In August, as
the Mars Polar Lander sped towards its December 1999 rendezvous with
Mars, researchers were using this topographic map, constructed with
data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), to select a landing
site. The selected site, at 76° south latitude and 195°
east longitude (between six and seven o'clock and between two inner
latitude rings in this image), represents a compromise between safety
for the lander and the promise of interesting science. The article
by Raymond Ladbury describes how MOLA and other experiments on the
Mars Global Surveyor are changing how researchers look at Mars. (Courtesy
of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.)
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Jordan,
Pauli, Politics, Brecht, and a Variable Gravitational Constant
Pascal 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 conspicous 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
thelatest remote sensing techniques to bring the Red Planet into
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
Physics
Update
Letters
Search and
Discovery
The fermionic cousin of
Bose-Einstein condensate makes it's 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 computer project...More
US students take high school physics...Web
Watch
Opinion
No kid should know that much
about...--Henry J. Frisch
Books
When Things Start to Think and The Nature of Mathematical
Modeling, N Gershenfeld (reviewed by M. Marder)...Cradle
of Life: The Discovery of Earth's 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. Rubin, and G.L. Korolev, translated
by E.V. Maroko (reviewed by M.E. Goldstein)
New Products
We Hear
That
Obituaries
Rolf William Landauer...Peter Alden Franken...William Phelps Allis...Robert
Sears Jr.
Calendar
Information
Exchange
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©
1999 American Institute of Physics
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