Table of contents

A single massive star was the first cosmic structure to form after the big bang, according to a team of astrophysicists in the US. Recent simulations by Tom Abel of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-workers have revealed in detail how density fluctuations in the early universe could have lead to the formation of a pre-galactic gas cloud with a lone star at its centre. Moreover, the model predicts that no other stellar object could have formed before this first star died in a supernova (T Abel et al. 2001 Science at press).

Bird songs are complex acoustic patterns comprising notes of many frequencies and lengths. But the physical processes that produce these songs could be surprisingly simple, according to researchers at Rockefeller University in the US and Ciudad University in Argentina. By treating the vocal organ of a canary as a harmonic oscillator, Tim Gardner and co-workers developed a simple formula that accurately mimics at least three distinct notes in the song-bird's repertoire (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2001 87 208101).

Three years have passed since physicists discovered that neutrinos have mass, yet the most elusive particles in nature continue to hold surprises. By firing a beam of high energy neutrinos at a steel-scintillator detector, physicists working on the NuTeV experiment at Fermilab in the US have found that the ghostly particles behave differently under the weak force compared with other particles, such as electrons and quarks. Although the discrepancy is small, the results provide further evidence that neutrinos may hold the key to physics beyond the so-called Standard Model of particle physics (arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0110059).

There is a long history of connections between condensed-matter and particle physics. The classic example is the Higgs mechanism, which has its origins in studies of superconductivity and is thought to explain the masses of elementary particles. Now condensed-matter theorists are returning to the traditional pursuit of particle physicists – the quest for a theory of everything that unifies the four fundamental forces of nature. Indeed, some condensed-matter physicists argue that the answer will not be found by probing higher and higher energies, and instead believe that the ultimate theory will emerge at low energies.

Earth and space scientists did not get the news they were hoping for when Europe's research ministers met recently to thrash out the European Space Agency's budget for the next five years. At a meeting in Edinburgh last month representatives of ESA's member states decided to increase the agency's space-science budget by slightly less than the rate of inflation, putting in jeopardy at least one major new space mission, and approved just over half of the funding expected for programmes in Earth observation. ESA's overall budget for the period 2002–2006 is Euro 7.8bn, which means it remains roughly unchanged in real terms.

Football fans love statistics and can talk endlessly about the numbers of goals their team has scored or conceded. Now physicists at Warwick University in the UK have taken this obsession one stage further, and have used the methods of statistical physics to analyse the number of goals scored in domestic football games in more than 150 countries. Fans from all over the world will be interested to learn that "the probability density functions of goals scored cannot be fitted over their entire range by Poisson or negative binomial distributions" (arXiv.org:cond-mat/0110605).

The SuperKamiokande experiment in Japan – one of the world's leading neutrino detectors – will be out of action for at least a year following an accident in which the majority of its 11000 photomultiplier tubes imploded. Officials have yet to confirm the cause of the accident but it is thought that the water pressure inside the detector was too high.

In The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene's awarding-winning book about superstrings and the search for the ultimate theory of physics, the author describes the disheartening experiences of a post-doctoral fellow working in the office next door to the noted string theorist Edward Witten at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Greene writes about how the post-doc "struggled with complex string-theory calculations at his desk while hearing the incessant rhythmic patter of Witten's keyboard, as paper after ground-breaking paper poured forth directly from mind to computer file".

Predicting weather patterns up to two months in advance may soon be possible thanks to new research that reveals the meteorological influence of the stratosphere. Forecasters cannot currently predict the weather more than about a week ahead, in northern latitudes at least, because the troposphere – the part of the atmosphere where weather occurs – is chaotic. But Mark Baldwin and Timothy Dunkerton of Northwest Research Associates in the US have shown that changes in the circulation of the stratosphere – which is relatively stable and easy to analyse – are linked to changes in the troposphere. This link could, for example, help forecasters to predict the number of storms or the average surface temperature over the course of a winter (Science 294 581).

France has launched a plan to tackle the wave of retirements expected in science over the next ten years. The government will create 1000 new research jobs between now and 2004 – including 500 permanent research posts and 500 positions for engineers and technicians. It will also introduce additional "lecturer–researcher" posts at French universities.

Physics is not immune to lawsuits. Perhaps the most notorious case in recent years pitted Gordon Gould, a former physics PhD student at Columbia University, against his professor, Charles Townes, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for Physics for the development of the maser and laser. In 1987 – more than 20 years after Gould filed the suit – a court decided that he deserved some of the intellectual and financial credit for Townes' work.

Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that any accelerating mass will distort space and time. These distortions radiate away from the body as gravitational waves – or ripples in the fabric of space and time as they are poetically known – and, like their electromagnetic counterparts, they carry information about the body itself.

When he became administrator of NASA on April Fool's Day in 1992, Daniel Goldin took charge of a lumbering organization with a bloated budget and a programme heavily tilted towards large projects. By the time he left the agency last month (Physics World November p12), Goldin had cut annual budgets by a total of $40bn (about £28bn) and had reduced the proportion of expenditure on human space flight from almost 50% to just over a third.

The physics community – like the rest of American society – faces new challenges following the terrorist attacks of 11 September. Policy makers think that while physics will not face big long-term funding cuts, it will almost certainly suffer short-term disruption. Fortunately, physicists have someone from their own ranks as science advisor to President George W Bush. That person is John Marburger – former head of the Brookhaven National Laboratory – who took up the post in July.

No company illustrates the recession that has brought some of the world's leading high-tech companies to their knees like Marconi, the British-based communications firm. In August 2000 shares in Marconi were valued at £ 12.50 – in the middle of last month they were worth 33 pence and the company reported a record loss of £5bn. Hardly a fitting way to mark the 100th anniversary of Guglielmo Marconi sending the first radio waves across the Atlantic (see page 29).

Stephen Hawking's new book, The Universe In A Nutshell, receives a favourable review on page 43.

"But the greatest error of all is mistaking the ultimate end of knowledge. For some men covet knowledge out of a natural curiosity and inquisitive temper; some to entertain the mind with variety and delight; some for ornament and reputation; some for victory and contention; many for lucre and a livelihood; and but few for employing the Divine gift of reason to the use and benefit of mankind." Francis Bacon: On the Dignity and Advancement of Learning (1605).

Werner Heisenberg has a lot to answer for. As one of the founders of quantum mechanics, he left a huge legacy to physics. As the inventor of the uncertainty principle, he also left a huge legacy outside physics. Albert Einstein may be more widely recognized by the public – and his theory of relativity often appears in popular culture – but it is Heisenberg who has had the greater impact on public discourse.

I must congratulate the Institute of Physics on the outcome of its inquiry into undergraduate physics (October p5). Many of us have argued for years that there is room for a degree course in physics that places less emphasis on mathematics. However, I fear that even if such courses were introduced, they would make little difference to the take-up of physics at university.

Recent letters have explained why the overall force on a pendulum bob as it passes through its lowest point is directed towards the hanging point (August p22). It turns out that this tension is important in classical beam-balances. Such balances have suspended pans that are essentially pendulum bobs. The extra tension in the suspension as the pans swing has the unwanted effect of perturbing the desired balance reading. Balances of this type are used in mass metrology where their precision can reach 1 μg in 1 kg or better.

It is always sobering to learn of the privations of colleagues around the world. Recently I learned of the case of Anvar Gulusoy, a politically active physics teacher at a secondary school in Azerbaijan. According to Amnesty International, he was arrested nearly a year ago after taking part in a post-election demonstration, had his arm broken in a beating from the police, and is reportedly still in prison.

I was interested in your story about designs for the next generation of extremely large telescopes (October p7). Having worked for many months on the European project for an Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL)–simulating the kinds of results that we can expect to obtain–I would like to clarify two important points. First, the 100 m aperture OWL project has very few technological problems yet to be solved, apart from the adaptive optics. The main problem here is not the optics themselves, but the enormous computing power required, which is currently out of our reach by about three orders of magnitude.

Rasmus Benestad raises some legitimate concerns about the likelihood that our climate is affected by the activity of the Sun (July p 19). He takes issue with the hypothesis, first proposed by Henrik Svensmark and others, that recent increases in the Sun's magnetic field have shielded the Earth from galactic cosmic rays, which have in turn reduced the number of clouds at low altitudes. Fewer clouds would let more solar energy in and cause less energy to be reflected back into space. Benestad argues that before we can make any inferences about the effect of changes in the Sun's magnetic field on our climate, we must first determine the contribution made by Earth's magnetic field.

Universities in the UK are witnessing a spate of retirements following the great expansion of the 1960s. However, there are almost no women in this retiring group. Does anyone know why so few women were recruited into physics departments in the 1960s? Were there few suitably qualified women? Or were the universities unwilling to appoint qualified women?

The Physics World quiz celebrates it's second birthday with a Nobel-flavoured selection of quotes, questions and trivia. There is £50 for the reader who gets the most question right.

During the last century great strides were made in understanding the structure of the universe and the overall processes that drive its evolution. The utter vastness of the cosmos became apparent following the discovery that although our own galaxy is gigantic, it is just one of many billions of galaxies scattered throughout the universe. The sheer physical size of the universe makes it even more remarkable that the evolution of galaxies is directly linked to physical processes that occur on the smallest scales – the reactions between atomic nuclei.

