Issues
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Cover Image
Cover Image
cover: This photo, captured from the International Space Station, shows Hurricane Florence as it made landfall in North Carolina on 14 September 2018. The category 1 storm killed 52 people and caused some $24 billion in damages. On
page 28 , Caroline Muller and Sophie Abramian dive into how multicloud structures such as Florence are formed in the atmosphere and what advances have been made in observing and simulating cloud dynamics and convective storm systems. (Photo courtesy of NASA.)
Readers' Forum
Science in Ukraine and in Iraq: Two sides of the same coin
Newton’s “force” and fake doors: The “geometric spirit” in the arts
Correction
Search and Discovery
Fluorescence microscopy watches proteins at their own scale
Visible light can track molecules with nanometer and millisecond resolution, even amid the complexity of a living cell.
Trapped-atom analysis pushes calcium-41 onto the radiometric dating scene
With recent advances in laser technology and cold-atom methods, the technique’s sensitivity to the isotope has reached environmental levels.
Issues and Events
Russian strikes on Ukrainian nuclear plants stir talk but little action in Western nations
Even as shelling of Ukrainian facilities threatens a radiological disaster, Russia’s sales of enriched uranium to the US and the EU continue.
Hybrid scientific conferences: An ongoing experiment
Duplicating or replacing serendipitous encounters in virtual environments is a challenge.
Articles
The cloud dynamics of convective storm systems
Through a combination of idealized simulations and real-world data, researchers are uncovering how internal feedbacks and large-scale motions influence cloud dynamics.
Iron-based superconductors: Teenage, complex, challenging
Fifteen years after the surprising discovery of superconductivity in iron-based materials, researchers are beginning to impart some of their newfound wisdom on a slew of emerging superconductors that display similar traits.
Physics Today turns 75
Even as the physical sciences have advanced and transformed, many of the community’s needs and concerns have persisted.
Books
Popular science, with equations
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion, Sean Carroll, Dutton, 2022, $23.00
The power of fluctuation relations
The Statistical Mechanics of Irreversible Phenomena, Pierre Gaspard, Cambridge U. Press, 2022, $99.99
New Products
Obituaries
Karl Alexander Müller
Roger H. Stuewer
Quick Study
Nature’s search for a quiet place
The predominance of green terrestrial plants stems from chlorophyll’s absorbance wavelengths. Those spectral selections ensure consistent energy harvesting and avoid photo-oxidative stress.