Category archives: Physics

Authors: Predrag Slijepcevic, Senior Lecturer in Biology, Brunel University London and Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe, Honorary Professor, University of Buckingham Are we alone in the universe? The famous Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) programme has been trying to answer this question since 1959. American astronomer Carl Sagan, and many others, believed that other human-like civilisations must […]

When Cern’s gargantuan accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), fired up ten years ago, hopes abounded that new particles would soon be discovered that could help us unravel physics’ deepest mysteries. Dark matter, microscopic black holes and hidden dimensions were just some of the possibilities. But aside from the spectacular discovery of the Higgs boson […]

Quick simulations of space orbits and trajectories are essential in different aspects of space engineering, from the optimization of trajectories and orbit transfers, to the determination of the orbits themselves, altitude control, and gravitational modelling. Although the preliminary analysis of satellite space orbits can be done without extensive simulations, to represent the dynamical states of […]

Let me make a short interruption in our series about the prehistory of philosophy of science, to discuss a completely different point. I am writing this now, just because in the last days I think I have been able to clearly formulate a specific perplexity that for many years I had felt about what we […]

The concept of crystal is very old, and it is strongly related to symmetries. Basically, a crystal is a system with a repeated pattern through space. For instance, in ice the water molecules form a hexagonal pattern, giving rise to many different macroscopic forms. But, can it happen that a system presents a pattern not […]

Adsorption commonly is understood as the reversible binding of molecules and atoms from the gaseous or liquid phase on surfaces, mostly of highly porous adsorbent media. In chemisorption a single layer of molecules, atoms or ions is attached to the adsorbent surface by chemical bonds; in physisorption only van der Waals forces are involved. Adsorption […]

Thermodynamics is one of the oldest physical theories with its origins going back to the beginnings of the 19th century. The theory was initially developed to tackle practical problems, such as the performance of steam engines. However, within a few decades, thermodynamics was formulated on firm grounds providing one of the most fundamental laws of […]

Many problems in science and engineering involve understanding how quickly a physical system transitions between distinguishable states and the energetic costs of advancing at a given speed. While theories such as thermodynamics and quantum mechanics put fundamental bounds on the dynamical evolution of physical systems, the form and function of the bounds differ. Rudolf Clausius’s […]

The interactions between moving charges and magnetic fields can be quite complicated; more if we consider the quantum effects. One example is the collection of Hall effects. Imagine that we have a conductor or a semiconductor through which a current is flowing. Then we apply a strong transverse magnetic field. As a result, we can […]

One of the unique features of the chemistry of carbon (and, to some extent, silicon) is its ability to form long chains of atoms. Polymers are substances that have macromolecules composed of many repeating units (known as ‘mers’). Many naturally occurring substances are polymers, including rubber and many substances based on glucose, such as the […]