Dear PhysicaPlus Readers,
Our frequent readers may have noticed that lastly each PhysicaPlus issue is “staying on air” a bit longer than we, and probably many of our readers, would wish to. Unfortunately, we are suffering from severe budgetary constraints. Nevertheless, we will continue with our policy of free access to all contents of PhysicaPlus, including our archive, from the first edition. We do hope, however, that our readers will assist us to continue issuing PhysicaPlus with some donations. These can be accomplished by using the bank account of the Israel Physical Society (IPS), which is the Bank Mizrahi Tepachot, branch 421 Gan Hair, account No. 021-532931. Donations can be made also by sending a check to the IPS Accountant Dr. Israel Mardor, Sorek Nuclear Research Center, Yavne 81800, Israel.
We are pleased to have now on air the 10th issue, the date of which coincides with the Pesach holiday, the Jewish holiday of freedom and spring. We wish all our readers and supporters a very pleasant and joyful Pesach holiday.
Thousands of physicists and probably millions of people interested in the advancement of science in general, and physics in particular, are “keeping their breath” to see the outcome of the unprecedented experiment to take place with the operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) built near the France-Switzerland border. Protons accelerated to velocities very near to the speed of light will collide at non-imaginable energies of 14 million millions Ev. It is expected that the “shower” of particles which will result from these collisions may revolutionize the physics, and our understanding of the universe. In this context we bring you an article by the Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Steven Weinberg entitled From the BCS Superconductivity Theory to the LHC.
Although the energies to be achieved by the LHC experiment, are a far cry from the Planck scale energy of 1.22 × 10
19 GeV - the dream of super-string physicists, some important findings may be expected, to shed some light on the inconsistencies between the standard model, theory of gravity and the string theory. We bring you two articles of prominent string theory physicists Leonard Susskind and Brian Greene, entitled Superstrings and A Theory of Everything, respectively.
In an article by Abraham Loeb entitled “Acharit Hayamim”: The Future of our Universe, the biblical fate of the Universe takes an unexpected form, the present majestic view of the Universe may not last forever, and it will gradually disappear from our sight. The article by Noam Soker Nebulae around Evolved Stars tells us the story of dying stars, and their “signature” - the nebula images of different shapes.
The following two articles deal with some important technological applications of physical phenomena: the spin of electrons, which is the basis of the newly developing spintronics discipline, and plastic electronics. The article by Marianna Korzhov, Rafi Shikler and David Andelman, entitled Plastic which conducts electricity?, gives us an exciting insight into the domain of the evolving plastic electronics. Tony Bland, Kiyoung Lee and Stephan Steinmüller tell us about the promising future of Spintronics, in their article entitled The Spintronics Challenge.
Quasicrystals do not stop to puzzle us since their discovery in 1984 by Dan Shechtman. Paul Steinhardt brings us A New Paradigm for the Structure of Quasicrystals.
In the Point of View section we give the stage to Prof. Arie Issar and his view on The Evolution of Complex Information Systems as Movement against the Pull of Entropy, in a Space-Time-Information Continuum.
We hope you will enjoy also our Culture columns, Science and Art by Abraham Tamir, and On Symmetry and Beauty by Eilam Gross.
