Toni Feder

2 months ago | physicstoday.scitation.org | Witold Nazarewicz |Toni Feder |Lindsay McKenzie

In a time of nuclear escalation, including Russia hinting it might use nuclear weapons, says Karen Hallberg, “the situation is much riskier than anytime during the Cold War, except maybe the Cuban missile crisis.” The threshold of nuclear confrontation is at an all-time low, says the theoretical physicist at the Balseiro Institute in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. “The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is closer to midnight than ever.

Apr 12, 2024 | pubs.aip.org | Ryan Dahn |Toni Feder |Alex Lopatka

The total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 propelled Albert Einstein to international celebrity. During the precious moments when the Moon blotted out the solar disk, a team of astronomers, including Arthur Eddington, measured the deflection of starlight by the Sun’s gravitational field and found it to be consistent with the amount predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity (see the article by Daniel Kennefick, Physics Today, March 2009, page 37).

Apr 1, 2024 | pubs.aip.org | Toni Feder |Alex Lopatka

Dry salt lakes are an extraordinary part of desert landscapes. Their surfaces are often covered by strikingly regular polygonal shapes bounded by narrow ridges. Familiar to millions of tourists who have visited Death Valley, shown in figure 1, or Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni—Earth’s largest known natural source of lithium—these otherworldly patterns inspired the Star Wars planet Crait, site of the climactic battle of The Last Jedi.

Apr 1, 2024 | pubs.aip.org | Toni Feder |Alex Lopatka

Topics Educational institutions, Diversity in education, Universities, Careers and professions, Legislation and regulations, Physicists, Diversity in science, Scientific society and organization Last July a law in Florida went into effect that banned many diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities in the state’s public institutions of higher education. On 1 January, a similar law began in Texas, and this summer one kicks in for Utah.

Apr 1, 2024 | pubs.aip.org | Toni Feder |Alex Lopatka

Power-hungry bitcoin miners in the US won a victory of sorts last month when the Energy Information Administration (EIA) agreed to soften its demand for the industry to detail its electricity consumption. But the controversy over bitcoin’s surging energy demand and carbon footprint worldwide is unlikely to go away. The EIA estimated in February that cryptocurrency mining accounts for anywhere from 0.6% to 2.3% of US electricity consumption.