video, which shows this year’s transit as seen from Svalbard (Norway, 78ºN) and Canberra (Australia, 35ºS) using images obtained by members of the European Space Astronomy Centre, just outside Madrid. Nothing beats seeing the transit for real (actually I’m ashamed to admit I was lying in bed when it occured although, to be fair, it was raining in Bristol at the time, but the above video is a pretty good next-best-thing.

And if you want to watch a quick overview of why the transit of Venus occurs, then check out Physics World‘s own video below, featuring Zoe Leinhardt from the University of Bristol.

By Matin Durrani

If you’re a member of the Institute of Physics, it’s time to tuck into the October 2012 issue of Physics World, which sees Michael Riordan continue his story of the search for the Higgs boson, taking us from the closure of the Large Electron–Positron collider at CERN in 2000 to the final, joyous days in July this year when the particle – or something like it – finally appeared at the Geneva lab. Elsewhere, PhD student Ashley Dale gives a riveting account of his two-week stay in the Utah desert, where he was part of a mission seeking to simulate a trip to Mars, which saw him do everything from riding on quad bikes to eating dehydrated food.

Don’t miss either our latest graduate special, where Physics World careers editor Margaret Harris examines the pitfalls and positives of doing a postdoc. Finally, we have a brilliant Lateral Thoughts article this month, in which Stephanie Walton describes her attempts to take a break from her PhD studies – and try her hand at writing a fully fledged crime novel. Physicists are a bright bunch; how hard could penning some fiction possibly be?

Members of the Institute of Physics (IOP) can access the entire new issue free online through the digital version of the magazine by following this link or by downloading the Physics World app onto your iPhone or iPad or Android device, available from the App Store and Google Play, respectively.

For the record, here’s a rundown of the highlights of the issue:

• Astronomy’s golden future – One year on from sharing the Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, Brian Schmidt tells Jude Dineley why he thinks the future is bright for physics in Australia

• Courting controversy – A new independent analysis of global temperature records, led by Richard Muller, has found that humans are indeed contributing to climate change, but the result has proved contentious, as Philip Ball reports

• Critical point: How to vote – Ahead of the upcoming US elections, Robert P Crease describes his tactic for determining the qualifications of candidates

• Is the ‘Cox effect’ good for us? – Some claim that recent increases in the number of students studying physics in the UK are due to the TV appearances of physicist Brian Cox. But, as Felicity Mellor warns, the “Cox effect” may not be all good news

• My life on Mars – In December 2011 Ashley Dale spent two weeks in the Utah desert as part of a simulated Mars mission. This is his account of the experience

• Britain and the bomb – On the 60th anniversary of Britain’s first nuclear test, Richard Corfield explores how Operation Hurricane – the British effort to develop the atomic bomb in the 1940s and 1950s compares with states such as Iran that today wish to have such devices

• Cornering the Higgs boson – Michael Riordan continues his look back on the Higgs boson search with the early attempts to hunt it down at the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider

• Hans Bethe’s early life’ – Jeremy Bernstein reviews Nuclear Forces: the Making of the Physicist Hans Bethe by Silvan Schweber

• The science of Prometheus’ – Seymour Mauskopf reviews Roald Hoffmann: On the Philosophy, Art, and Science of Chemistry edited by Jeffrey Kovac and Michael Weisberg

• The academic pyramid – With the world economy struggling, physics graduates might be tempted to ride out the recession by doing a PhD or postdoctoral research. But as Margaret Harris reports, the academic sector has its own career problems

• My career as a crime novelist – In this month’s Lateral Thoughts column, Stephanie Walton muses on just how hard it could be to write a crime novel

If you’re not yet a member, you can join the IOP as an imember for just £15, €20 or $25 a year via this link. Being an imember gives you a full year’s access to Physics World both online and through the apps.

By Matin Durrani

Ask a non-scientist what a theoretical physicist does and you’re likely get a shrug of the shoulders along with a guess such as “Scribbles equations all day?” Even most physics students probably don’t know what theorists really do.

In an attempt to shed light on how theoretical physicists work, the September 2012 issue of Physics World, which is now out, contains the first of an occasional series exploring the emotional challenges behind some of the most elegant, ingenious or important calculations in physics

Our plan is to look at calculations that theorists consider their own favourite or that represented a personal triumph – a reward for years of study or a moment of clarity into what science is all about. This month we examine the work of Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, Daniel Freedman and Sergio Ferrara in 1976 on the theory of “supergravity”, which combines supersymmetry with gravity.

