Issues

Observations of the 12 February outburst and its aftermath are helping astronomers understand novae and supernovae.

Geometry and topology allow music theorists to quantitatively analyze a technique that composers have intuitively practiced for centuries.

The form and chemical composition of their lavas add to our growing understanding of where on Earth volcanoes can form.

After serving 24 years as a Republican congressman, the last 6 as chair of the House Committee on Science, Sherwood Boehlert is retiring. He says he’s leaving with a smile on his face, but science advocates in Washington aren’t smiling about the loss of one of their strongest supporters.

The need to augment Newtonian mechanics to encompass systems more complex than collections of point masses engendered a century-long dispute about conservation principles.

If fuel cells are to do for the 21st century what combustion engines did for the 19th and 20th, designers must wrestle with the complex role of water—as reaction product, proton shuttle, and asphyxiant.

A rich Bengali cultural tradition, British–Indian politics, and a two-year stint in Europe all helped Satyendra Nath Bose become a renaissance man as well as the originator of quantum statistics.

Structures with periodically varying indices of refraction allow light to be controlled for a variety of purposes. That’s a trick Nature has used for 500 million years.