News
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November's Physics World: Can an oil bath solve the mysteries of the quantum world?
For the past eight years, two French researchers have been bouncing droplets around a vibrating oil bath and observing their unique behaviour. What sounds like a high-school experiment has in fact provided the first ever evidence that the strange features of the quantum world can be reproduced on a macroscopic scale. Now, many researchers are […]
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‘This month’s articles' policy
In January 2002, IOP Publishing (IOP) opened up access to many current articles for the first thirty days after publication under the heading of ‘This month’s articles’. This was introduced to coincide with the launch of our Electronic Journals platform (the predecessor of IOPscience) to help raise the visibility of new research and attract readers […]
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Water impurities key to an icicle's ripples
A group of physicists from Canada have been growing their own icicles in a lab in the hope of solving a mystery that has, up until now, continued to puzzle scientists. The presence of characteristic ripples along the surface of icicles, which remarkably have the same wavelength no matter how big the icicle or where […]
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Superconductivity to meet humanity's greatest challenges
The stage is now set for superconductivity to branch out and meet some of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. This is according to a topical review `Superconductivity and the environment: a Roadmap’, published today, 16 September, in IOP Publishing’s journal Superconductor Science and Technology, which explains how superconducting technologies can move out of laboratories […]
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Australian physicists cast new light on spin-bowling
As the Ashes series gets underway next week, a pair of brothers from Australia have been exploring the physics behind the spin of a cricket ball. While physicists are much more accustomed to measuring the spin of electrons, protons and neutrons, Garry and Ian Robinson, Honorary Visiting Fellows at the University of New South Wales […]
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July's Physics World: Cancer is result of default cellular safe mode, physicist proposes
With death rates from cancer have remained largely unchanged over the past 60 years, a physicist is trying to shed more light on the disease with a very different theory of its origin that traces cancer back to the dawn of multicellularity more than a billion years ago. In this month’s special issue of Physics […]
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In June's Physics World: Europe needs to engage and invest in national R&D budgets
In June’s edition of Physics World Portugal’s former science and technology minister, José Mariano Gago, calls for more investment in, and engagement with, national science budgets in light of the European Union’s (EU) stagnated investment. Gago also proposes a totally independent and credible “observatory” that would analyse national science policies and science budgets across Europe […]
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In May's Physics World: Researchers tackle collapsing bridges with new technology
In this month’s issue of Physics World, an international group of researchers propose a new technology that could divert vibrations away from load-bearing elements of bridges to avoid catastrophic collapses. Michele Brun, Alexander Movchan, Ian Jones and Ross McPhedran describe a “wave bypass” technique that has many similarities to those being used by researchers looking […]
