Art inspired by fluid-mechanics, the story of robot-cooked pizza, and the latest on the Wow! signal
Bringing you the latest highlights from Physics World?
Hello and welcome to your fortnightly summary of the latest breakthroughs, developments and opportunities in physics, tech and beyond. Find out what physicists can learn from the failure of a company delivering robot-cooked pizzas, discover why the physics community is honouring Abdus Salam, and listen to an astrophysicist with new ideas on the famous Wow! signal.?
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Zume was a $500m start-up company that delivered pizzas cooked in GPS-equipped automated ovens installed on a fleet of trucks. James McKenzie explains what the firm’s much-publicized failure earlier this year can teach physicists who work in business and industry.?
Claudia de Rham and Ian Walmsley pay tribute to the Nobel-prize winning particle theorist Abdus Salam, who founded the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, 60 years ago. Ahead of the centenary of Salam’s birth in 2026, they explain recent efforts to honour him, including renaming Imperial College’s library the Abdus Salam Library.?
Astrophysicists have long debated the origins of the famous Wow! signal – a strong, one-minute-long narrow-bandwidth burst picked up by the Big Ear radio telescope in 1977. A trio of scientists now have an astrophysical explanation for the signal that doesn’t involve intelligent extraterrestrials. One of them, Abel Méndez from the University of Puerto Rico, is our guest on the Physics World Weekly podcast.?
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In case you missed it…?
Management insights catalyse scientific success : Effective management training can equip scientists and engineers with powerful tools to boost the impact of their work, identify opportunities for innovation, and build high-performing teams. Sponsored by MIT Sloan Executive Education ?
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领英推荐
Akiko Nakayama: the Japanese artist skilled in fluid mechanics : Sidney Perkowitz explores the science behind the work of Japanese painter Akiko Nakayama, who creates live paintings that exploit her intuitive knowledge of how liquids behave.?
With CERN turning 70 this year, this Physics World Live event will feature a panel of speakers discussing what the future holds for high-energy physics and where the next particle collider should be built.
Confirmed speakers:
Tara Shears, University of Liverpool, UK
Phil Burrows, University of Oxford, UK
Tulika Bose, University of Wisconsin–Madison, US
The final word…?
“She was free to be more radical in her thinking. She was right and they were wrong”?
Playwright and actor Stella Feehily quoted in the Guardian ??
A new play examines the work of astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin who in the 1920s proposed that stars were primarily made of hydrogen and helium despite much opposition at the time from colleagues. The Lightest Element is at Hampstead Theatre from 5 September to 12 October.?
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Matin Durrani?
Editor-in-chief, Physics World?