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Posts by: Tushna Commissariat
Got your physics degree… now what?
By Tushna Commissariat
Last year, we launched our first ever Physics World Careers guide, which brought together all of our best content from the careers section of our monthly magazine, together with an extensive directory of employers. This year, we’re back with the bigger Physics World Careers guide 2018, packed with case-studies and analyses, to help you choose the right path for your future – as James McKenzie, vice-president for business at Institute of Physics point out in his foreword for the guide, “As physicists, you will have learnt to be logical, analytical and articulate. These are skills that are highly prized by employers and open up many career paths for you.”
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A very LIGO Christmas
Light speed: LIGO gets a surprise signal (click to expand)
By Tushna Commissariat
Every December, we like to do something special for you, dear readers, as the year draws to an end. As you are undoubtedly aware, some of the most exciting news in physics this year came from the world of gravitational-wave research and multimessenger astronomy, in the first ever observation of a neutron-star merger. Indeed, this global discovery bagged our 2017 Breakthrough of the Year award, while the pioneers of gravitational-wave astronomy won this year’s Nobel prize in physics.
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Physics World’s shortlist for Book of the Year 2017
By Tushna Commissariat
The first week of December can only mean one thing – it’s time to reveal the shortlist for the Physics World book of the year. We’ve based our choice on the 54 books we’ve reviewed over the last 12 months in Physics World, picking our favourite 10 using the same three criteria that have been in place since we launched our book of the year award in 2009. These are that the books must be well written, novel and scientifically interesting to physicists.
Following on from a tumultuous 2016, this year has seen much political strife and human-rights crises, along with the rise of the unexpected demon of “fake news”. Unsurprisingly, the books we reviewed in Physics World this year reflected a lot of these global issues, which means that, along with the usual mix of popular-physics titles, the 2017 shortlist has a few books that at first sight might not seem to have direct links to physics. However, we feel these titles are nevertheless important and relevant to physicists (and of course scientists in general).
Given the number of strong and interesting books on our shortlist, it’s going to be hard to pick a single winner. That, however, is what we shall endeavour to do, via the Physics World podcast next week, when we’ll announce the award-winning book and discuss some of our other favourites on the shortlist. Let us know which ones you have read and are your favourite, and which you may be adding to your Christmas list.
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Science, scepticism and fear at the theatre
Sceptical siblings: Olivia Williams (left) and Olivia Colman in Mosquitoes by Lucy Kirkwood. (Courtesy: National Theatre/Brinkhoff & Mogenburg)
By Tushna Commissariat
Working at Physics World for the last six years has taken me to some pretty cool labs – everywhere from CERN to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). My job has allowed me to meet some quite famous people too…at least in the world of physics, that is. But getting to spend a morning at the National Theatre in London watching Olivia Colman and Olivia Williams rehearse for a play is not usual even for me. That is precisely why I jumped at the chance, when I found out that the pair star as sisters in the recently opened play Mosquitoes.
You may be wondering what a play with that moniker has to do with physics. Mosquitoes tells the story of rational and lucid Alice (played by Williams), a particle physicist at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and her often-illogical sister Jenny (played by Colman) “who spends a lot of time Googling” and is easily swayed by the bad science she chances upon. Written by Lucy Kirkwood and directed by Rufus Norris – the National Theatre’s current artistic director, the play follows the siblings through a family tragedy, as well as the fairly disastrous switching on of the LHC in 2008, and takes a hard look at our relationships with science, facts, belief and so much more. Kirkwood, whose previous successes include Chimerica and The Children, was commissioned to write the play by the Manhattan Theatre Club as part of its Alfred P Sloan Foundation initiative, which aims to “stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination”.
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Physics World visits LIGO Livingston
Wave sign: the secluded road that leads to LIGO Livingston. (Courtesy: Tushna Commissariat)
By Tushna Commissariat and Sarah Tesh at LIGO Livingston, Louisiana, US
Being a journalist can be a busy and often stressful job, especially as deadlines loom fast and furious. But one of the best perks of the job is the chance to meet some amazing people and visit some of the best scientific facilities in the world. As most regualr readers of Physics World will know, we – Sarah and Tushna – have been in New Orleans, Lousiana for the APS March Meeting 2017. And it just so happens that about a two-hour drive away from New Orleans lies one half of one of the most advanced experiments in the world – the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) at Livingston.
