Print Edition - Physics Today

cover: Materials scientists have long known how to make disordered solids, or glasses, from polymers, organics, and other chemical compounds, but only recently have they learned to do so with metals. Known as bulk metallic glasses, the new materials are prized for their strength and ease of processing. And as illustrated by the examples shown here, they are finding diverse applications—from nanoscale catalytic fibers to jewelry casings. To learn more about bulk metallic glasses and the images in the cover montage, see Jan Schroers’s article on page 32.

Select this Article		The physics of eukaryotic chemotaxis Herbert Levine and Wouter-Jan Rappel


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	+ -	Show Topic Cells sense chemical gradients, communicate gradient information throughout the cell, and change their shape in response. Statistics, materials science, and more underlie thoseessential biological processes.

Select this Article		Bulk Metallic Glasses Jan Schroers


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	+ -	Show Topic Stronger than steels but able to be shaped and molded like plastics, bulk metallic glasses are the quintessential engineering materials.

Select this Article		Lagrangian coherent structures: The hidden skeleton of fluid flows Thomas Peacock and George Haller


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	+ -	Show Topic New techniques promise better forecasting of where damaging contaminants in the ocean or atmosphere will end up.

Select this Article FREE		Time for a game-changing nuclear technology John A. Parmentola


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Select this Article FREE		Identifying Herschel misidentification Jay M. Pasachoff and Roberta J. M. Olson


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BROWSE VOLUMES

February 2013

Volume 66, Issue 2

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Select this Article FREE		Notes on the hippies who saved physics Jack Sarfatti


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Select this Article FREE		Data’s sound debut James R. Webb


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Select this Article FREE		Fluorescent molecules offer another route to efficient organic LEDs Johanna L. Miller


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	+ -	Show Topic The new materials bypass the need for costly heavy metals.

Select this Article		Hidden order emerges in stream networks Ashley G. Smart


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	+ -	Show Topic A model for groundwater flows reveals that merging tributaries have an affinity for the angle 2π/5.

Select this Article		An electrical insulator turns metallic within a femtosecond R. Mark Wilson


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	+ -	Show Topic When silica is driven by an ultraintense and ultrashort light pulse, its electrical conductivity can rise and fall by 18 orders of magnitude during a single optical cycle.

Select this Article		The Hoyle state of carbon-12 unmasked Stephen G. Benka


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Select this Article		Damaged, porous materials: A salty tale Steven K. Blau


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Select this Article		Taking the shine off copper Charles Day


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Select this Article		The many facets of “cubic ice.” Richard J. Fitzgerald


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Select this Article FREE		Scientists alarmed by rapidly shrinking Arctic ice cap David Kramer


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	+ -	Show Topic With summertime disappearance of polar sea ice expected as early as this decade, various geoengineering schemes have been proposed for mitigation. But each carries baggage.

Select this Article		Dark-matter search gets started deep in Sanford Lab Toni Feder


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	+ -	Show Topic If more experiments, in particular the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment, go forward, what scientists had hoped to get in one go will instead be realized incrementally.

Select this Article		CERN gains observer status at United Nations Toni Feder


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Select this Article		Italy axes flavor-physics facility Toni Feder


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Select this Article FREE		Complex Plasmas and Colloidal Dispersions: Particle-Resolved Studies of Classical Liquids and Solids Peter N. Pusey, Reviewer


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Select this Article		Good news for space research in massive defense package David Kramer


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Select this Article		New Max Planck institute Toni Feder


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Select this Article FREE		Confronting the Bomb: Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out Frank Charles Barnaby, Reviewer


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Select this Article FREE		Astrophysical Jets and Beams Serguei Komissarov, Reviewer


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Select this Article FREE		Solid Biomechanics Jennifer Clarke, Reviewer


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Select this Article FREE		Focus on photonics and biomedical optics Andreas Mandelis


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Select this Article FREE		Sally Kristen Ride Jeffrey Hoffman


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Select this Article		Replicating the discovery of Venus’s atmosphere Vladimir Shiltsev, Igor Nesterenko, and Randall Rosenfeld


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	+ -	Show Topic The 2012 transit of Venus gave us a chance to reproduce Mikhail Lomonosov’s 1761 observation and demonstrate the excellent quality of 18th-century telescopes.