Research Highlight |
Featured
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Editorial |
Elegant connections
The pursuit of connections both within and between disparate disciplines is a powerful driver for new understanding.
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Comment |
Trustworthy data underpin reproducible research
Lack of reproducibility is not necessarily bad news; it may herald new discoveries and signal scientific progress.
- Martin J. T. Milton
- & Antonio Possolo
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Measure for Measure |
Plenty of pitches
The note A tuned to 440 Hz only became the norm for musical performance in 1939 after decades of international and interdisciplinary disputes. Fanny Gribenski retraces this rocky path.
- Fanny Gribenski
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News & Views |
From ferromagnets to electoral instability
An electoral model predicts that polarized and alienated voters lead to unstable elections, like phase transitions in an Ising model. Such physics-inspired models may help political scientists devise electoral reforms to quench instability.
- Soren Jordan
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Measure for Measure |
Some like it hot
Working in a Mexican restaurant during his teenage years, Mark Buchanan discovered his love for jalapeños. Since then he has climbed higher and higher on the Scoville scale.
- Mark Buchanan
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Measure for Measure |
To the Sun and beyond
Tell Bartolo Luque and Fernando Ballesteros how far the Sun is from the Earth, and they will tell you the size of the Universe.
- Bartolo Luque
- & Fernando J. Ballesteros
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Editorial |
Time to move beyond average thinking
Taking the expectation value of an observable is not the same as averaging over time.
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Measure for Measure |
Of limited length
Continuously improving precision in length measurements increases understanding of our world and its phenomena, both at small and large scales, as Leo Gross reveals.
- Leo Gross
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Measure for Measure |
e is everywhere
From determining the compound interest on borrowed money to gauging chances at the roulette wheel in Monte Carlo, Stefanie Reichert explains that there’s no way around Euler’s number.
- Stefanie Reichert
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Editorial |
Correspondence on data
As a result of feedback from the research community, we are strengthening our encouragement for authors to share a certain amount of data with their papers.
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Comment |
A FAIRer future
Availability of the source code should soon become the minimum standard for academic software. In addition, culture should shift to embrace code review and appropriate credit for the developers of reusable software.
- Radovan Bast
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Measure for Measure |
Cool sensing
Superconducting quantum interference devices can accurately measure temperatures even below 1 mK, but there’s more to them — as Thomas Schurig explains.
- Thomas Schurig
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Measure for Measure |
Imagination captured
Imaginary numbers have a chequered history, and a sparse — if devoted — following. Abigail Klopper looks at why a concept as beautiful as i gets such a bad rap.
- Abigail Klopper
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Editorial |
Israel flies high
Although often in the headlines for the wrong reasons, Israel is host to a strong economy. The fundamental drivers of this economic success include a top-tier research system, which is worth examining more closely.
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Editorial |
Brexit blues
Three years have passed since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, yet the country struggles to agree on a way forward. The uncertainty this creates is being felt across its research community.
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Measure for Measure |
A unit for nothing
The way that we understand free space has varied wildly since our first conception of the vacuum. And how we measure the void has proven just as changeable, as Karl Jousten explains.
- Karl Jousten
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Measure for Measure |
The end of artefacts
Bill Phillips celebrates a beautiful reformation of the metric system, by which scientists measure the physical world, coming into effect on World Metrology Day, 20 May 2019.
- William D. Phillips
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Comment |
A hundred years of the first experimental test of general relativity
Einstein’s general theory of relativity is one of the most important accomplishments in the history of science. We reassess the importance of one of the expeditions that made its experimental verification possible — a story that involves a sense of adventure and scientific ingenuity in equal measure.
- Luís C. B. Crispino
- & Daniel J. Kennefick
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Editorial |
We like to share
Nature Physics is one of 23 Springer Nature journals involved in a pilot scheme to make published papers readily available via ResearchGate.
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Editorial |
Black hole son
The British Royal Mint has issued a commemorative coin in honour of Stephen Hawking.
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Measure for Measure |
Broad as a barn
If you were ever puzzled about the fact that the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider record huge datasets despite the tiny probability of two protons colliding, this is for you. Steven Goldfarb and Katarina Anthony connect the dots.
- Steven Goldfarb
- & Katarina Anthony
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Editorial |
Recognition in review
Each year, hundreds of scientists dedicate their time and expertise to help us assess the manuscripts that we send out for review. For those papers that make it through to publication, we will now be thanking them publicly.
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Measure for Measure |
π ≈ 3.141, not only now, but forever
In 2016, Peter Trueb computed 22.4 trillion digits of π. Ahead of π Day on 14 March, he reflects on the nature of π and its role in mathematics, science and philosophy.
- Peter Trueb
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Editorial |
A problem shared is a problem halved
After much debate about what should be done about sharing of scientific data and source code, practical solutions are still hard to come by. How should the physics community move forward?
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Measure for Measure |
Diagnostics of brewing
Beer is a high-quality product that comes with a dedicated set of units. Stefanie Reichert and Bart Verberck elaborate on the most common ones.
- Stefanie Reichert
- & Bart Verberck
The certainty of uncertainty
Taking charge
Back to the Moon
The sound of black holes fusing
People’s potential
The benefits of public transport
Fake, out!
Energy costs
The limits of machine prediction