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Physics World Digest: June 2002 edition

June 07, 2002

PET targets small animals
Finding new drugs for deadly diseases like cancer or Alzheimer`s is no easy task. Suitable drugs first have to be discovered and then tested to ensure that they work properly and without side effects. One way of speeding up the process is to use positron emission tomography (PET). It provides three-dimensional images of the human body by measuring the effect of a radioactive tracer that has been attached to a drug and injected into the body. Simon Cherry from the University of California describes how his group have developed miniature PET scanners that can be used on animals such as mice, which share about 95 percent of their genes with humans. Understanding how particular diseases affect mice will help us to determine their impact on humans. Cherry`s equipment can also take a PET scan and an X-ray image at the same time, providing more information than either alone. (p 29)
Contact: Simon Cherry, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California at Davis, US (tel +1 530 754 9419; fax +1 530 754 5739; e-mail srcherry@ucdavis.edu)

Miniature machines plug measurement gap
The huge potential of nanotechnology was vividly depicted by none other than Tony Blair in his recent speech on science to the Royal Society. But if nanotechnology is to lead to real products, it will be vital that they can be made over and over again to the same standard of precision. Help may now be at hand, however, thanks to a miniature laser-based co-ordinate measuring machine developed by the National Physical Laboratory in London. It can measure the size of objects down to an accuracy of 50 millionths of a metre. (p 27)
Contact: Richard Leach, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK (tel +44 (0)20 8943 6303; fax +44 (0)20 8943 2945; e-mail richard.leach@npl.co.uk)

Supermassive black holes
At the heart of every galaxy lurks a "supermassive black hole" weighing several billion times the mass of the Sun. Very different from the ordinary black holes that are left behind when stars collapse and die, these supermassive holes suck in matter and can shine with a staggering brightness. Laura Ferrarese and David Merrit from Rutgers State University are using computers to simulate what happens when galaxies merge and two supermassive black holes collide. The holes bind together, flinging out any stars that happen to pass nearby. They are also seeing what might happen if a third supermassive hole fell into a galaxy containing a binary hole. The violent interaction could eject one or more of the black holes from the galaxy, creating "rogue" supermassive black holes that drift forever through space. (p 41)
Contact: David Merritt, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers State University, New Jersey, USA (tel +1 732 445 5742; fax +1 732 445 4343; e-mail merritt@physics.rutgers.edu)

Physics and the secret service
Scientists are generally regarded as above politics. But when Albert Einstein arrived in the US in 1933, the FBI and its director J Edgar Hoover regarded him as a subject of suspicion with suspect socialist leanings. Now historian Richard Schwartz has published The Einstein File, in which he reveals the true details of the FBI`s campaign against Einstein ? including an attempt to evict him as a spy. The full 1400-page FBI file is now available on the Web at http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein.htm. In the Soviet Union, meanwhile, the KGB held a file on the great physicist Lev Landau, who was jailed in the 1930s by Stalin for his political views. Writing in Physics World, Alexei Kojevnikov uses the KGB`s file to piece together the story of Landau`s life. (p 13 & 35)
Contact: St. Martin`s Press, 175 5th Avenue, New York, USA (tel +1 212 674 5151; fax +1 212 674 6132; web http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein.htm)
Contact: Alexei Kojenikov, Department of History, University of Athens, Georgia, USA (e-mail anikov@arches.uga.edu)

Who said that?
When it comes to quotations, Stephen Hawking is the modern master. "There`s nothing like the eureka moment of discovering something that no-one knew before," he said earlier this year. "I won`t compare it to sex, but it lasts longer." Peter Rodgers unearths some of the best known physics quotations and explains why physicists love to use them so much. (p 17)
Contact: Peter Rodgers, Editor, Physics World (tel +44 (0)117 930 1007; fax +44 (0)117 925 1942; e-mail peter.rodgers@iop.org)

Also in this issue:
Misconduct claim hits Bell Labs (p 5 & 15), A high-energy window on the universe (p 6), Cyclic universe runs into criticism (p 8), Quantum cascade lasers shine on (p 10), Edward Teller: friend and foe (p 18), Spectroscopy scales new peaks (p 23), A star role for stripes (p 24), Atom interferometer that puts noise in the shade (p 26), Physics, biology and DNA (p 53) Graduates get set for success (p 58).

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