The week in physics: Atmospheric rivers; Science outreach and pop music

Atmospheric rivers bring anomalously high temperatures Forward this email View in your browser The week in physics: 20–24 January Beginning in February, all Physics Today newsletters will be sent from PhysicsToday@aipcomm.org. To ensure that you continue to receive our newsletters without interruption, please add our new email address to your contacts. Atmospheric rivers bring anomalously high temperatures Narrow bands of water vapor, long known for the torrential rains they deliver, also transport vast amounts of heat. Alex Lopatka A geophysicist uses Swifties' seismic activity for science outreach Eleanor Dunn employs celebrity and crowdsourcing to spark the public's interest in science. Hannah H. Means Advertisement In Case You Missed it: Special Issue on Quantum Quantum mechanics is all around us and early debates about quantum theory, epitomized by Schrödinger's cat, have morphed into real-world quantum applications. In this special issue, we present articles from our archives that describe the birth of modern quantum mechanics, the emergence of several key concepts, and new applications that have the potential to transform both science and society. Read now. From the vault: December 2003 Stern and Gerlach: How a bad cigar helped reorient atomic physics The history of the Stern–Gerlach experiment reveals how persistence, accident, and luck can sometimes combine in just the right ways. Bretislav Friedrich and Dudley Herschbach France's Oppenheimer Frédéric Joliot-Curie was one of the first to conceive of the nuclear chain reaction. But the ardent advocate of nuclear disarmament paid a high price for his political convictions. William Sweet From the January magazine Is the Moon there when nobody looks? Reality and the quantum theory Einstein maintained that quantum metaphysics entails spooky actions at a distance; experiments have now shown that what bothered Einstein is not a debatable point but the observed behavior of the real world. N. David Mermin 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 Program Manager Yale Summer Program in Astrophysics (New Haven, CT) View Job Post-Doctoral Positions Indiana University Physics Department (Bloomington, IN) View Job Department Chair and Professor University of Rochester (Rochester, NY) View Job Postdoctoral positions (physicist/microscopy development) (m/f/d) Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology (Dortmund, Germany) View Job Summer 2025 undergrad research at UMD College Park (nonlinear dynamics) University of Maryland College Park (College Park, MD) View Job Astronomy Lecturer and Observatory Director The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (Chattanooga, TN) View Job Physics Today is published by the American Institute of Physics 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740 USA +1 301 209 3100 © 2025 American Institute of Physics. Unsubscribe  |  Email Preferences  |  Privacy Policy  |  Contact Us