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Google’s ‘supreme’ 20-qubit quantum computer
Quantum cohort: John Martinis (right) and some of his team.
(Courtesy: Matt Perko)
By Tushna Commissariat in New Orleans, Louisiana, US
“We should have a 20-qubit chip ready very soon… in the next two months most likely,” says Google’s John Martinis to me as we lean against a wall in a relatively quiet corner of the sprawling convention centre in New Orleans. Martinis, a tall man with a mop of silver hair and an Alan Alda-esque manner, is very busy and I’m lucky to have caught him. Earlier that day, he gave one of the APS March Meeting‘s most popular talks on “quantum supremacy: checking a quantum computer with a classical supercomputer”. Martinis, whose team is based at the University of California Santa Barbara, spoke about how they are working towards developing a “scientifically and commercially useful quantum computer” made up of 50 qubits – a 7 by 7 array of superconducting qubits (each of which is coupled to its nearest neighbour) that can be programmed with a one or two-qubit gate – which has an error rate of about 0.1% and can actually do quantum computations.
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Holiday word challenge
To keep your brain cells active over the festive period, we have put together a word puzzle based wholly on articles published in Physics World this year. We have two copies of Astronomy Photographer of the Year: Collection 5 to give away as prizes. Download a PDF of the puzzle here.
For the fifth year in a row, the Royal Observatory Greenwich has produced a beautiful hardback book showcasing the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. This year, its publisher Collins Astronomy has kindly offered us two copies to give away to readers. You just need to complete the festive puzzle in this PDF to be in with a chance of winning. Terms and conditions apply.
See “Galaxies and auroras and planets, oh my!” for our review of Astronomy Photographer of the Year: Collection 5 and a sneak preview of the photos.
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Physics World‘s shortlist for Book of the Year 2016
By Margaret Harris and Tushna Commissariat
The year 2016 has not covered itself in glory. Divisive elections, various natural and human-made disasters and a depressingly long obituary roll of well-loved celebrities mean that for many residents of planet Earth, this solar orbit has been one to forget.
But if, for a moment, we concentrate solely on the year in physics, the picture looks brighter. In particular, it’s been another strong year for popular-physics writing, and over the past few weeks, we have been determining which of the 57 books reviewed in Physics World in 2016 deserve to be on our list of the year’s best.
The books that appear on the shortlist below are all well written, novel and scientifically interesting to physicists – the criteria we’ve followed since 2009, when The Strangest Man, Graham Farmelo’s landmark biography of Paul Dirac, became our first “Book of the Year”. A couple of biographies appear on our 2016 shortlist, too, but they face stiff competition from books on big science, stringy science, loopy science, spooky science, jazzy science and more. There’s even a book of science infographics in the running – a first for a competition that is, naturally, dominated by words rather than images.
We’ll announce the winner of our “Book of the Year” award in the Physics World podcast in mid-December, but in the meantime, take a look at the shortlist. We think it’s proof, if you needed any, that the year 2016 had some redeeming features after all.
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The facts and figures of peer review
Counting up: peer review by numbers – click to expand. (Courtesy: IOP Publishing)
By Tushna Commissariat
I mentioned yesterday that it was the start of “Peer Review Week”, which this year takes “recognition for review” as its theme. Physics World is published by IOP Publishing, which makes us a “society publisher” as we’re wholly owned by the Institute of Physics – a charity. IOP Publishing is also a relatively small operation compared with other large commercial publishers, but we still pack a punch, publishing more than 70 journals.
If you’ve ever wondered just how big a deal peer review is to the publishing sector, the infographic above (click on it to see the whole graphic) reveals some key figures such as the number of reviews completed last year at IOP Publishing, the average time taken to complete a review, as well as the reviewers’ geographical spread.
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Recognizing peer review and all those who referee
Recognized reviewers: Peer Review Week 2016
By Tushna Commissariat
This week, academic publishers all over the world are celebrating peer review and the vital role it plays in the scientific process. Indeed, this week is officially dubbed “Peer Review Week” and this yearly event aims to bring together “individuals, institutions and organizations committed to sharing the central message that good peer review, whatever shape or form it might take, is critical to scholarly communications”. This is the second time the event is being held, and this year’s theme is “recognition for review”.
