Physics Update
Letters
Educating
Students to Appreciate Physics
When Did the Science Wars Start?
A Proposal for Rescaling Units
Strings 2000's Top 10 Bemuse Belfast
Goldhaber Provided Szilard's Isotopes
Search
and Discovery
Spacecraft Probes the Site of
Magnetic Reconnection in Earth's Magnetotail
For the first time--and quite by chance--a spacecraft has directly encountered
one of the most important energy conversion mechanisms in the solar
system.
Spectra of the Most Distant Quasars Elucidate
the Reionization of the Cosmos
Half a million years after the Big Bang, almost all
the hydrogen in the cosmos was neutral. When and how did it all get
reionized?
Buckyball Crystals Made to Superconduct at 117
K
By slipping molecules between C60 spheres in a crystal, researchers
have raised the critical temperature as high as those of many copper-oxide
superconductors.
The
Stars have eyes
A team of researchers from Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, the
Weizmann Institute, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles have
found evidence for a novel photoreceptor system in some species of brittle
stars.
Issues and
Events
Legislation to Revive OTA Focuses on Science
Advice to Congress
In an era of tight budgets and shrinking programs, it will be difficult to reestablish the Office of Technology Assessment, once a small highly regarded office that provided science advice to Congress.
Brookhaven Celebrates Maurice Goldhaber's 90 years
Formal talks about physics past and present were interspersed with spontaneous reminiscences at a celebration of Maurice Goldhaber's 90th birthday at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Bell Labs Research Regroups as Parent Lucent Shrinks
With
Lucent Technologies in meltdown, many researchers mournfully predict the
demise of Bell Labs. Lab leaders, however, maintain they will stay at
the forefront of research.
Cost Cuts Kill Climate Satellite
Deep cuts in NASA's Earth science budget for 2002 have claimed a second casualty.Having mothballed the Triana satellite, which would have provided data on ozone and climate change, NASA now plans to switch off another earth-observing satellite, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS).
Physicist Arrested in Iran
It's been 100, 101, 102 days, counts Sorayya Shahtahmasebi Hadizadeh. By late August, she had seen her husband only a few times, always briefly and never alone, since he was arrested. "We cry a lot because his health is very bad and his life is in real danger," she says.
Superstring Theory Is a Theatrical Hit
A play about a suicidal astrophysicist, based loosely on Shakespeare's Hamlet, is proving to be a critical and financial success at London's Royal National Theatre.
Professor Surveys Physics Faculty Makeup
Donna Nelson, a chemistry professor at the University of Oklahoma, has surveyed the makeup of faculty in physics by rank, race, and gender for the country's 50 best-funded universities
News
Notes
Instrumentation fellowship
Astronomy award founded
New DTRA Director
NSF TeraGrid
Web Watch
MSI Final Descent
The Night Sky in the World
Hoaxbusters
Opinion
After-Dinner Physics
Michael F. Shlesinger
Books
Physics, the Human Adventure: From Copernicus to Einstein and Beyond, G. Holton and S. G. Brush (reviewed by J. Evans)
The Origin and Evolution of Planetary Nebulae, S. Kwok (reviewed
by H. L. Dinerstein)
Solid State Physics, M. S. Rogalski and S. B. Palmer, and Solid State Physics, G. Grosso and G. P. Parravicini (reviewed by B. R. Patton)
The Dating Game: One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth, C. Lewis (reviewed by P. R. Renne)
Small Scale Processes in Geophysical Fluid Flows, L. H. Kantha and C. A. Clayson (reviewed by J. Moum)
Splitting the Second: The Story of Atomic Time, T. Jones (reviewed by D. D. McCarthy)
Silicon Surfaces and Formation of Interfaces: Basic Science in the Industrial World, J. Dabrowski and H.-J. Müssig (reviewed by Y. J. Chabal)
New Books
New Products
Focus on semiconductor technology
We Hear
That
Medwin Tops List of ASA Awardees
AAPT Honors Four at New York Meeting
Princeton Physicist Garners Dirac Medal
Three Share Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology
In
Brief
Obituaries
Clifford Glenwood Shull
Louis Néel
Herman Feshbach
Hsu-Yun Fan
Werner Lindinger
Wilfrid Basil Mann
Andrew Ching Tam
Job Opportunities
