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Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.
Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest. Over much of the past two millennia, physics, chemistry, biology, and certain branches of mathematics were a part of natural philosophy, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century these natural sciences emerged as unique research endeavors in their own right. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the fundamental mechanisms studied by other sciences and suggest new avenues of research in these and other academic disciplines such as mathematics and philosophy.
Advances in physics often enable new technologies. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism, solid-state physics, and nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons; advances in thermodynamics led to the development of industrialization; and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus. (Full article...)
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The magnetosphere of Jupiter is the cavity created in the solar wind by Jupiter's magnetic field. Extending up to seven million kilometers in the Sun's direction and almost to the orbit of Saturn in the opposite direction, Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest and most powerful of any planetary magnetosphere in the Solar System, and by volume the largest known continuous structure in the Solar System after the heliosphere. Wider and flatter than the Earth's magnetosphere, Jupiter's is stronger by an order of magnitude, while its magnetic moment is roughly 18,000 times larger. The existence of Jupiter's magnetic field was first inferred from observations of radio emissions at the end of the 1950s and was directly observed by the Pioneer 10 spacecraft in 1973.
Jupiter's internal magnetic field is generated by electrical currents in the planet's outer core, which is composed of liquid metallic hydrogen. Volcanic eruptions on Jupiter's moon Io eject large amounts of sulfur dioxide gas into space, forming a large torus around the planet. Jupiter's magnetic field forces the torus to rotate with the same angular velocity and direction as the planet. The torus in turn loads the magnetic field with plasma, in the process stretching it into a pancake-like structure called a magnetodisk. In effect, Jupiter's magnetosphere is internally driven, shaped primarily by Io's plasma and its own rotation, rather than by the solar wind as at Earth's magnetosphere. Strong currents in the magnetosphere generate permanent aurorae around the planet's poles and intense variable radio emissions, which means that Jupiter can be thought of as a very weak radio pulsar. Jupiter's aurorae have been observed in almost all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, including infrared, visible, ultraviolet and soft X-rays. (Full article...)Did you know -
- ... that it is estimated that The Sun burns around 620 million metric tons of Hydrogen per second into 616 million metric tons of Helium?
- ... that the Big Bang was secured as the best theory for the origin of the universe by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964?
- ... that neutron stars are so dense (10¹⁷ kg/m³) that a teaspoonful (5 mL) would have ten times the mass of the total human population?
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Johannes Kepler (December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation. During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria. Later he became an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He was also a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope), and mentioned the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei.
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A 1610 portrait of Johannes Kepler by an unknown artist
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Kepler's Platonic solid model of the Solar System from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1600)
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Close-up of inner section of the model (to the right)
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Brian David Josephson FRS (born 4 January 1940) is a Welsh theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Cambridge. Best known for his pioneering work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his prediction of the Josephson effect, made in 1962 when he was a 22-year-old PhD student at Cambridge University. Josephson is the first Welshman to have won a Nobel Prize in Physics. He shared the prize with physicists Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, who jointly received half the award for their own work on quantum tunnelling.
Josephson has spent his academic career as a member of the Theory of Condensed Matter group at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. He has been a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 1962, and served as professor of physics from 1974 until 2007. (Full article...) -
Fourteenth-century drawing of angels turning the celestial spheres
Ancient, medieval and Renaissance astronomers and philosophers developed many different theories about the dynamics of the celestial spheres. They explained the motions of the various nested spheres in terms of the materials of which they were made, external movers such as celestial intelligences, and internal movers such as motive souls or impressed forces. Most of these models were qualitative, although a few of them incorporated quantitative analyses that related speed, motive force and resistance. (Full article...) -
Figure 1. Steam devils on Lake Michigan 31 January 1971, from the paper which first named and reported the phenomenon.
A steam devil is a small, weak whirlwind over water (or sometimes wet land) that has drawn fog into the vortex, thus rendering it visible. They form over large lakes and oceans during cold air outbreaks while the water is still relatively warm, and can be an important mechanism in vertically transporting moisture. They are a component of sea smoke.
