Physics World celebrates 20th birthday

The Institute of Physics

7 October 2008

Physics World

In the October issue of Physics World...

Physics World - the international monthly magazine published by the Institute of Physics - this month celebrates 20 years of news, features and opinion about the world of physics.

This month's anniversary issue includes flashbacks to key events in physics history from the past 20 years and predictions from leading physicists at some possible trends for the future, with a look at how the world’s biggest ever physics experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), could alter the work of physicists around the globe.

Extraordinary strides have been made in physics over the past 20 years that have affected our daily lives and how we see the universe – what, for example, would our working lives be like if the world wide web had not been invented at CERN and where would our understanding of the universe be if, say, the first claims for dark energy had not been voiced just a decade ago?

Some things however have changed very little. In the very first edition of Physics World, angry physicists were complaining about subscription fees to CERN while members of the UK's House of Lords were calling for an underground repository for nuclear waste that remains unbuilt. Physics funding and nuclear waste are still, of course, pertinent issues of general concern.

Throughout all the changes and dramas, however, Physics World has striven to provide an unbiased but informed voice that physicists worldwide can rely on for relevant information.

Introducing the anniversary issue, Physics World editor Matin Durrani writes, “As for Physics World itself, we too have changed in those 20 years, although our core values and principles remain essentially unchanged. Articles are now, as then, timely, accurate, well written and global in outlook.”

Coincidentally, this year also marks the 20th anniversary of Stephen Hawking's seminal book A Brief History of Time which tops a list, compiled for this month’s edition of Physics World, of the 10 most significant popular-physics books published in the last 20 years.

This month’s edition also takes a forward glance at what can be expected from LHC and how the data that will be spewed out and the conclusions that physicists come to could change physics for the next 20 years and beyond.

Predicting a new physics landscape, Michael Riordan, author of The Hunting of the Quark and a historian of physics at both StanfordUniversity and the University of California, writes, “What will appear at the LHC is still any theorist’s guess. Most likely something completely unexpected will eventually show up in ATLAS and CMS [The LHC’s two main detectors]. Whenever the experimental reach is extended so far, history suggests, something usually does.”

Also in this issue:

• Paul Ginsparg, founder of the arXiv e-print archive, recounts the early days of the web and looks at how it has changed scientific communication
• Bell Labs, once the epitome of synergy between fundamental and applied physics, is about to close its basic research department. Jennifer Oulette, a freelance science writer, investigates how this reflects industrial physics today.

Source of items: Physics World

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