The week in physics: Aerosols from car brakes; Measuring high-pressure superconductors

Most automobile brakes emit charged aerosols into the atmosphere Forward this email View in your browser THE WEEK IN PHYSICS: 18–22 MARCH Advertisement MagLev Provides Next Level Precision Motion Control A magnetic levitation positioning stage is a contactless, virtual bearing mechanical system which can achieve picometer precision. The active control in all 6-DOF vastly overcomes disadvantages of conventional mechanical bearings and guiding systems. Watch the video. Most automobile brakes emit charged aerosols into the atmosphere The charges may allow engineers to mitigate the aerosols' contribution to urban pollution. R. Mark Wilson An all-in-one device for creating and characterizing high-pressure superconductors Diamond has the power to squeeze materials to immense pressures and to measure their magnetic properties. Now it can do both at the same time. Johanna L. Miller Webinar Webinar—El Niño and climate change: What can we expect for the rest of 2024? This webinar will provide an overview of El Niño and La Niña and their global impacts. We will review the strong El Niño of 2023–24 and the current forecast for the rest of 2024. We will also cover what is understood about ENSO and global warming. Register now. FROM THE VAULT: March 1950 Astrophysicists watch the Sun The coronagraph, with an artificial moon that permits observations of the sun as though it were in eclipse, is providing a rapid accumulation of data which are raising more questions than they have answered. Donald H. Menzel and Catherine B. Wyatt April issue preview State anti-DEI laws sow uncertainty in public colleges and universities Inclusivity efforts are thwarted as faculty and institutions navigate new laws with unclear penalties. Toni Feder April issue preview Code changes could drastically reduce bitcoin's enormous electricity requirements Further improvements in hardware and software efficiencies may counteract an expected surge in demand for electricity needed to power the new large language models. David Kramer April issue preview Will AI's growth create an explosion of energy consumption? Further improvements in hardware and software efficiencies may counteract an expected surge in demand for electricity needed to power the new large language models. David Kramer Webinar Workshop—Inspiring Students to Think Like Physicists with Hands-On Data Collection and Real-World Modeling In the first half of this workshop, we will highlight how your students can investigate physics in the world around them. Discover how you can use your students' surroundings to introduce the concept of "goal-less problems," helping your class learn—and think—like physicists. Register now. FROM THE MARCH MAGAZINE Bubble lasers can be sturdy and sensitive Made of liquid-crystal films, the soft, air-filled lasers have stable spectra that shift when the bubbles are squeezed. Johanna L. Miller Get notified about our webinars and whitepapers Sign up Get Physics Today delivered for just $25 per year Subscribe Accelerating career connections worldwide for over 75 years BROWSE ALL JOBS POST A JOB CREATE JOB ALERTS FEATURED JOBS Lecturer UBC Department of Physics and Astronomy (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) View Job Postdoctoral position: Impacts of terrestrial climate change on the lunar orbit University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) View Job Tenure-Track Professorship (W1) - Cosmology Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) Campus Süd (Karlsruhe, Germany) View Job Physics Laboratory Program Operations Manager Washington University St. Louis (St. Louis, MO) View Job Assistant Professor, Transdisciplinary Space Science and Aerospace Technology, Faculty of Science University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) View Job Max Planck Research Group Leader (m/f/div) at the Interface between Physics and Medical Research Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (Erlangen, Germany) View Job Physics Today is published by the American Institute of Physics 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740 USA +1 301 209 3100 © 2024 American Institute of Physics. Unsubscribe  |  Email Preferences  |  Privacy Policy  |  Contact Us