Smaller steam devils and steam whirls can form over geyser basins even in warm weather because of the very high water temperatures. Although observations of steam devils are generally quite rare, hot springs in Yellowstone Park produce them on a daily basis. (Full article...) -
Stanisław Marcin Ulam ([sta'ɲiswaf 'mart͡ɕin 'ulam]; 13 April 1909 – 13 May 1984) was a Polish-American mathematician and nuclear physicist. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, discovered the concept of the cellular automaton, invented the Monte Carlo method of computation, and suggested nuclear pulse propulsion. In pure and applied mathematics, he proved some theorems and proposed several conjectures.
Born into a wealthy Polish Jewish family, Ulam studied mathematics at the Lwów Polytechnic Institute, where he earned his PhD in 1933 under the supervision of Kazimierz Kuratowski and Włodzimierz Stożek. In 1935, John von Neumann, whom Ulam had met in Warsaw, invited him to come to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, for a few months. From 1936 to 1939, he spent summers in Poland and academic years at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he worked to establish important results regarding ergodic theory. On 20 August 1939, he sailed for the United States for the last time with his 17-year-old brother Adam Ulam. He became an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1940, and a United States citizen in 1941. (Full article...) -
Schiehallion's isolated position and symmetrical shape were well-suited to the experiment
The Schiehallion experiment was an 18th-century experiment to determine the mean density of the Earth. Funded by a grant from the Royal Society, it was conducted in the summer of 1774 around the Scottish mountain of Schiehallion, Perthshire. The experiment involved measuring the tiny deflection of the vertical due to the gravitational attraction of a nearby mountain. Schiehallion was considered the ideal location after a search for candidate mountains, thanks to its isolation and almost symmetrical shape.
The experiment had previously been considered, but rejected, by Isaac Newton as a practical demonstration of his theory of gravitation; however, a team of scientists, notably Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, was convinced that the effect would be detectable and undertook to conduct the experiment. The deflection angle depended on the relative densities and volumes of the Earth and the mountain: if the density and volume of Schiehallion could be ascertained, then so could the density of the Earth. Once this was known, it would in turn yield approximate values for those of the other planets, their moons, and the Sun, previously known only in terms of their relative ratios. (Full article...) -
Henri Coutard (27 August 1876 – 16 March 1950) was a French radiation therapist. He is known for his studies of radiation therapy for the treatment of laryngeal cancer and the development of the "protracted-fractional method" of radiation dosing.
Born in Marolles-les-Braults in the French department of Sarthe, Coutard attended medical school at University of Paris and graduated in 1902. He served in the French Army and lived for several years in the Jura Mountains before returning to Paris to study the medical applications of radium. During World War I, he worked in one of the radiological ambulance units overseen by the Polish-French physicist and chemist Marie Curie. He became the chief of the X-ray department at the Radium Institute of the University of Paris in 1919, working closely with Claudius Regaud and other scientists. Coutard's early work demonstrating the efficacy of radiating patients with laryngeal cancer led to the adoption of radiation therapy as a primary course of cancer treatment. The protracted-fractional method consisted of long durations of radiation applied over several weeks. (Full article...) -
John Tucker "Chick" Hayward (15 November 1908 – 23 May 1999) was an American naval aviator during World War II. He helped develop one of the two atomic bombs that was dropped on Japan in the closing days of the war. Later, he was a pioneer in the development of nuclear propulsion, nuclear weapons, guidance systems for ground- and air-launched rockets, and underwater anti-submarine weapons. A former batboy for the New York Yankees, Hayward dropped out of high school and lied about his age to enlist in the United States Navy at age 16. He was subsequently admitted to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, from which he graduated 51st in his class of 1930. He volunteered for naval aviation.
During World War II, he served at the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia, where he was involved in an effort to improve aircraft instrumentation, notably the compass and altimeter. He attended the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, and studied nuclear physics. In June 1942, he assumed command of a new patrol bomber squadron, VB-106, equipped with PB4Y-1 Liberators, which he led in a daring raid on Wake Island, in the Solomon Islands campaign, and in the Southwest Pacific Area. Returning to the United States in 1944, he was posted to the Naval Ordnance Test Station at Inyokern, California, where he joined the Manhattan Project, participating in Project Camel, the development of the non-nuclear components of the Fat Man bomb, and in its drop testing. (Full article...) -
An electron backscatter diffraction pattern of monocrystalline silicon, taken at 20 kV with a field-emission electron source
Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) is a scanning electron microscopy (SEM) technique used to study the crystallographic structure of materials. EBSD is carried out in a scanning electron microscope equipped with an EBSD detector comprising at least a phosphorescent screen, a compact lens and a low-light camera. In this configuration, the SEM incident beam hits the tilted sample. As backscattered electrons leave the sample, they interact with the crystal's periodic atomic lattice planes and diffract according to Bragg's law at various scattering angles before reaching the phosphor screen forming Kikuchi patterns (EBSPs). EBSD spatial resolution depends on many factors, including the nature of the material under study and the sample preparation. Thus, EBSPs can be indexed to provide information about the material's grain structure, grain orientation, and phase at the micro-scale. EBSD is applied for impurities and defect studies, plastic deformation, and statistical analysis for average misorientation, grain size, and crystallographic texture. EBSD can also be combined with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), cathodoluminescence (CL), and wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (WDS) for advanced phase identification and materials discovery.
