Departments

Prolific Stars -- Clever Horse -- Busy Worms

Oil Haves and Have-Nots
The fossil fuel age will end, but few agree on when

News Scan Briefs

Superhot among the Ultracool
With atoms near absolute zero, Deborah S. Jin created a Fermi condensate--opening a new realm in physics that might lead to room-temperature superconductivity

Letters

Existential Terroir in Northern California
140 million years of geologic history in a bottle of wine

Hiking Underground
The longest cave in the world wends below Kentucky's Mammoth Cave National Park. Here visitors can view cave formation up close

String Theory
The yo-yo is just a simple toy, right? Not anymore. Rim weights and axle technologies now exploit the physics of angular momentum to make possible all sorts of tricks and traits.

• Nipah's Return
• Bad Rap for Nitrate?
• Scaled-Up Darkness
• Piecing the Past
• Test Drive
• Chemical Conversations

• Einstein = Man of Conscience²

• Terror Bull

• Mustangs, Monists and Meaning

 

Features

The Search for Relativity Violations
To uncover evidence for an ultimate theory, scientists are looking for infractions of Einstein's once sacrosanct physical principle
By Alan Kostelecký

The String Theory Landscape
The theory of strings predicts that the universe might occupy one random "valley" out of a virtually infinite selection of valleys in a vast landscape of possibilities
By Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski

Einstein and Newton: Genius Compared
The two scientific giants were alike in intellect and temperament
By Alan Lightman

Atomic Spin-offs for the 21st Century
A new generation of technologies aims to put Einstein's theories to work in computers, hospitals--even submarines
By W. Wayt Gibbs

Was Einstein Right?
Unlike nearly all his contemporaries, Albert Einstein thought quantum mechanics would give way to a classical theory. Some researchers nowadays are inclined to agree
By George Musser

Einstein's Compass
What was it about the magnetism of an iron bar that could divert Einstein from perfecting his celebrated theory of general relativity?
By Peter Galison

A Cosmic Conundrum
A new incarnation of Einstein's cosmological constant may point the way beyond general relativity
By Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner

A Century of Einstein
Scientific American has covered Einstein's theories--and the refinements and reactions to them--ever since scientists began to grasp the import of his landmark 1905 papers. Read on for a sampling of our reports, some by leading physicists of their times
By Daniel C. Schlenoff

The Patent Clerk's Legacy
In 1905 the musings of a functionary in the Swiss patent office changed the world forever. His intellectual bequest remains for a new generation of physicists vying to concoct a theory of everything
By Gary Stix

Forces of the World, Unite!
In a 1950 Scientific American article, Einstein outlined his unified theory of physics. Too bad it was wrong
By George Musser

Everyday Einstein
Finding your way out of the woods with GPS? Hanging a picture frame with a laser level? Making photocopies? Better thank Einstein
By Philip Yam