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Physics World Digest: February Issue

February 02, 1999

Date:1 February 1999

PHYSICS WORLD DIGEST: FEBRUARY 1999 EDITION

Earth's poles could reverse before the next millennium

It is well known that the Earth's magnetic north pole is not stationary but geophysicists at the Danish Meteorological Institute have now discovered that it is moving faster than it has since records began. They say that the pole is moving northwards at 20km a year--the fastest rate since 1928--and take this as evidence that the Earth's magnetic field could change direction before the next millennium is out. They warn that before the magnetic field reverses, it will become weaker and no longer be able to protect the Earth from violent cosmic radiation from space and the consequences for life on Earth could be dire. Other geophysicists disagree, however. (p.8)

Squeezing the most out of light

Optical fibre is firmly established in the communications industry as the ideal way of sending information around the world. But with the huge popularity of the Internet, there is a growing need for faster links that can carry even more data. One solution being examined by telecoms firms is to send data down an optical fibre in the form of 'solitons'--pulses of light that keep their shape over thousands of kilometres. There is no guarantee, however, that the data will be transmitted faithfully since quantum mechanics places fundamental limits on what is possible. Researchers in universities and industry are now investigating various quantum tricks--such as 'squeezing'--that could overcome these limits. (p.21)

Contact: Izo Abram, Centre National d'Etudes des Télécommunications, Bagneux, France (tel. +33 1 42 31 73 32; fax +33 1 42 53 49 30; e-mail izo.abram@cnet.francetelecom.fr)

Mud, sludge and custard

What can collaborations between industry and academia hope to achieve? Many university physicists question whether 'good' fundamental research is possible from such projects. Industrial physicists, meanwhile, can have their own misgivings about the benefits of research done in the ivory towers of academia. Athene Donald describes the high and lows of one particular collaboration on the physics of 'colloids'--materials such as paint, mayonnaise, toothpaste and ice cream that have multi-billion dollar industrial markets. (p.27)

Contact: Athene Donald, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, UK (tel. +44 (0)1223 337007; fax +44 (0)1223 337000; e-mail amd3@phy.cam.ac.uk)

Physicist on the bright side of the law

Ephraim Fishbach, an elementary particle physicist from Purdue University in the US, has taken the idea of interdisciplinary projects into a new realm. Working with a political scientist, he has proposed a new way of deciding damages in civil cases which would reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits that are choking courts in the US and threatening to do so in Europe. The new system, based on probability theory and elementary calculus, requires that the losing party should pay the court a fine that is a multiple of its own expenses. This system, he claims, is fairer and cheaper than those currently being used, as Physics World finds out. (p.9)

Colossal prospects for floppy disks

When researchers discovered in 1986 that certain copper oxides could conduct electricity without resistance, the breakthrough sparked off intense research into the properties of these materials. Scientists were just as excited seven years later when they found that the current flowing in some manganese oxides could change enormously when a magnetic field was applied. Dubbed 'colossal' magnetoresistance, this unusual property could have a huge potential in the multi-billion dollar magnetic recording industry, as Josep Fontcuberta explains. Although applications still seem a long way off, data-storage devices based on giant magnetoresistance have recently reached the market. (p.33)

Contact: Josep Fontcuberta, Institut de Cie'ncia de Materials de Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain (tel. +34 93 580 1853; fax +34 93 580 5729; e-mail fontcuberta@icmvax.icmab.es)

Also in this issue:

Hydrogen: the first two-dimensional quantum gas (p.17).
Excitations in exotic superconductors (p.18).
Optical biosensors tackle drug abuse (p.19).
Hydrogen clusters get critical (p.20).
Getting to the bottom of the biosphere (p.39).
Framework 5: new opportunities for Europe's physicists (p.42).
Physics, economics and Hollywood (p.60).





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