EBSD is a versatile and powerful technique that can provide valuable insights into the microstructure and properties of a wide range of materials. Hence, it is widely used in materials science and engineering, geology, and biological research. It is a key tool for developing new materials and understanding their behaviour under different conditions. (Full article...) -
Rendering of the LIFE.1 fusion power plant. The fusion system is in the large cylindrical containment building in the center.
LIFE, short for Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, was a fusion energy effort run at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory between 2008 and 2013. LIFE aimed to develop the technologies necessary to convert the laser-driven inertial confinement fusion concept being developed in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) into a practical commercial power plant, a concept known generally as inertial fusion energy (IFE). LIFE used the same basic concepts as NIF, but aimed to lower costs using mass-produced fuel elements, simplified maintenance, and diode lasers with higher electrical efficiency.
Two designs were considered, operated as either a pure fusion or hybrid fusion-fission system. In the former, the energy generated by the fusion reactions is used directly. In the later, the neutrons given off by the fusion reactions are used to cause fission reactions in a surrounding blanket of uranium or other nuclear fuel, and those fission events are responsible for most of the energy release. In both cases, conventional steam turbine systems are used to extract the heat and produce electricity. (Full article...) -
A tamper is an optional layer of dense material surrounding the fissile material. It is used in nuclear weapon design to reduce the critical mass of a nuclear weapon and to delay the expansion of the reacting material through its inertia. Due to its inertia it delays the thermal expansion of the fissioning fuel mass, keeping it supercritical longer. Often the same layer serves both as tamper and as neutron reflector. The weapon disintegrates as the reaction proceeds and this stops the reaction, so the use of a tamper makes for a longer-lasting, more energetic and more efficient explosion. The yield can be further enhanced using a fissionable tamper.
The first nuclear weapons used heavy natural uranium or tungsten carbide tampers, but a heavy tamper necessitates a larger high-explosive implosion system, and makes the entire device larger and heavier. The primary stage of a modern thermonuclear weapon may instead use a lightweight beryllium reflector, which is also transparent to X-rays when ionized, allowing the primary's energy output to escape quickly to be used in compressing the secondary stage. More exotic tamper materials such as gold are used for special purposes like emitting large amounts of X-rays or maximizing or minimizing radioactive fallout. (Full article...) -
Uranus by Voyager 2
The atmosphere of Uranus is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. At depth it is significantly enriched in volatiles (dubbed "ices") such as water, ammonia and methane. The opposite is true for the upper atmosphere, which contains very few gases heavier than hydrogen and helium due to its low temperature. Uranus's atmosphere is the coldest of all the planets, with its temperature reaching as low as 49 K.
The Uranian atmosphere can be divided into five main layers: the troposphere, between altitudes of −300 and 50 km and pressures from 100 to 0.1 bar; the stratosphere, spanning altitudes between 50 and 4000 km and pressures of between 0.1 and 10−10 bar; and the hot thermosphere (and exosphere) extending from an altitude of 4,056 km to several Uranian radii from the nominal surface at 1 bar pressure. Unlike Earth's, Uranus's atmosphere has no mesosphere. (Full article...) -
In modern cosmological theory, diffusion damping, also called photon diffusion damping, is a physical process which reduced density inequalities (anisotropies) in the early universe, making the universe itself and the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) more uniform. Around 300,000 years after the Big Bang, during the epoch of recombination, diffusing photons travelled from hot regions of space to cold ones, equalising the temperatures of these regions. This effect is responsible, along with baryon acoustic oscillations, the Doppler effect, and the effects of gravity on electromagnetic radiation, for the eventual formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters, these being the dominant large scale structures which are observed in the universe. It is a damping by diffusion, not of diffusion.
