Valerie Jamieson

Physics raises food standards

Physicists know less about the temperature inside a souffle than they do about the temperature of Venus, the late Nicholas Kurti once famously remarked. Yet the food industry uses a surprising variety of physics-based tools and techniques, including X-rays, lasers and spectroscopy, to inspect the quality of products ranging from basmati rice to sausage rolls.

Carbon nanotubes roll on

Nanotechnology is predicted to spark a series of industrial revolutions in the next two decades that will transform our lives to a far greater extent than silicon microelectronics did in the 20th century Carbon nanotubes could play a pivotal role in this upcoming revolution if their remarkable electrical and mechanical properties can be exploited.

Lasers and optics

Light influences the way we live today in ways that could never have been imagined just a few decades ago. The invention of the laser has led to fibre-optic communications, compact disks for data storage and laser surgery. Other developments in optics have had a less obvious but equally profound impact. Examples include the optical lithography techniques used to make computer chips, high-resolution microscopes, infrared sensors and highly efficient lighting sources.

Love and the two-body problem

Gabriela Gonzalez and Jorge Pullin of Louisiana State University in the US are living proof that Einstein was wrong when he said that gravitation was not responsible for people falling in love. They met when Pullin attended a meeting on gravitational physics in Cordoba, Argentina, where Gonzalez was an undergraduate. Soon afterwards they both found positions at Syracuse University near New York–Pullin accepted a post-doc while Gonzalez worked on her PhD.

Antique dealers turn to physics

With works of art now fetching significant amounts of money at auction, it is not surprising that counterfeiters are becoming ever more skilful at producing copies of antiques. While art dealers can easily spot fake porcelain figures that are the wrong shape or have the wrong glaze, the more sophisticated copies only come to light following scientific analysis. Indeed, counterfeit pottery is so prevalent that dealers are unable to sell a piece without a certificate to show that it has passed a physics-based test known as thermoluminescence dating.

Liberté, égalité and fraternité

When the astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell was in her final year as a physics student at Glasgow University in the early 1960s, she was greeted by a barrage of wolf whistles and foot stamping every time she walked into a lecture theatre. The reason for all this unwanted attention was that Bell Burnell was the only woman in an honours class of 50 undergraduates.

A new golden age for astronomy

The latest telescope that is capable of studying the Southern sky in detail was unveiled in January amid a fanfare of Andean panpipe music and choreographed movements of its 8.1 metre mirror. The Gemini South telescope at Cerro Pachon in Chile is set to provide astronomers with the sharpest ever infrared images of both distant galaxies and the star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy.

New frontiers in superconductivity

Research into superconductivity is enjoying a renaissance. Over the past two years physicists have discovered a wide variety of materials – including iron, single crystals of carbon-60 and even DNA – that lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures. Meanwhile, power cables made from ribbons of high-temperature superconductors have been installed in Detroit and there are similar plans for Los Angeles.

Sensors fit for the road

Car manufacturers are packing ever-more technology into the dashboard and under the bonnet of vehicles. Indeed, the global market for automotive electronics, which was worth

Career options for physicists

22.7bn two years ago, is expected to grow to