Although there is not yet any experimental proof that supergravity is a valid description of the real world, the tale of how the theory was created – as told by science writer David Appell – is fascinating and gripping. You can read Appell’s feature “When supergravity was born” by clicking here.

Elsewhere in the issue, Magdolna Hargittai from Budapest University of Technology and Economics examines the long-standing question of whether the physicist Chien-Shiung Wu should have received a share in the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics – or whether she missed out to theorists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang as a result of gender discrimination. Meanwhile, Henrik Melbéus and Tommy Ohlsson from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden look into whether CERN’s Large Hadron Collider could find evidence for “extra dimensions”. Plus reviews, careers, lateral thoughts, feedback and much more.

Members of the Institute of Physics (IOP) can access the entire new issue online through the free digital version of the magazine by following this link or by downloading the Physics World app onto your iPhone or iPad or Android device, available from the App Store and Google Play, respectively.

For the record, here’s a rundown of highlights of the issue:

• Support mounts for ‘honeytrap’ physicist – Michael Banks looks at the physics community’s attempts to support 68-year-old particle theorist Paul Frampton, who is languishing in an Argentine jail on drug-smuggling charges

• Delivering on a promise – Shiraz Minwalla says India’s education needs to be reformed before the country can realize its full scientific potential

• Critical point: One amazing moment – Robert P Crease wonders why physicists are not doing more to celebrate the centenary of one of the most important events in science – the discovery that crystals diffract X-rays

• Credit where credit’s due? – Magdolna Hargittai asks if physicist Chien-Shiung Wu should have received a share in the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics – or whether she missed out to theorists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang as a result of gender discrimination

• Delving into extra dimensions – Henrik Melbéus and Tommy Ohlsson describe three different theories of extra dimensions – universal, large and warped – and how these unseen dimensions could be observed, if they exist at all

• Crackpots and consequences – Margaret Harris reviews Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything by Margaret Wertheim

• Science in a dictatorship – Gordon Fraser reviews The German Physical Society in the Third Reich: Physicists between Autonomy and Accommodation edited by Dieter Hoffmann and Mark Walker

• Speak up – The role of spokespeople on international physics collaborations is important, complex and, as David Wark explains, requires skills that nobody ever taught you during your PhD

• Once a physicist: Ralph Palmer – Meet the 12th Baron Lucas – a Conservative member of the House of Lords

• Fiddling around with physics – In this month’s Lateral Thoughts column, Nicole Yunger Halpern muses on what would happen if great physics-loving musicians were to meet

If you’re not yet a member, you can join the IOP as an imember for just £15, €20 or $25 a year via this link. Being an IOPimember gives you a full year’s access to Physics World both online and through the apps.

By Matin Durrani

The Physics World editorial team has been to a fair few places in the last couple of years as we try to make some interesting, entertaining and (hopefully) informative films about the world of physics.

We’ve been inside CERN to investigate the latest in the search for the Higgs boson. We’ve travelled to major international conferences from San Francisco to Boston. And then there was the time we went one mile underground to a dark-matter experiment in the north of England.

Yesterday, however, we shot a set of new films at this year’s Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, where thousands of people gather to watch as a series of hot-air balloons take off over a four-day period.

So what, you might wonder, is the link with physics? Well, as Alan Watson describes in this new article, this week marks the centenary of the discovery – during a balloon flight – by the Austrian physicist Victor Hess of what we now know as cosmic rays.

Physicists from the University of Bristol, led by David Cussans, decided to use the fiesta as an opportunity to showcase not only the centenary but also a new project that has allowed school pupils to build their own cosmic-ray detector.

The university launched two balloons, one of which you can see being filled with hot air (right). No, don’t ask me the cost in wasted greenhouse gases.

Sadly we didn’t hitch a ride in either of the balloons, but three of the pupils who were involved in the detector-building project were on board, as were three others who won a competition to take part in the flight.

As you can see, the view from the balloon over the festival site was fabulous.

Although Physics World editors didn’t manage to thumb a lift, a copy of the August issue of Physics World, which contains Watson’s article, did make the trip.

The pupils even took their detector in the balloon, but unfortunately – as is the way with experimental physics – someone had accidentally left the battery running and it had discharged completely so no data could be collected during the flight. Oops.

