Issues

A proof-of-principle demonstration sets the stage for creating designer magnets, from simple Heisenberg spin chains to exotic spin ices.

Paul Dirac showed in 1931 that the existence of even a single monopole, anywhere, would suffice to explain the universal quantization of electric charge.

The introduction of a fee to use the LHC is viewed in the US as breaking a deal and opening the floodgates to an unwelcome new paradigm for accessing scientific facilities.

Hundreds of letters of protest from scientific, academic, and industrial organizations convinced Department of Commerce officials to reconsider a tightening of the deemed export policy.

Double stars with tight, rapid orbits enable astronomers to study issues ranging from binary-star evolution to the internal structure of white dwarfs and neutron stars. In addition, they may emit directly observable gravitational waves.

The search for a large-scale, error-free quantum computer is reaching an intellectual junction at which semiconductor physics, knot theory, string theory, anyons, and quantum Hall effects are all coming together to produce quantum immunity.

In the years following World War II, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, President Truman decided the US would develop a hydrogen bomb, Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, Congress quadrupled US defense spending, and the US government turned to a small cadre of physicists for advice.

By comparing phase information from images taken at different times, interferometric synthetic aperture radar can measure terrestrial displacements as small as a centimeter.