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Singularities

Covering the people in the physics community and their activities through conference reports, profiles, and interviews.

Forging ahead with astronomy, baby and all

Earning a bachelor's degree in physics and a PhD in astronomy is even more challenging when you've been raising a daughter since your sophomore year.

The year in reviews: Five books to put on your holiday wish list

Books editor Jermey Matthews picks his five favorite books that were reviewed last year in the pages of Physics Today.

IPF 2011: The electric economy: The supply/demand challenge

The electrical grid needs to keep up with demand, become more efficient and robust, and handle intermittent sources of energy.

IPF 2011: Cars, batteries, and thermoelectrics

A team from IBM aims to improve the energy density of car batteries. A team from GM aims to turn the waste heat from a car's exhaust gases into electricity.

IPF 2011: Materials for low-risk nuclear reactors

Materials science can help nuclear reactors run more safely and efficiently, produce less harmful waste, and last longer

IPF 2011: Energy security and energy policy

Sustainable energy is the theme of the latest Industrial Physics Forum, which is being held in Nashville, Tennessee, in conjunction with the annual meeting of AVS: Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing.

ROSAT retrospective: After years of space travel, the satellite observatory falls to Earth

One of the most successful x-ray observatories ever launched reentered Earth's atmosphere on 23 October.

Multiwavelength M81 - NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org.

A peek at dark energy between the pages

Books editor Jermey Matthews looks back at the reviews of five books on dark energy that have appeared in the pages of Physics Today since 2000.

A sustainable house in Tlemcen, Algeria

A team from Abou-Bekr Belkaid University in Algeria has designed an environmentally friendly house that is cheap to build, cool and heat.

Searching for a theory of quantum gravity

Bianca Dittrich is among the first of many new faces to populate Canada's Perimeter Institute as it expands toward its goal of becoming the world's largest center for theoretical physics.

Why go offshore?

A conference this summer examined the financial, technical, and political issues that must be addressed before offshore wind farms can become a viable source of renewable energy.

Discontinuity under the Aloha State

An advanced seismic imaging technique has provided a more detailed picture of mantle structure beneath the Hawaii islands, but it hasn't resolved how the islands formed.

Io's magma ocean provides a view into Earth's past

Magnetic field data collected by NASA's Galileo contains evidence of the magma sea.

Embracing physics as a returning student

With a strict schedule, chutzpah, determination, and focus, a nontraditional student takes on physics—and a lot of other things.

EGU 2011: Geodetic and inundation models of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami

At the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, Don Dingwell, the EGU president, introduced the session on the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake as the geoscientific community's way of paying respect and expressing condolences to the victims of March's seismic events.

EGU 2011: The slippery slope of alpine glaciers, permafrost, and newly formed lakes

At the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union, several experts spoke about climate change in alpine regions.

EGU 2011: An outdoor volcano laboratory; lots of questions, and a few answers

Surface activity at Mount Stromboli has been recorded in detail for a thousand years. The resulting wealth of data provided ample material for a discussion at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.

EGU 2011: Effects of aerosols on the East Asia summer monsoon

When it rains, it pours. But where and how much it pours over China, North and South Korea, and Japan during the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) is changing.