Apart from that, as we discovered when we returned to the fiesta this morning, the flight was a success and took the pupils and crew to a height of some 3000 m.

We’ll now set about turning our footage into a set of films, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, for more about the cosmic-ray centenary, don’t forget the Physics World feature.

All pictures courtesy: Beth Cotterell

By Matin Durrani

It’s probably because he was born and raised in Bristol, UK – the city where Physics World is based – that my colleagues and I perhaps give a disproportionate amount of coverage to Paul Dirac compared with other great theoretical physicists of the 20th century.

But although Dirac did his most famous work at the University of Cambridge, where he was Lucasian professor for more than 35 years, it is nevertheless true to say that his approach to science was forged by his educational experiences in Bristol, as Graham Farmelo’s classic 2009 biography makes clear.

Dirac studied for two separate degrees in engineering and mathematics at the University of Bristol and before that gained a wealth of practical experience, particularly in the art of technical drawing, when he was a pupil at Merchant Venturers’ Technical College – an institution that was the forerunner of today’s Cotham School.

Given that 8 August is the day on which Dirac was born back in 1902, I thought today an appropriate moment to mention an interesting new artwork (see right, click to enlarge) that is currently on show at Cotham School.

Created by Eric Hardy, the work is an alternative version of the traditional end-of-year school photograph and consists of a pixelated image of Dirac himself. All the pixels, however, have been replaced by photos taken in 2010 – when Hardy was still at Cotham School – of fellow pupils, teachers and other members of staff.

“As such it connects the past to the present, the individual to the collective,” says Hardy’s father Tim.

The original artwork, which is printed on a canvas about 100 × 90 cm in size, was on display at the school in May when its other great former pupil – the University of Edinburgh theorist Peter Higgs – paid a visit.

If you can’t make out Dirac in the image, try scrunching up your eyeballs.

And talking of Dirac, don’t forget that today is also the day that the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste awards its annual Dirac prize, which this year went to Duncan Haldane, Charles Kane and Shoucheng Zhang for their work on a new class of exotic materials called “topological insulators”.

By Matin Durrani

Now that the dust has settled on CERN’s historic discovery of what looks very much like a Higgs boson, why not settle back and enjoy the August 2012 issue of Physics World. In a series of special Higgs-boson-related sections, we explore the implications of the discovery, offer a selection of amusing behind-the-scenes tales about CERN’s big announcement on 4 July, while Michael Riordan looks back at how the Higgs boson was predicted and the first quarter century of experimental searches for it. The digital magazine also includes access to a fabulous new Physics World podcast, “Going where the beam is good”, about the ups and downs of a career in particle physics.

Elsewhere in the issue, Alan Watson celebrates the centenary of cosmic rays, Kevin Weatherill and Edgar Vredenbregt describe how ultracold particle beams could transform nanoscience, while Physics World columnist Robert P Crease looks back at this summer’s historic transit of Venus. Plus reviews, careers, lateral thoughts, feedback and much more.

Members of the Institute of Physics (IOP) can access the entire new issue online through the free digital version of the magazine by following this link or by downloading the Physics World app onto your iPhone or iPad or Android device, available from the App Store and Google Play, respectively.

For the record, here’s a rundown of highlights of the issue:

• CERN finds evidence for new boson – Hamish Johnston explains how attention is now being focused on finding out more about the new boson’s properties

• Japan frets over ‘Galapagos syndrome’ – With worries that Japan’s research is becoming isolated, it is hoped that new initiatives will reverse the trend, as Dennis Normile reports

• Introducing the higgson – Gordon Fraser and Michael Riordan argue that the boson discovered at CERN should be known not as the Higgs boson, but the “higgson”

• Critical point: Transit watching – Robert P Crease reports on the result of four new experiments in “historical astronomy”

• The long road to the Higgs boson – Michael Riordan looks back at how this long-sought particle was predicted and the first quarter century of experimental searches for it

• 100 years of cosmic rays – A century on from the discovery of cosmic rays, Alan Watson relates how physicists have gradually revealed the nature of these mysterious objects, and examines progress in understanding where cosmic rays come from and why they tail off at high energies

• The next coolest thing – Over the past 25 years, laser cooling and trapping have transformed experimental atomic physics. Kevin Weatherill and Edgar Vredenbregt describe how ultracold particle beams could soon do the same for nanoscience applications

• A Cold War puzzle persists – Istvan Hargittai reviews The Pontecevoro Affair: a Cold War Affair and Nuclear Physics by Simone Turchetti

