There’s a relatively new site set up by the American Physical Society that keeps track of current trends in physics, and is very readable: Physics.
I know I’m biased (I was a graduate student in physics way back when), but what a great way to keep the analytical parts of your mind sharp. Today, they’re featuring:
Flipping nanomagnets using spin-polarized current: electric current through magnets is how magnetic media like hard drives store data. Figuring this stuff out with nanomagnets means smaller storage.
Microfluidic transportation in mesoorganisms: fluid physics involves a lot of tricky math. If we can understand how fluid flows in small organisms, we can set up our own fluidic microsystems.
Understanding the cosmological constant: Our models of the universe include this constant, which implies the existence of dark matter. But what is the nature of the distribution of dark matter and dark energy, which is so hard for us to measure directly? Perhaps we can use measurements of the luminosity (brightness) of supernovae to form some conclusions.
There’s plenty more on the site, including the papers that earned this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physics their awards.
{ 0 comments }