Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The Allies' accurate prediction of astronomical tides was crucial for the success of the Normandy invasion doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.1…#DDay75
The Germans had built obstacles on the beaches that became immersed by midtide. So the Allies wanted to land near first light and soon after low tide, to give their engineers a chance to destroy the obstacles.
The Allies needed to accurately and precisely calculate the tides. They achieved that using mechanical analog computers, including one designed by Lord Kelvin
Once the invasion began, the tide predictions proved to be quite accurate. And the Germans were not as prepared as they should have been, in part because they expected the Allies to come at high tide
Weather was a major factor in the decision to attack on 6 June rather than 5 June as initially planned. British meteorologist James Stagg and colleagues correctly predicted a break in the weather for the invasion doi.org/10.1063/PT.6.6…
Image credits: German Federal Archive; Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory; H. R. Seiwell, Mil. Eng. 39, 202 (1947)
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A historian’s dream, the Farm Hall transcripts capture the secretly recorded conversations of Werner Heisenberg and 9 other German physicists discussing the atomic bomb in 1945. So why do scholars disagree on what they tell us? 🧵#histSTM#twitterstoriansphysicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.…
The Farm Hall transcripts are among the most famous primary sources in 20th-century physics. They document conversations between 10 German physicists suspected of working on an atomic project for Nazi Germany, including Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.
The physicists were rounded up at the end of World War II by Allied intelligence and imprisoned in a luxurious English country mansion called Farm Hall, where their conversations were secretly recorded.
Albert #Einstein’s neat cursive has achieved pop culture status: A letter he wrote featuring the E = mc² equation recently sold for nearly $1.25 million at auction. But Einstein’s handwriting is also a microcosm of his turbulent life, argues @_rdahn [1/5] physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.…
Einstein actually employed a different type of German handwriting early in his life. Called Kurrent script, it looks quite different than the Latin cursive still taught in some English-language schools today. [2/5]
Credit: Der Damen-Briefsteller, 1866/Public Domain
Einstein switched from Kurrent script to Latin cursive in 1905—the same year he published his annus mirabilis papers. Part of the reasoning behind his decision was surely practical: Foreign scientists could read German, but they often struggled to read Kurrent. [3/5]
This year's #NobelPrize laureates have received their medals. If the October prize announcements feel like two years ago rather than two months, check out this thread on some of the prizewinning work:
Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel shared half the #NobelPrize in Physics “for their discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy” doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4…
This month in Physics Today: our second annual careers issue, with a focus on early careers. Read about the initial employment of physicists who just earned their PhDs, advice on landing a tenure-track professorship, and more (thread) physicstoday.scitation.org/toc/pto/73/10
Securing a faculty position can take months or even years. From applications to negotiations, Omar Magana-Loaiza, a new professor at @LSUphysastro, advises candidates on what to expect and how to prepare physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.10…
New in Physics Today's September issue: Graphene kirigami, Europe's particle physics strategy,@NASAJuno at Jupiter, and are we at the dawn of the topological age? physicstoday.scitation.org/toc/pto/73/9
Graphene gets bent: Two-dimensional nanomaterials are bending the rules of the papercraft known as kirigami doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4…
Particle physicists hash out long-term strategy for Europe: Among the goals are to pick a Higgs factory, carry out R&D on accelerators and detectors, conduct feasibility studies, and improve environmental sustainability doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4…
New in the August issue of Physics Today: Sarah Frances Whiting's x-ray photography, bridging the gap between physics and biology, the warmth of wind power, and more physicstoday.scitation.org/toc/pto/73/8
Sarah Frances Whiting and the “photography of the invisible”: A team of women working in the physics laboratory at Wellesley College carried out some of the first successful x-ray experiments in the US doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4…
Does new physics lurk inside living matter? The link between information and physics has been implicit since James Clerk Maxwell introduced his famous demon. Information is now emerging as a key concept to bridge physics and biology doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4…