• ESP and LSD on the CIA’s dime – Andrew Whitaker reviews How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser

• Making the ‘wonder material’ – Graphene is taking the world of physics by storm, with new applications cropping up almost weekly. Daniel Stolyarov describes how he and his wife, Elena Polyakova, turned the graphene boom into a business

• Once a physicist: Olaf Olafsson – Meet the executive vice-president for international and corporate strategy at Time Warner, whose fourth novel, Restoration, was published in February

• A brief geography of time – In this month’s Lateral Thoughts column, Gareth Leyshon muses on the awkwardness of Earthly calendars

If you’re not yet a member, you can join the IOP as an imember for just £15, €20 or $25 a year via this link. Being an imember gives you a full year’s access to Physics World both online and through the apps.

By Matin Durrani

For every researcher, getting published is the name of the game.

You might be a brilliant blogger, a terrific Tweeter or a frenetic Facebook fan, but having a scientific paper published in a professional scientific journal is still your best bet for getting your results recorded, archived, peer-reviewed and disseminated.

If you’re new to the publishing game, however, IOP Publishing, which publishes physicsworld.com, has brought out a handy little online introductory guide.

Aimed at early-career researchers, the guide is designed to provide an overview of academic publishing and advice on how to make the most of the process for sharing your research.

There are sections on choosing where to submit your paper, how to go about writing it, how the peer-review process operates, and what to do when you receive your referee’s report.

Check out the guide to getting published.

PS Talking of Facebook, we’ve started posting “images of the day” on our Facebook page. They seem to be quite popular, so let us know if you have any suggestions.

By Matin Durrani

Ernest Rutherford used to enjoy “noisy and appalling” golf at Cambridge with his Trinity College colleagues. Niels Bohr was a keen footballer who played in goal for the top Danish side Akademisk Boldklub in the early 1900s. Arthur Eddington was a passionate cyclist who coined the “Eddington number”, E, which is the number of days on which you have cycled at least E miles. (He reached an incredible 84.) And, of course, CERN physicists are handily placed for a spot of Alpine hiking, climbing and skiing.

But for some physicists, sport is more than just something they take part in – it is what they study too. This month’s issue of Physics World looks at some of the challenges in the “physics of sport”, including:
• the effects of technology and rule change on sporting performance;
• the physics of the prosthetic devices that are leading disabled athletes like Oscar Pistorius to success;
• and how gymnasts, divers and long-jumpers are all unconscious masters of manipulating the law of conservation of angular momentum.

Members of the Institute of Physics (IOP) can enjoy the entire new issue online through the digital version of the magazine by following this link or by downloading the Physics World app onto your iPhone or iPad or Android device, available from the App Store and Google Play, respectively.

But for those of you who are not yet members of the IOP, to show you what you’re missing out on, we’re offering for a limited period only the opportunity to download a free PDF of the July issue via this link. The PDF version doesn’t contain all the features of the digital issue, which include reading articles in plain-text or page-view formats, the ability to share articles and have them read out loud, as well in-built multimedia content.

Remember that if you’re not yet a member, you can join the IOP as an imember for just £15, €20 or $25 a year via this link. Being an imember gives you a full year’s access to Physics World both online and through the apps.

Click here to download a free PDF of the July issue of Physics World.

By Matin Durrani

Ernest Rutherford used to enjoy “noisy and appalling” golf at Cambridge with his Trinity College colleagues. Niels Bohr was a keen footballer who played in goal for the top Danish side Akademisk Boldklub in the early 1900s. Arthur Eddington was a passionate cyclist who coined the “Eddington number”, E, which is the number of days on which you have cycled at least E miles. (He reached an incredible 84.) And, of course, CERN physicists are handily placed for a spot of Alpine hiking, climbing and skiing when their hunt for the Higgs has worn them down.

But for some physicists, sport is more than just something they take part in – it is what they study too. This month’s issue of Physics World looks at some of the challenges in the “physics of sport”, including the effects of technology and rule change on sporting performance, the physics of the prosthetic devices that are leading disabled athletes to success, and how gymnasts, divers and long jumpers are all unconscious masters of manipulating the law of conservation of angular momentum.

Members of the Institute of Physics (IOP) can access the entire new issue free online through the digital version of the magazine by following this link or by downloading the Physics World app onto your iPhone or iPad or Android device, available from the App Store and Google Play, respectively.