For many years atomic-collision experiments basically involved measuring the deflection of fast projectiles that had passed through gaseous targets, or measuring the amount of light given off by atoms and molecules as they were bombarded with different projectiles. In recent years, however, the atomic-physics community has aspired to much more: we want to prepare a target of non-interacting atoms or molecules in a particular quantum state, strike it with projectiles of perfectly known speed, direction and internal state, and then record the time, frequency, speed, energy, direction, spin and internal state of every fragment that emerges from the collisions.

Light is beautiful. It can probe matter in a multitude of ways, but there are limitations when we try to use it to investigate the revolution in nanotechnology that is currently taking place. The first problem with light in the nanometre domain is diffraction. Light cannot be focused to a point smaller than half its wavelength – this is the famous Rayleigh criterion of optical resolution. The second problem is out-of-focus light. In essence, light that passes through a lens illuminates the regions before and after the focal point, as well as the focal spot itself.

Protons and neutrons are composite objects that consist of quarks bound by the strong force. Free quarks, and the gluons that hold them together, are not observed in nature because the coupling strength between quarks becomes stronger as the distance between them increases. The theory describing this strong force is called quantum chromodynamics. However, the equations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) are so complicated that they cannot be solved by traditional techniques. The modern way to tackle them is through the use of powerful computers.

There cannot be many people who screwed up at school, failed to get into university, and then went on to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. But at least one did, and with good reason: he made radio happen. In a few years of manic activity, Guglielmo Marconi managed to transform an obscure piece of maths into a social upheaval that makes the dot.com phenomenon look about as radical as a new bike for your postman.

Read any account of the development of physics in the early 20th century and you will almost certainly discover that a stay in Germany was de rigueur for any aspiring young physicist. One German physicist who became famous as the teacher of a generation of outstanding pupils was Arnold Sommerfeld. In the summer of 1922, shortly after the young Werner Heisenberg came under his tutelage, Sommerfeld wrote to Paul Epstein, a former student who had since become professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology: "I expect enormous achievements by Heisenberg, who I think is the most gifted one among all my pupils, including Debye and Pauli." Just 10 years later, Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for the "creation of quantum mechanics". The Nobel committee summed up Heisenberg's merits in a nutshell.

It is said that one of the world's most eminent quantum-gravity theorists was once asked to explain in his institution's annual report what he did. He declined, claiming that his work was far too complicated for the general public to understand. All the more credit to Stephen Hawking for having seized the challenge.

My teacher of high-school physics was reputed to be the best in the state, and had won many awards for his skill in making physics palatable to the average high-school student, who was then – as now – highly resistant to the subject. His approach involved many intriguing demonstrations, much playing with the lab apparatus, and a lot of apparently unrelated facts to memorize.

Basil Schonland is distinguished for his pioneering observations of lightning, which at the time constituted the biggest advance in the field since Benjamin Franklin's work in the late 18th century. Brian Austin's biography also chronicles Schonland's contribution to South African science, his military work – which included a spell as scientific advisor to Field Marshall Montgomery – and his interactions with his colleagues at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Schonland ultimately succeeded his fellow physicist John Cockcroft as director of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) Research Group.

What is physics? We all have our own definitions, ranging from the tautological "physics is what physicists do" to Carlos Calle's "physics deals with the way the universe works at its most fundamental level". He has written a book covering the entire subject, as he sees it, aimed at non-experts – an awesome task.

Science-fiction writers have long been fascinated by the idea of time travel. H G Wells, for example, wrote his classic story The Time Machine in 1895 – well before Einstein's discovery of relativistic space–time. Unfortunately for science-fiction writers, you cannot "move" in Newtonian absolute time for logical reasons, since motion is defined as change with time. Returning to the past would require time itself to be cyclic – a concept that, according to Leibniz, would be appropriate if the whole universe returned exactly to a former state. The problem is that this would in general be inconsistent with the laws of motion, and would violate the second law of thermodynamics.

Somewhat for convenience, the simplistic answer to the question "who discovered the electron, and when?" is usually given as "J J Thomson, in 1897". That was the year that Sir Joseph John Thomson carried out his famous cathode-ray experiments at Cambridge, which yielded a value for m/e, the ratio between the mass and charge of his "corpuscles". He obtained a value that was independent of the nature of the gas in the cathode-ray tube, and that was very small compared with the value already known for hydrogen ions in electrolysis.

2002 Institute of Physics Awards.

Physics World Volume 14 2001