Issues

Researchers using a clever new magnetic trap have cooled a cloud of rubidium‐87 atoms to a record‐low 20 nanokelvins and achieved the Holy Grail of low‐temperature atomic physics: Bose–Einstein condensation in a gas.

A handful of muon neutrinos at the LAMPF accelerator appear to have undergone a metamorphosis. If it's true, it tells us that some neutrinos have mass.

Direct‐drive laser fusion is a decade behind indirect drive, but new laser facilities at Rochester and NRL may reduce the lead. Meanwhile megajoule indirect‐drive facilities are planned for Livermore and Bordeaux.

A talk delivered to top German research officials demonstrates that Heisenberg understood, several years before the end of World War II, the basics of how to obtain fissile materials for an atomic bomb.

On hearing the news from Hiroshima, the incredulous internees came up with a self‐serving story to explain their failures in nuclear research: To keep Hitler from winning, they had deliberately not developed the atomic bomb.

The general understood that although the contributions of the scientists were crucial, their work was only one of a host of critical components that made up the totality of the Manhattan Project.