October 1999 Contents

ARTICLES

Jordan, Pauli, Politics, Brecht, and a Variable Gravitational Constant

Pascual Jordan was one of the great theoretical physicists of the century. But his attempt to modify general relativity with a variable gravitational constant did nothing to enhance his reputation. Nor did his conspicuous membership in the Nazi Party — Engelbert L. Schucking

Rediscovering Mars

After 20 years of pondering the results of the first wave of Mars exploration, researchers are using some of the latest remote sensing techniques to bring the Red Planet into sharper focus — Raymond Ladbury

Special Focus:

Gravitational Radiation and the Validity of General Relativity

Observing the speed, polarization, and back influence of gravitational waves would subject Einstein's theory to new tests — Clifford M. Will

LIGO and the Detection of Gravitational Waves

Large detectors on opposite sides of the country are about to start monitoring the cosmos for the gravitational waves that general relativity tells us should be emanating from catastrophic astrophysical events — Barry C. Barish and Rainer Weiss

DEPARTMENTS

Search and Discovery

• The fermionic cousin of Bose-Einstein condensate makes its debut

• Femtosecond laser excites novel surface chemistry

• Going for the gold: First collisions at RHIC are set for December

• Single microwave photons can be measured nondestructively

• Long x-ray observation probes black hole infall

Physics Community

• Sandia bets on mega-microsystems facility, holds off on pulsed power

• Scientists' counsel counts in Congress

• Search for extraterrestrials is this planet's largest computing project

• More US students take high school physics

• Web Watch

Books

When Things Start to Think and The Nature of Mathematical Modeling, N. Gershenfeld (reviewed by M. Marder)

Cradle of Life: The Discovery of EarthÆs Earliest Fossils, J. W. Schopf (reviewed by R. M. Hazen)

Self-Organized Criticality: Emergent Complex Behavior in Physical and Biological Systems, H. J. Jensen (reviewed by M. O. Magnasco)

Classical Electrodynamics, W. Greiner (reviewed by H. S. Picker)

Asymptotic Theory of Separated Flows, V. V. Sychev, A. I. Ruban, V. V. Sychev, and G. L. Korolev, translated by E. V. Maroko (reviewed by M. E. Goldstein)

Plus ...

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