Issues

The up-down pattern of the electric field within intense optical pulses breaks the left-right symmetry of diatomic dissociation.

Two groups working in different size regimes have found similar recipes for making new and potentially useful materials.

Cooks use the Leidenfrost effect to see when skillets are hot enough. Some day it may serve to keep microprocessor arrays cool.

A Canadian accelerator’s newly gained supremacy in some regimes of radioactive beams may last longer than expected because of setbacks to the Rare Isotope Accelerator planned in the US.

A lot has changed in the past 75 years. Can those changes help us guess where physics will be 75 years from now?

Science policy depends on the state of science itself, which evolves in response to new instrumentation, theoretical methods, and analytical tools. The growth of science and the course of science policy are undeniably progressive.

The underrepresentation of women and minorities among recipients of physics degrees is a manifestation of systemic educational problems. Corrective measures must begin in the primary grades and continue through university schooling and beyond.

What began as independent and disparate specialties has matured into a unified field whose remarkable diversity has influenced the development of many others, including quantum physics and chemistry, computer science, and engineering.

String theory is entering an era in which its theoretical constructs will be confronted by experimental data. Some cherished ideas just might fail to pass the test.

Recent advances in laser technology have hastened developments in other fields–precision measurement, atomic cooling, gravitational-wave sensing, quantum computing, cryptography, and many more. Like the laser itself, those fields may transform society.

Chocolatiers adjust properties of chocolate’s ingredients to confect a treat that feels as good as it tastes.