79 results found for physics

In October 2011 we celebrated the centenary of the Solvay conferences that played a unique and important role in the development of twentieth century physics, most notably in the quantum revolution whose birth overlapped the initiation of these meeti....

Metrology - the science of measurements - is responsible for the international uniformity and precision in standards. Today, the seven units for meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela of our international system of units (SI units....

The idea of time travel makes great science fiction, but can it really be achieved? Paul Davies, Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College, describes wormholes in space and other ways that might allow travel into the past or future.

An unusual look at the effects that things rotating have on our everyday life.

During the past decade laser cooling and evaporative cooling of atoms have produced quantum degenerate gases both of bosons (Bose-Einstein condensates) and of fermions (gases with temperatures below the Fermi temperature). Such gases can provide ana....

The founders of quantum theory assumed in 'thought experiments' that they were manipulating isolated quantum systems, obeying the counterintuitive laws which they had just discovered.  Technological advances have recently turned these virtual experi....

Astrophysical objects are able to accelerate atomic nuclei to energies 10^7 times more than man made accelerators such as LHC. _Particles arrive at earth from space with energies as great as 50 joules, a macroscopic energy in a microscopic particle.....

Cold, quantum degenerate gases of neutral atoms have proved to be useful in simulating the behavior of quantum systems like electrons in solids.  For example, cold atoms moving in optical lattices (periodic potentials created by interfering laser be....

What do six brides have to do with Density-Functional Theory? Discover it in this lecture, in which the essential ideas behind DFT are explained in three different non-technical ways. After this practical lecture, you will be able to understand the m....

I had the great fortune to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics for using electron tunneling to measure the energy gap in superconductors. In this talk I will recollect some of the events that led to this discovery and hopefully I will be able to convey....

Recently the Higgs particle has been discovered at CERN. This particle was theoretically predicted. The historical development of field theory, leading to this prediction will be discussed.

What might 'new Einsteins' achieve in the 21st century? Science offers more intellectual challenges than ever, but is a less individualistic enterprise. Technology offers imense opportunities, but poses threats and ethical dilemmas. Can scientists re....