The digital issue also contains a trio of unmissable videos on the physics of running, cycling and swimming filmed with Steve Haake, director of the Centre for Sports Engineering Research at Sheffield Hallam University.

Here’s a rundown of other highlights of the issue:

• SKA’s double site splits opinion – The decision to build the world’s biggest radio telescope – the Square Kilometre Array – on two separate sites in Africa and Australasia has been praised by many. Jon Cartwright examines if the split site will hamper its science prospects

• Supercharging Japan’s atom smasher – The KEKB collider in Japan is halfway through a major revamp that may help to explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe, as Michael Banks reports

• Critical point: Sporting knowledge – When we say that athletes “know” the laws of physics, what we really mean, argues Robert P Crease, is that they know the laws of “physics”

• An impaired cosmic vision – The European Space Agency recently picked a probe to Jupiter as its next large-class mission. Paul Nandra, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, says the decision could devastate astronomy

• The fastest man on no legs – Prostheses remained unchanged for thousands of years, but that all changed once amputee athletes got involved in the design process. James Poskett explores the stories behind the elite sports prostheses we see today

• Material advantage – Sprinters are running faster than ever before, but why are javelin throwers not throwing further and swimmers not swimming faster? Steve Haake, director of the Centre for Sports Engineering Research at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, explains the effects of technology and rule change on sporting performance

• Balance, angular momentum and sport – Roland Ennos from the University of Manchester explains how athletes and the rest of us use simple physics principles to perform amazing balancing acts

• Technology for life – The fight against cancer offers rewarding career opportunities for medical physicists as well as healthcare professionals, as Giulia Thompson, who leads the R&D team at Elekta, describes

• Once a physicist: Crispin Duenas – the University of Toronto physicist who will be representing Canada in archery at this summer’s Olympic Games

• The Great Physics Games – In this month’s Lateral Thoughts column, Kate Oliver takes a wry look at how physicists compete to succeed

If you’re not yet a member, you can join the IOP as an imember for just £15, €20 or $25 a year via this link. Being an imember gives you a full year’s access to Physics World both online and through the apps.

Edward Cowie, left, after yesterday’s world première of Particle Partita.

By Matin Durrani

“I loved it, I really loved it.”

So said one guy to me on the lawns of Balliol College, Oxford, at the drinks reception that followed yesterday’s world première of what was dubbed “a ground-breaking arts–science collaboration themed around the elementary particles”.

The event was a one-hour scientific “performance–lecture” presented by Oxford University particle physicist Brian Foster and the Brit Award-winning violinist Jack Liebeck, in which the pair linked the ideas of particle physics with music.

The concept was simple. Foster presented a bite-sized history of particle physics in eight parts, all the way from Democritus’s idea of atoms right up to the current hunt for the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. At the end of each part, Liebeck performed music specially written by the physicist, artist and composer Edward Cowie, with each of these eight short pieces reflecting – and being inspired by – the concepts just discussed by Foster.

Entitled Particle Partita, Cowie dubs the work “a sonic ‘history’ of particle physics” that follows the “ornate and beautiful actions and reactions” of particles’ charge, spin and symmetry. “It is a music of great complexity with many materials that re-emerge in altered but related forms from the opening to the close,” muses Cowie in the programme notes. Cowie also created special drawings for each piece that were displayed on a screen as Liebeck played in Oxford’s beautiful Holywell Music Room.

The last of the eight pieces was a duet in which Liebeck was joined by Foster to perform “The Higgs boson – and beyond?”.

Foster and Liebeck are not, of course, new to the world of art–science collaborations, having been entertaining audiences for more than five years with their lectures Superstrings and Einstein’s Universe. Cowie, meanwhile, also collaborated with Bristol University’s Michael Berry in writing Rutherford’s Lights, a work for solo piano created as a homage to Ernest Rutherford.

Speaking in an interview with Physics World in 2010, Cowie wryly noted that many arts–science collaborations are “unholy marriages”. At turns sparse, dramatic and violent, the music of Particle Partita is certainly demanding of the listener, with Cowie himself admitting to me as we made our way in to yesterday’s first public performance that the music is “challenging”. One audience member, meanwhile, was overheard to say that the lecture went “right over my head”.

Particle Partita was commissioned with funds from the University of Oxford, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Institute of Physics, which publishes physicsworld.com. You can get a special, behind-the-scenes look at the making of the piece in this video we filmed last year.