Tony Jones

New planet excites and confounds

The chance discovery of a planet orbiting a neutron star has taken astronomers by surprise. Andrew Lyne, Matthew Bailes and Setnam Shemar, at the University of Manchester, found the planet in orbit about PSR 1829-10, one of dozens of radio pulsars routinely monitored at the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire (Nature (1991) 352 311). The discovery is decisive (this is a topic notorious for false alarms and ambiguous claims) and intrinsically exciting, but also has stark implications for our understanding of the end-points of stellar evolution.

Hard lessons and hot air

British citizens have little say over matters of science policy. An election every four or five years is a very blunt instrument, and even if scientific issues were uppermost in an election campaign (and they never are), the expressed will of the people is a sufficiently ambiguous convolution of opinions to allow politicians to do more or less what they want when it comes to deciding how science is to be supported.

Skirmishes on the wild side of science

Steve Donnelly, professor of experimental physics at Salford University, is about to read my mind.

The man behind Uncle Albert

Russell Stannard is modestly proud of his sculptures. Two of them, bronzed and lanky, stand in the shrubbery outside his office at the Open University in Milton Keynes. One is called Archetype (see photograph). The other, he explains, is designed to be viewed from orthogonal directions – this way a restful abstract shape, that way a vaguely female form. One entity, two identities. Like wave-particle duality? No, he says, nothing to do with physics. He just made it for fun.

Ferry cross the Weser

How many ways are there to cross a river? Let me tell you one. I know of a car ferry that has no engine, sail or oar. It needs neither petrol, wind nor muscle to send it on its way. It consumes no fuel and creates no pollution. In fact it has no motive power of any kind, not even a pole to push it off from the bank. My ferry needs none of these things because it is driven by the power of the river itself.

Astronomy: EU helps Liverpool look to the stars

The European Union has given £878000 to a venture that hopes to resurrect the UKs telescope industry. The first telescope to be made will be a 1 m model, which will be sited on La Palma in the Canary Islands. Uniquely for a professional research tool, some of the observing time will be offered to schools.

Soundbites for the autumn

Radio is a modest medium. If your department has ever been visited by a television crew you will certainly have noticed, but the radio reporter probably came and went under your nose. It is the modesty of radio that makes it such a good medium for communicating science. Unable to exploit the seductive possibilities of the visual image, now dazzlingly enhanced by computer graphics, radio relies only upon the spoken word and has to keep to the point.

All the fun of the Festival

An important new event is edging its way on to the scientific calendar. In April, Edinburgh staged the fourth in its series of increasingly noticed international science festivals: two full weeks of talks, debates, exhibitions, competitions, tours, workshops, open days and films – 200 events in all.

Science shortfall and the “second tier”

Reform is in the air. Suddenly comes a consensus that the way physics has been taught for decades will no longer do. A report by representatives of the UK physics community (The Future Pattern of Higher Education in Physics) calls for the content of BSc courses to be cut by a third, with a shift of emphasis away from the unrelenting accumulation of knowledge and towards a surer and deeper understanding of physics. A fourth year, leading to the new degree of MPhys, would prepare graduates for PhD work or other professional careers. The new BSc could be in place by autumn 1993.

Astronomy: ROSAT rolls onward

With the successful launch, as scheduled, on 1 June of the German Roentgen satellite, ROSAT, and in the wake of the Hubble Space Telescopes problems, astrophysicists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching near Munich have every reason to be happy.