Science

Tushna Commissariat ponders the surprising fluid dynamics of wine It’s got legs Wine in a glass has some interesting fluid dynamics. (Courtesy: iStock/Georgia-Court) See, swirl, sniff, sip and savour – these are the five S’s of wine tasting. You, or the oenophile (wine connoisseur) in your life may be well-versed in swirling that perfect glass

WASHINGTON — Fresh off of securing a significant budget increase, the European Space Agency plans to hire 200 new employees in 2023 to help it implement new projects. At a Dec. 15 briefing after a meeting of the ESA Council, agency officials announced ESA would increase its staff, currently at about 6,000 people, by 200

WASHINGTON — A cubesat launched on Artemis 1 missed its original chance to go into orbit around the moon but could still carry out its primary mission if engineers fix its thrusters in the coming weeks. The NASA-funded LunaH-Map spacecraft, a six-unit cubesat, was one of 10 cubesat secondary payloads flown on the Artemis 1

Inherited nanobionics: light-harvesting bacteria infused with nanoparticles can produce electricity in a “living photovoltaic” device. (Courtesy: Giulia Fattorini) Materials and nanotechnology are thriving fields for physicists, who often benefit from collaborating with chemists, biologists, engineers and, of course, materials scientists. This makes materials and nanotechnology fascinating to write about, and this year has been no

TAMPA, Fla. — Uncrewed rather than crewed spacecraft will be key to realizing an emerging in-orbit manufacturing industry, according to a European venture that has tasked Thales Alenia Space to develop a vehicle called REV1 for missions starting in late 2025. Thales Alenia Space signed a first phase contract for the REV1 reusable and pressurized

U.S. expansion into the high frontier of space has proven to be critically important to global security and economic growth. Commercial space assets are an essential element of U.S. national defense plans and operations and serve as an economic growth multiplier through communications, position knowledge, Earth observation, and combinations of those capabilities as an enhancement

Advanced computation: Artificial intelligence techniques such as deep learning and machine learning could enhance many areas of medicine. (Courtesy: iStock/metamorworks) From developing advanced machine-learning algorithms to building devices that will improve access to effective treatments for patients across the world, researchers working in medical physics, biotechnology and the many related fields continue to apply scientific

SAN FRANCISCO – Canadian startup Magnestar is establishing a platform to predict radio frequency interference among satellite operators. “By mapping and monitoring all communication pathways between Earth and space, we predict when points of interference will occur for multiple operators, giving them time to reroute their signals or take other measures to maintain consistent operations

Schrödinger and snowflakes: Celebrating all things quantum. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/sakkmesterke) Quantum physicists celebrated in October when the Nobel committee awarded a long-awaited physics prize to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for their pioneering research on quantum entanglement. But the community certainly hasn’t been resting on its laurels, and with so many other exciting developments

SAN FRANCISCO – Northrop Grumman has completed ground-based tests to demonstrate critical technology required for a 2025 demonstration of space-based solar power. “As far as the technologies go, we’re very confident in our design and we’ve proven it out,” Tara Theret, Northrop Grumman’s Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) program director, told SpaceNews.

TAMPA, Fla. — French satellite operator Eutelsat said Dec. 22 it stands to lose up to 15 million euros ($16 million) in annual revenues from restricting broadcasts in Russia and Iran to comply with sanctions. The amount represents 2.2% of the broadcast revenues Eutelsat reported for its previous fiscal year to the end of June

It might seem right to rename scientific principles that honour physicists who have done bad things. But doing so raises ethical questions, says Robert P Crease Human impact Like the main protagonist in the movie Tár, there are physicists who have soared and fallen – but should we cut their names from history? (Courtesy: LANDMARK

More than 50 people are recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration for traveling to space and back on commercially licensed vehicles, and forecasts indicate the list will continue to grow. Remarkably, the United States lacks continuous oversight throughout commercial human spaceflight. To ensure the safety of spaceflight travelers from launch to landing, the United States

Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine was the biggest story of 2022. Aside from reviving Cold War fears of nuclear war and playing havoc with energy markets, it’s been a black swan event for a space industry still adjusting to a black swan called COVID. Russia’s flouting of international order set in motion a realignment with

A year after its launch, astronomers are revealing the secrets of the universe, as the first scientific results from observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are released. This month, Physics World is publishing a series of blog posts on the discoveries. This is the fourth post in the series – you can read the previous

Ukraine and Elon Musk weren’t the only big stories of 2022. These seven commanded our attention with actions that will reverberate well into 2023. JWST AND SLS Credit: SpaceNews illustration by B. Berger For most of the last decade, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Space Launch System were albatrosses around the neck of

The 2023 omnibus spending package includes $26.3 billion for the U.S. Space Force WASHINGTON — Congress in a massive $1.7 trillion government funding bill on Dec. 23 approved $797.7 billion for the Defense Department, or $69.3 billion more than DoD got in 2022.  The consolidated funding bill funds the U.S. government for the remainder of

A large room-temperature TMR of 85% was obtained in all-vdW Fe3GaTe2/WSe2/Fe3GaTe2 MTJs. (Courtesy: K Wang) Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs), which consist of two ferromagnets separated by a non-magnetic barrier material, are found in a host of technologies, including magnetic random-access memories in computer hard disk drives as well as magnetic sensors, logic devices and electrodes