Physics

Hannah Williams is a postdoctoral researcher in experimental atomic physics at the Institut d’Optique, just south of Paris, France. This post is part of a series on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the personal and professional lives of physicists around the world. If you’d like to share your own perspective, please contact us at pwld@ioppublishing.org.  Making

PeakForce Tapping has been widely adopted in a broad range of research fields, outpacing all other recently developed AFM modes in research impact and productivity. Webinar OverviewIn December 2009, a new mode for atomic force microscopy was introduced – PeakForce Tapping. Since then, it has been widely adopted in a broad range of research fields,

Benjamin Nelms is an inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur in the radiation therapy industry. Since 2005, Ben’s company called Canis Lupus LLC has invented, designed, and commercialized a host of products across multiple vendors. In 2016, Ben co-founded the company ProKnow to bring ‘big data’ analytics and vital cloud-based capabilities to the field of radiation oncology.

Mercuric researchers: Georgia Tech’s Thomas Orlando (left) Brant Jones. (Courtesy: Rob Felt) Some of the ice on Mercury is created by chemical reactions triggered by the planet’s extreme daytime heat according to Brant Jones and Thomas Orlando at the Georgia Institute of Technology and NASA’s Menelaos Sarantos.  The trio discovered the process by modelling the

Most of the time science appears in the media – including in this podcast – the focus is on the scientific results. Rightly so, as scientific research consistently delivers inspiring breakthroughs. But this type of coverage can present an idealised version of science. Researchers are presented as dispassionate beings working together seamlessly to uncover the

“Bacteria always find new ways to manipulate their environment to protect themselves,” says Harshitha Kotian, a PhD candidate at the Indian Institute of Science. Like many physics students, Kotian once thought research on bacteria and antibiotics should be left to the biologists and chemists. Now she’s part of an interdisciplinary research team that recently uncovered

Long haul: the new quantum memory could allow quantum cryptography systems to work over longer optical fibres. (Courtesy: iStock/MorePixels) A new type of quantum memory that could extend the range of quantum encryption systems has been unveiled by physicists at Harvard University in the US. It offers a secure way of allowing an intermediate to

Bill Atkinson is a professor at Trent University in Canada This post is part of a series on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the personal and professional lives of physicists around the world. If you’d like to share your own perspective, please contact us at pwld@ioppublishing.org.  Seasonal renewal: Bill Atkinson enjoys the first signs of

Forward thinker: physicist Philip Anderson made a vital contribution to our understanding of how electrons move in solids. (Courtesy: P W Anderson via Wikimedia Commons) The US condensed-matter physicist Philip Warren Anderson died yesterday aged 96. One of the most celebrated condensed-matter physicists of his generation, Anderson’s theoretical research into the electronic structure of magnetic

Formation of defect-pairs in GaN under high-energy particle irradiation. Courtesy: S Chen Gallium nitride (GaN) is the world’s second-favourite semiconductor, present in devices ranging from light-emitting diodes and photodetectors to high-temperature electron mobility transistors. When these devices are exposed to irradiation from high-energy particles – as they often are in fields such as satellite communications,

Taken from the April 2020 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. The mathematical physicist Freeman Dyson was famed for his visionary ideas that stretched far beyond pure science. Hamish Johnston looks at the life of a scientist who was never afraid

Taken from the March 2020 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. (Courtesy: Cather Simpson) What skills do you use every day in your job? At Engender Technologies, our technology is physics-based, so that’s our most critical expertise. Microfluidics and light–matter interactions are

Bonnie Tsim is a PhD student in theoretical physics at the Graphene NOWNANO Centre for Doctoral Training at the University of Manchester, UK. This post is part of a series on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the personal and professional lives of physicists around the world. If you’d like to share your own perspective,

Of the shelf: 3D drawing of the MVM control unit. The base plate is 152×170 mm. (Courtesy: C Galbiati et al) Members of the DarkSide experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy have temporarily put their hunt for dark matter on hold in an attempt to stem the deadly tide of COVID-19. The

Joanne O’Meara is a professor and second year coordinator at the University of Guelph in Canada This post is part of a series on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the personal and professional lives of physicists around the world. If you’d like to share your own perspective, please contact us at pwld@ioppublishing.org.  Video shoot: Joanne

Suman Shrestha is a PhD student in medical physics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UT Health Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas. This post is part of a series on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the personal and professional lives of physicists around the world. If you’d like to

David Graves interview Plasmas are finding a growing number of applications in food production and agriculture. In this interview, Dave Graves of the University of California, Berkeley talks about the physics and chemistry of non-thermal (or cold) plasmas and explains how these plasmas could improve food and agriculture. He also talks about a special issue

[embedded content] Physicist and author Sabine Hossenfelder is probably most famous for being the bane of those who believe that physics should have an underlying mathematical beauty. But she is also a talented musician and video producer, as you can see in the above video. It’s a riff on REM’s “It’s the end of the

Taken from the March 2020 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. Libby Jackson is human exploration programme manager at the UK Space Agency. Jackson is one of 10 physicists profiled in the March issue of Physics World to launch our new Ask Me

The March Meeting of the American Physical was cancelled, but here is an opportunity to learn about companies that would have been exhibiting products in Denver. Eureka moments: read about notable product launches that were to take place at the APS March Meeting. (Courtesy: iStock/Gajus) The last-minute decision by the American Physical Society (APS) to