Mid-twentieth-century physics in the home of Galileo

Florence was a flourishing center for fundamental physics research throughout most of the twentieth century. Roberto Casalbuoni, Daniele Dominici and Massimo Mazzoni—all physicists currently working there—have reviewed ...

Researchers turn liquid metal into a plasma

Most laypersons are familiar with the three states of matter as solids, liquids, and gases. But there are other forms that exist. Plasmas, for example, are the most abundant form of matter in the universe, found throughout ...

In physics, a famous paradox that hangs by a thread of light

Imagine a metal bar that has been heated at one end. Instead of the heat gradually spreading over its entire length, the bar eventually becomes hot again at the place where it was originally. The fact that, paradoxically, ...

Thermoelectric nanodevice based on Majorana fermions is proposed

In March 1938, the young Italian physicist Ettore Majorana disappeared mysteriously, leaving his country's scientific community shaken. The episode remains unexplained, despite Leonardo Scascia's attempt to unravel the enigma ...

Intelligent life in the universe? Phone home, dammit!

We've been conditioned by television and movies to accept the likelihood of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. "Of course there's intelligent life out there; I saw it last week on Star Trek." We've seen it all, from ...

Enrico Fermi and extraterrestrial intelligence

It's become a kind of legend, like Newton and the apple or George Washington and the cherry tree. One day in 1950, the great physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with colleagues at the Fuller Lodge at Los Alamos National ...

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