Candy corn in space, compact fusion reactors and physics in Palestine

By Hamish Johnston

Besides the great views of the Earth, one of the best things about being on the International Space Station (ISS) must be messing around in near-zero gravity. In the above video on Science Friday the American astronaut Don Pettit describes an “experiment” that he did on the ISS using candy corn, which are kernel-like sweets. He begins with a blob of floating water into which he inserts the candy corn pointy-end first. The points are hydrophilic so they tend to stay in the water, and eventually Pettit has a sphere of candy corn packed around the water. The flat ends of the candy corn have been soaked in oil to make them hydrophobic so the candy corn layer acts like a detergent film or one half of a cell membrane. It’s a fun video and I wonder how he got the idea in the first place?

Is there anyone who isn’t trying to develop a small-scale fusion reactor these days? The defence manufacturer Lockheed Martin has joined a growing list of labs and companies that say they have had made an important breakthrough towards making a reactor that could fit in the back of a truck. Or perhaps more importantly for Lockheed Martin, fit in an aircraft carrier. Needless to say, no-one from huge international collaborations down to tiny start-up companies has managed to create a reactor that can pump out more energy than is put in. You can read all about Lockheed Martin’s fusion programme in “So Lockheed Martin says it’s made a big advance in nuclear fusion…”, which appears in Wired.

Before I head down to the basement of Physics World HQ to tinker with our small-scale fusion reactor, I’ve got one more thing to mention. This month’s issue of Physics World features an opinion piece by Kate Shaw about physics education in Palestine. Shaw is a particle physicist at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste and while in Palestine she teamed up with photographer Jack Owen to create a photo-essay of scenes from the lives of female physicists there. If you want to read Shaw’s article and much, much more you can get the digital version of Physics World by joining the Institute of Physics as an IOPimember. At £15, €20 or $25 for one year, it is the best deal in physics.