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Hard at work at the LHC (Courtesy: CERN/Samuel Morier-Genoud)
By Hamish Johnston
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to CERN’s Steve Myers who is supervising the herculean task of upgrading the superconducting magnets that guide protons around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
By Hamish Johnston
Courtesy: Basic Books
I think it’s safe to say that Peter Woit was never going to like Gordon Kane’s latest book about string theory. Woit, who is at Columbia University, is a prolific anti-string-theory blogger and author of Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics, whereas Kane is a leading string theorist who is based at the University of Michigan.
Kane’s latest tome is called Supersymmetry and Beyond: From the Higgs Boson to the New Physics and it will be published later this month by Basic Books. On his blog – also called Not Even Wrong – Woit compares the new book with Kane’s previous effort Supersymmetry: Unveiling The Ultimate Laws Of Nature, which was published in 2000.
Woit makes the controversial claim that about 75% of Supersymmetry and Beyond is a simply a rehash of the 2000 book. To make his point, Woit focuses on several examples of how Kane has updated the text to paper over the fact that little experimental evidence for supersymmetry has been found over the past 13 years.
By James Dacey
Seeking the meaning of psi. (Courtesy: Pasieka/Science Photo Library; Mat Ward)
In the May issue of Physics World, science writer Jon Cartwright explores some of the most profound questions about the nature of reality. His feature, “The life of psi”, engages with an apparently simple question: what are quantum wavefunctions? Of course, like many of the most interesting questions in physics, the answer to the question is far from elementary. In fact, it is a question that goes right to the heart of quantum mechanics and philosophy, and one that has puzzled some of the greatest minds for the best part of a century.
Physics World May 2013.
By Matin Durrani
We’re sometimes accused here at Physics World of being hopelessly in awe of supposedly esoteric science such as the Higgs boson or quantum entanglement. In fact, as if to prove the point, the lead news story and the lead feature in the May issue of Physics World are on those very topics!
However, the new issue of the magazine – which you can read online and via our apps – also contains some very down-to-Earth physics in the form of an article that describes how special “wave bypass” structures could enable bridges to cope with potentially damaging vibrations. The most famous example of such destruction was the Tacoma Narrows Bridge – the falling-apart of which you can watch in our archive video clip on page 33 of the digital magazine.
Elsewhere in the issue, we look at the exciting potential of the brain-imaging technique of magnetoencephalography, while we have a great careers article this month outlining the benefits of a career as a scientific consultant.
By Hamish Johnston
Billed as the world’s smallest movie, an animated film made using single atoms has been released by scientists working at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in the US. Called A Boy and his Atom, the production was made using a scanning tunnelling microscope tip to push individual atoms around on a surface – a technology that was invented at IBM in 1981.
By Tushna Commissariat
Just think how handy it would be if your mobile phone could transform into different shapes depending on what you are using it for – nice and compact if you want to, say, securely enter a password in a public space or a broad console when playing a video game. That vision has moved one step closer to reality thanks to a prototype ultra-flexible mobile device unveiled yesterday by a group of researchers from the Department of Computer Science at Bristol University in the UK.
An opened diamond anvil cell. The diamond is visible at the centre of the left disc.
(Courtesy: ESRF/Blascha Faust)
By Ian Randall in New Zealand
We owe our existence to the liquid nature of the Earth’s outer core. Without its internal convection our planet would have no magnetic field to shield us and solar winds would rip away most of our atmosphere. Indeed, this is probably what happened to our neighbour Mars. Despite its importance, however, we don’t know that much about conditions within the core. This is why a recent high-pressure experiment is so important.
By Matin Durrani
I have always felt a bit uncomfortable about the “heroic” view of science – the idea that the most significant progress depends on the work of individual geniuses. Unfortunately, this is the way in which many people view scientific history, with the contributions of lesser mortals dismissed and swept aside.
However, it is fair to say that some physicists do stand head and shoulders above all others – none more so than Abdus Salam, who was (and still is) Pakistan’s only Nobel prize-winner.
Now two Pakistani film producers, Omar Vandal and Zakir Thaver, are creating a feature-length documentary about Salam’s scientific contributions – but they need your help to finish the job.
By James Dacey
Physics World film shoot at MIT Media Lab.
The proliferation of online video in recent years has triggered tidal waves of content across the globe. As well as all the dancing cats and piano-playing dogs, it has brought new opportunities for journalists to tell stories in more visual and personal ways.
The IOP’s Phil Diamond and director Kevin Hull with the Learning on Screen Award.
By Hamish Johnston
Congratulations to our colleagues at the Institute of Physics (IOP), who have won a British Universities Film and Video Council Learning on Screen Award for the second year running.
![[IOP]](http://images.iop.org/cws/icons/themes/phw/colophon-small.png){kind=icon}
