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NASA launches Mars Perseverance rover

Mission will explore the Martian geology and climate, look for signs of past microbial life as well as launch a small helicopter

China successfully launches Tianwen-1 Mars probe

Craft will study Mars’ magnetosphere and atmosphere as well as surface and subsurface geological structures

Photo of Samson Rogers holding a pipetting device next to the Highway1 cell sorter

Therapeutics firms share inaugural prize for health physics

The Institute of Physics’ first Lee Lucas Award honours two start-ups, Nebu~Flow and Cellular Highways, for applying physics to healthcare and medicine

United Arab Emirates launches Hope mission to Mars

The Hope craft – the first Arab mission to Mars – will study the Martian atmosphere including daily and seasonal changes in the climate

First winners of Bell Burnell fellowships announced by the Institute of Physics

Four female PhD students awarded grants from fund to encourage diversity in physics

Men and women go separate ways: why inquiry-based labs exacerbate gender imbalance

Male students in inquiry-based labs handle equipment more, while women spend twice as long on laptops

Science in a digital world

To celebrate 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the idea of a World Wide Web, this special collection explores how scientists are exploiting digital technologies to understand online behaviour and drive research progress

Research updates

Bio-inspired material can’t be cut

Shells, grapefruit and piranha-proof fish motivate design of "Proteus" material that resists power drills and water jets

Electronics drawn directly on the skin creates robust biosensors

“Draw-on-skin” electronics can record physiological signals while addressing the shortcomings of common wearable sensors

How to avoid coffee rings when printing graphene devices

New type of ink deposits nanocrystals evenly on surfaces

Second critical point appears in two models of water

Computations suggest that supercooled water exists in two distinct liquid phases

Acoustic imaging promises real-time dose measurement for FLASH radiotherapy

Exploiting the increased sound wave generation during FLASH radiotherapy could enable real-time monitoring of both the deposited dose and the patient’s anatomy

Microwave anomalies strengthen the case for loop quantum cosmology, say physicists

Tiny features of a ‘Big Bounce’ led to universe-size anomalies today

Features

How to hack a self-driving car

Cars that drive themselves may improve road safety, but they are vulnerable to hackers, as Stephen Ornes finds out

Charging ahead

With electric cars set to enter the mainstream, Susan Curtis investigates the new charging solutions that will be needed

Simple, routine QA enhances contrast-enhanced mammography

Quality-assurance specialist CIRS has teamed up with GE Healthcare to commercialize an easy-to-use breast-equivalent phantom for contrast-enhanced spectral mammography

NASCAR: the science of racing safely

Diandra Leslie-Pelecky explores the science behind some of the features in NASCAR that are designed to keep the drivers safe

Fighting flat-Earth theory

Rachel Brazil explores ways in which the physics community can best combat unscientific thinking, such as the belief the Earth is flat

Finding a consistent constant

Keith Cooper investigates the discrepancies in values of the Hubble constant and asks what this might mean for cosmology

Physics World Jobs

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