American Institute of Physics: Physics Today

Physics Today magazine

• Vortices and tall buildings: A recipe for resonance
  Structures buffeted by steady winds experience pushes and pulls in the direction perpendicular to the wind flow. If those forces were to organize coherently, the results could be disastrous.
  
  
• The discovery of superconductivity
  A century ago Heike Kamerlingh Onnes set a new standard for physics research laboratories. But careless notebook entries have confused the story of his greatest discovery.
  
  
• The Stability of Matter in Quantum Mechanics
• Imaging with ambient noise
  Whether noise is a nuisance or a signal depends on how it’s processed. By cross-correlating noise recorded at two sensors, researchers can retrieve the waves that propagate between them and extract details about the intervening medium.
  
  
• Bologna reforms in Germany
• Femtosecond snapshots capture atomic motion in a powdered solid
  A new technique sets the stage for ultrafast diffraction studies of materials that can’t easily be crystallized.
  
  
• New books
• Radio waves map matter without counting galaxies
  A new technique for charting the large-scale structure of the universe has received its first experimental demonstration
  
  
• Scientific societies should speak out
• Laser-generated bubbles take aim at a cell membrane
• When Holmdel lab opened for business
• Physics update
• Optical Metamaterials: Fundamentals and Applications
• 'Copilot in chief' Augustine takes on space, energy, and education
  Prior to his retirement in 1997, the aerospace industry executive advised five US presidents on science and technology policy. He’s still at it 13 years later.
  
  
• Indrek Martinson
• NSF speeds funding for research on BP oil spill
  Sopping up oil with new materials, mapping the subsurface plume, and accelerating biodegradation of the slick are among dozens of time-sensitive research projects receiving grants.
  
  
• The freedom of confinement in complex fluids
  When it comes to self-assembly of photonic, drug-delivery, and biomimetic materials, big opportunities can be found in small spaces.
  
  
• Global R&D spending up, US industry spending down
• Forging more effective conferences
• China, others dig more and deeper underground labs
  From tiny to gargantuan, experiments are in the works to exploit the shielding from cosmic rays that being deep underground offers.
  
  
• Historical perspective on spin-polarized tunneling
• Physics olympiad meets in Croatia
• Inequity certain, cause disputed
  The Science on Women and Science
  
  
• Physics bachelors at work
• Crafting the Quantum: Arnold Sommerfeld and the Practice of Theory, 1890-1926
• News notes
  Green light for ITER
  
  
• The Hancocks of Marlborough: Rubber, Art, and the Industrial Revolution: A Family of Inventive Genius
• Web watch
• Focus on spectroscopy
• Empirical incompleteness and the search for a theory of everything
• Robert Vivian Pound
• HBCUs need better marketing
• NanoFET bioprobe