Issues

For the first time—and quite byy chance—a spacecraft has directly encountered one of the most important energy conversion mechanisms in the solar system.

Half a million years after the Big Bang, almost all the hydrogen in the cosmos was neutral. When and how did it all get reionized?

By slipping molecules between C₆₀ spheres in a crystal, researchers have raised the critical temperature as high as those of many copper-oxide superconductors.

In an era of tight budgets and shrinking programs, it will be difficult to reestablish the Office of Technology Assessment, once a small, highly regarded office that provided science advice to Congress.

With Lucent Technologies in meltdown, many researchers mournfully predict the demise of Bell Labs. Lab leaders, however, maintain they will stay at the forefront of research.

Physics-based techniques are yielding more accurate dates for our prehistoric ancestors, profoundly affecting our understanding of the past.

Microelectromechanical systems are currently used in a variety of applications, including triggering airbags and measuring the Casimir force. In the future, they may revolutionize the way we think about machines.

By monitoring the response of individual protein and DNA molecules to pulling and twisting, biophysicists can learn much about their structure and their interactions.