Skip to main content

Your web browser is out of date. Please update it for greater security, speed and the best experience on this site.

Choose a different browser

2012

  • New Senior Regional Sales Manager for Asia Pacific for IOP Publishing

    Neil Byrne has today been announced as the new Senior Regional Sales Manager for Asia Pacific for IOP Publishing. Mr Byrne will take up his role at the beginning of January 2013 and will be based in Sydney, Australia. He will take responsibility for customers based in the Asia Pacific region. With over 10 years’ […]

  • Physics World celebrates the best of this year's books

    This month’s Physics World boasts a bumper books section, providing a useful resource for those on the lookout for stocking fillers this Christmas. Five books are reviewed in depth and another five are given shorter reviews in the regular “Between the lines” section of the magazine. Three of the books reviewed – The Idea Factory: […]

  • Shrubs lend an insight into a glacier's past

    The stems of shrubs have given researchers a window into a glacier’s past, potentially allowing them to more accurately assess how they’re set to change in the future. Their findings have been published today, 27 November, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, and show how a glacier’s history of melting can be extended way […]

  • Pond skating insects reveal water-walking secrets

    This month’s special issue of Physics World is devoted to animal physics, and includes science writer Stephen Ornes’ explanation of how pond skaters effortlessly skip across water, leaving nothing but a small ripple in their wake. As Ornes writes, our current understanding of the mechanisms adopted by the pond skater is down to the efforts […]

  • Formula unlocks secrets of cauliflower's geometry

    The laws that govern how intricate surface patterns, such as those found in the cauliflower, develop over time have been described, for the first time, by a group of European researchers. In a study published today, 24 October, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics, researchers have provided a […]

  • Japanese spacecraft to search for clues of Earth's first life

    In a Physics World special report on Japan, Dennis Normile reports on how the Japanese space agency JAXA plans to land a spacecraft onto an asteroid in 2018 to search for clues of how life began on Earth. Hayabusa 2 will be JAXA’s second attempt at collecting material from an asteroid, after its first mission […]

  • Major step taken towards unbreakable message exchange

    Single particles of light, also known as photons, have been produced and implemented into a quantum key distribution (QKD) link, paving the way for unbreakable communication networks. The results of the experiment, undertaken by a close collaboration of researchers based in Wuerzburg, Munich and Stuttgart, have been published today, Thursday 2 August, in the Institute […]

  • Thousands of invisibility cloaks trap a rainbow

    Many people anticipating the creation of an invisibility cloak might be surprised to learn that a group of American researchers has created 25 000 individual cloaks. But before you rush to buy one from your local shop, the cloaks are just 30 micrometres in diameter and are laid out together on a 25 millimetre gold […]