n n n n n n Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) have enabled paralysed people to operate computers by thought alone. They have also been used to restore speech after it has been lost due to a stroke, and have shown promise for restoring sight to the blind. As applications expand, BCIs are even starting to be… Continue reading Bridging minds and computers through physics

In the summer of 1960 I set off for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, having just finished my bachelor’s degree in physics from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, now part of New York University. I had gained a high Q-level security clearance and was qualified to enter Los Alamos on a summer… Continue reading Robert Oppenheimer: how cinema has depicted this icon of the nuclear age

Last month I highlighted some of the medical-physics companies that won business innovation awards from the Institute of Physics in 2023. But firms in the photonics and instrumentation sectors have done well too, which is perhaps not surprising given that photonics is one of the UK’s largest physics-based industries. As the Photonics Leadership Group (PLG)… Continue reading Optics and instrumentation firms share in the 2023 Institute of Physics business awards

What is the Fusion Industry Association (FIA)? n The FIA is the independent business association for privately financed fusion-energy companies. We have 38 members, all of whom have different approaches to reaching commercial fusion energy. n How do you become a member? n You need to have raised private capital and demonstrate a plan for… Continue reading Fusion industry outlines ambitious plans to deliver electricity to the grid by 2035

  This episode of the Physics World Stories podcast features an interview with Kai Bird, co-author of the book that inspired the recent blockbuster film Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan. Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, American Prometheus: the Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer is an exploration of the brilliant and… Continue reading The biographer who inspired Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film Oppenheimer

Certified entangled In this entanglement certification scheme involving weak certification and reversal measurements, two parties (traditionally known as Alice and Bob) sitting in their respective laboratories share a potentially entangled pair of systems in the shared state |Ψi⟩. In the certification step, they subject their local systems to weak certification measurements to obtain statistics. In… Continue reading Weak measurement lets quantum physicists have their cake and eat it

It is not often that a campaign launched by a scientific learned society finds itself featured on the front page of the Daily Star. But that is what happened, not once, but twice over the past year when the paper responded to a call from the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World, for… Continue reading Why the Institute of Physics launched a campaign to get the media to ‘Bin the boffin’

Scientists in the US have introduced an ingenious new quantum chip architecture that significantly reduces disturbances caused by the signals used to control superconducting quantum bit (qubit) circuits. Led by Chuan Hong Liu and Robert McDermott of the University of Wisconsin, the team showed that the new multichip module (MCM) reduces gate errors by nearly… Continue reading New chip architecture offers hope for scaling up superconducting qubit arrays

Cosmic image: illustration of how, with further improvements, the new SNSPD could be used to observe astronomical objects. (Courtesy: S Kelley/NIST/Pixaby) n The highest resolution to date in a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) camera has been claimed by researchers in the US. Designed by a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology… Continue reading New superconducting nanowire single-photon detector has 400,000 pixels

The 2024 Rank Prize winners Left to right: Junzhong Liang, Donald Miller, Austin Roorda and David Williams. (Courtesy: Rank Prize) n Four scientists who pioneered the development of adaptive optics (AO) technologies for imaging the human retina have been awarded the 2024 Rank Prize for Optoelectronics. The winners – Junzhong Liang, Donald Miller, Austin Roorda… Continue reading Adaptive optics pioneers win Rank Prize for retinal imaging breakthroughs