The strength of diffusion damping is calculated by a mathematical expression for the damping factor, which figures into the Boltzmann equation, an equation which describes the amplitude of perturbations in the CMB. The strength of the diffusion damping is chiefly governed by the distance photons travel before being scattered (diffusion length). The primary effects on the diffusion length are from the properties of the plasma in question: different sorts of plasma may experience different sorts of diffusion damping. The evolution of a plasma may also affect the damping process. The scale on which diffusion damping works is called the Silk scale and its value corresponds to the size of galaxies of the present day. The mass contained within the Silk scale is called the Silk mass and it corresponds to the mass of the galaxies. (Full article...) -
Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. (August 27, 1915 – November 4, 2011) was an American physicist who was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics, for the invention of the separated oscillatory field method (see Ramsey Interferometry) which had important applications in the construction of atomic clocks. A physics professor at Harvard University for most of his career, Ramsey also held several posts with such government and international agencies as NATO and the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Among his other accomplishments are helping to found the United States Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab. (Full article...)
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The SI system after the 2019 definition: Base units as defined in terms of physical constants and other base units. Here, means is used in the definition of .
In 2019, four of the seven SI base units specified in the International System of Quantities were redefined in terms of natural physical constants, rather than human artifacts such as the standard kilogram. Effective 20 May 2019, the 144th anniversary of the Metre Convention, the kilogram, ampere, kelvin, and mole are now defined by setting exact numerical values, when expressed in SI units, for the Planck constant (h), the elementary electric charge (e), the Boltzmann constant (kB), and the Avogadro constant (NA), respectively. The second, metre, and candela had previously been redefined using physical constants. The four new definitions aimed to improve the SI without changing the value of any units, ensuring continuity with existing measurements. In November 2018, the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) unanimously approved these changes, which the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) had proposed earlier that year after determining that previously agreed conditions for the change had been met. These conditions were satisfied by a series of experiments that measured the constants to high accuracy relative to the old SI definitions, and were the culmination of decades of research.
The previous major change of the metric system occurred in 1960 when the International System of Units (SI) was formally published. At this time the metre was redefined: the definition was changed from the prototype of the metre to a certain number of wavelengths of a spectral line of a krypton-86 radiation, making it derivable from universal natural phenomena. The kilogram remained defined by a physical prototype, leaving it the only artifact upon which the SI unit definitions depend. At this time the SI, as a coherent system, was constructed around seven base units, powers of which were used to construct all other units. With the 2019 redefinition, the SI is constructed around seven defining constants, allowing all units to be constructed directly from these constants. The designation of base units is retained but is no longer essential to define the SI units. (Full article...) -
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft OM KCB CBE FRS (27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was a British physicist who shared with Ernest Walton the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951 for splitting the atomic nucleus, and was instrumental in the development of nuclear power.
After service on the Western Front with the Royal Field Artillery during the Great War, Cockcroft studied electrical engineering at Manchester Municipal College of Technology whilst he was an apprentice at Metropolitan Vickers Trafford Park and was also a member of their research staff. He then won a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he sat the tripos exam in June 1924, becoming a wrangler. Ernest Rutherford accepted Cockcroft as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory, and Cockcroft completed his doctorate under Rutherford's supervision in 1928. With Ernest Walton and Mark Oliphant he built what became known as a Cockcroft–Walton generator. Cockcroft and Walton used this to perform the first artificial disintegration of an atomic nucleus, a feat popularly known as splitting the atom. (Full article...)
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August anniversaries
- 2 August 1932 – The positron is discovered by Carl D. Anderson.
- 2 August 1939 – Einstein and Leó Szilárd urge Franklin D. Roosevelt to begin the Manhattan project.
- 3 August 1958 – USS Nautilus under the Arctic ice cap.
