Issues
Search and Discovery
Solid Helium-4 in Bulk Doesn’t Go With the Flow
New observations of an apparent superfluid component close loopholes in an earlier experiment, but present their own set of mysteries.
New Experiments Demonstrate Quantum Optics on a Chip
Researchers achieve coherent coupling between a superconducting quantum bit and a single microwave photon.
Three Newly Discovered Exoplanets Have Masses Comparable to Neptune’s
Unlike Neptune and Uranus, the ice giants of our solar system, the new planets may be rocky “super-earths.”
Reference Frame
Letters
Issues and Events
Building a Cyclotron on a Shoestring
Starting when he was an undergrad, Tim Koeth built a 12-inch cyclotron. Now he is in grad school and his creation is used in a senior-level lab class.
Articles
Detecting Illicit Radioactive Sources
Drawing on technologies from fields as diverse as space physics and nuclear medicine, scientists are fast developing instruments to search for material that terrorists might use to fashion dirty bombs or a nuclear device.
Ethics and the Welfare of the Physics Profession
Responding to a survey by an APS task force on ethics, younger members of the physics community have raised significant concerns about the treatment of subordinates and about other ethical issues.
Trust and the Future of Research
For many years, physicists were in denial that unethical conduct was a problem in their profession. But an erosion or neglect of trust and professional responsibility can threaten the research enterprise, often in subtle ways.
From the Archives: The Scientist’s Code of Ethics
The fact that a scientist spends a good deal of his time in studies from which he tries to exclude moral judgments, the author of this article points out, does not mean that the scientist and his activity will not be subject to moral judgment.