Issues
Physics Update
Letters
Search and Discovery
Evidence of exotic trimers sought and found in ultracold gas of cesium atoms
Long-predicted three-atom states form fleetingly when an external magnetic field is tuned to the right resonance.
Acoustic-waveguide sonar finds enormous fish shoals
Overfishing has devastated the oceans’ stock of fish. Backscattered echoes of low-frequency signals may provide an accurate census of that stock.
Gravitational microlensing reveals the lightest exoplanet yet found
Earth-like planets halfway across the galaxy can disclose themselves by bending light from background stars.
Is there a Slowing in the Atlantic Ocean’s Overturning Circulation?
A shift in the pattern of ocean currents might signal a long-term trend, or it might simply reflect large, natural fluctuations.
Issues and Events
Astronomer unearths evidence of scientific tradition in Africa
Thebe Medupe, a rising star in South Africa’s astronomy community, hopes his work will attract other young blacks into science and technology.
To redefine kilogram, experiments must weigh in
Once a discrepancy between experiments disappears, the definitions of the kilogram and three other units will be updated to keep pace with scientific measurement capabilities.
Special report: Bush budget boosts funding for physical sciences in FY 2007; NSF, DOE, and NIST would all do well
Years of relatively flat or declining funding for many of the physical sciences are being reversed in the administration’s budget proposal, but the continuing high cost of the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and the growing deficit mean the boon for the physical sciences is not new money but funds being transferred from other science programs.
Articles
Lessons from hydrodynamic turbulence
Turbulent flows, with their irregular behavior, confound any simple attempts to understand them. But physicists have succeeded in identifying some universal properties of turbulence and relating them to broken symmetries.
Erskine Williamson, extreme conditions, and the birth of mineral physics
A series of papers published between 1916 and 1923 broke new ground in materials research and laid the foundation for modern studies of planetary interiors.
Albert Einstein in Leiden
During World War I, this university town in neutral Holland was, for Einstein, a respite from the abhorrent chauvinism of German academia. Leiden was also the home of his father figure Hendrik Lorentz and of his dear and tragic friend Paul Ehrenfest.