- 3 August 1972 – U.S. Senate ratifies Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Birthdays
- 1820 - John Tyndall 2 August
- 1871 - Ernest Rutherford 30 August
- 1887 - Erwin Schrödinger 12 August
- 1902 - Paul Dirac 8 August
- 1931 – Roger Penrose 8 August
- 1934 - Valery Bykovsky 2 August
- 1951 - Edward Witten 26 August
- 1959 – Koichi Tanaka 3 August
Deaths
- 2 August 1922 – Alexander Graham Bell
- 3 August 1942 – Richard Willstätter, Nobel laureate
- 28 August 2006 - Melvin Schwartz, Nobel laureate
General images
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Daniel Bernoulli
(1700–1782) (from History of physics) -
James Clerk Maxwell
(1831–1879) (from History of physics) -
Einstein proposed that gravitation is a result of masses (or their equivalent energies) curving ("bending") the spacetime in which they exist, altering the paths they follow within it. (from History of physics)
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Alessandro Volta
(1745–1827) (from History of physics) -
A composite montage comparing Jupiter (lefthand side) and its four Galilean moons (top to bottom: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto). (from History of physics)
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J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) discovered the electron and isotopy and also invented the mass spectrometer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906. (from History of physics)
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Max Planck
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A replica of the first point-contact transistor in Bell labs (from Condensed matter physics)
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A Feynman diagram representing (left to right) the production of a photon (blue sine wave) from the annihilation of an electron and its complementary antiparticle, the positron. The photon becomes a quark–antiquark pair and a gluon (green spiral) is released. (from History of physics)
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Michael Faraday
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Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Johannes van der Waals with the helium liquefactor at Leiden in 1908 (from Condensed matter physics)
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Star maps by the 11th-century Chinese polymath Su Song are the oldest known woodblock-printed star maps to have survived to the present day. This example, dated 1092, employs cylindrical projection. (from History of physics)
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A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor. Today some physicists are working to understand high-temperature superconductivity using the AdS/CFT correspondence. (from Condensed matter physics)
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René Descartes
(1596–1650) (from History of physics) -
Christiaan Huygens
(1629–1695) (from History of physics) -
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
(1824–1907) (from History of physics) -
A Newton's cradle, named after physicist Isaac Newton (from History of physics)
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Chien-Shiung Wu worked on parity violation in 1956 and announced her results in January 1957. (from History of physics)
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Classical physics is usually concerned with everyday conditions: speeds are much lower than the speed of light, sizes are much greater than that of atoms, yet very small in astronomical terms. Modern physics, however, is concerned with high velocities, small distances, and very large energies. (from Modern physics)
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The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) is remembered for his development of a heliocentric model of the Solar System. (from History of physics)
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Classical physics (Rayleigh–Jeans law, black line) failed to explain black-body radiation – the so-called ultraviolet catastrophe. The quantum description (Planck's law, colored lines) is said to be modern physics. (from Modern physics)
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Gottfried Leibniz
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Richard Feynman's Los Alamos ID badge (from History of physics)
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Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1040). (from History of physics)
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Aristotle
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The Standard Model. (from History of physics)
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Albert Einstein (1879–1955), photographed here in around 1905 (from History of physics)
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A page from al-Khwārizmī's Algebra. (from History of physics)
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Computer simulation of nanogears made of fullerene molecules. It is hoped that advances in nanoscience will lead to machines working on the molecular scale. (from Condensed matter physics)
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Galileo Galilei, early proponent of the modern scientific worldview and method
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The Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The inscriptions on the edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE) display this number system being used by the Imperial Mauryas. (from History of physics)
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Werner Heisenberg
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Marie Skłodowska-Curie
(1867–1934) (from History of physics) -
Sir Isaac Newton
(1642–1727) (from History of physics) -
The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, famous for his ideas regarding fluid mechanics and buoyancy. (from History of physics)
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Image of X-ray diffraction pattern from a protein crystal. (from Condensed matter physics)
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Ludwig Boltzmann
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One possible signature of a Higgs boson from a simulated proton–proton collision. It decays almost immediately into two jets of hadrons and two electrons, visible as lines. (from History of physics)
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The first Bose–Einstein condensate observed in a gas of ultracold rubidium atoms. The blue and white areas represent higher density. (from Condensed matter physics)
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The quantum Hall effect: Components of the Hall resistivity as a function of the external magnetic field (from Condensed matter physics)
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Classical physics traditionally includes the fields of mechanics, optics, electricity, magnetism, acoustics and thermodynamics. The term Modern physics is normally used for fields which rely heavily on quantum theory, including quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, particle physics and condensed matter physics. General and special relativity are usually considered to be part of modern physics as well.
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