electromagnetism

Why does the Earth, as well as other planets and stars, have a magnetic field?

Where do the magnetic fields of planets and stars come from?

It's a good question with a fascinating answer.

How to get massive particles from gold.

After having explored our economic analogy for the force of electromagnetism, let us turn to the weak force.

Current physical theories suggest that beautiful symmetries underly the fundamental particles and forces of nature. We describe those symmetries using an analogy from economics, and even rediscover the famous Higgs boson.

Now let's look at the economic analogy for electromagnetism.

We'll start our series of articles with a look at the force of electromagnetism.

And finally, here is how the famous Higgs boson gets into the picture.

Celebrating the 150th anniversary of Maxwell's equations we talk to physicist John Ellis about what they mean for modern technology and our understanding of the Universe.

This is the second article in our four-part series exploring quantum electrodynamics. After successfully applying quantum mechanics to the electromagnetic field, physicists faced a problem of boundless proportions: every calculation they made returned infinity as the answer.

You may have heard of quantum theory and you probably know what a field is. But what is quantum field theory? This article traces the development of quantum electrodynamics in the first half of the 20th century. Hair raising difficulties, heroic struggle and illustrious characters — this story has it all!

  • Want facts and want them fast? Our Maths in a minute series explores key mathematical concepts in just a few words.

  • What do chocolate and mayonnaise have in common? It's maths! Find out how in this podcast featuring engineer Valerie Pinfield.

  • Is it possible to write unique music with the limited quantity of notes and chords available? We ask musician Oli Freke!

  • How can maths help to understand the Southern Ocean, a vital component of the Earth's climate system?

  • Was the mathematical modelling projecting the course of the pandemic too pessimistic, or were the projections justified? Matt Keeling tells our colleagues from SBIDER about the COVID models that fed into public policy.

  • PhD student Daniel Kreuter tells us about his work on the BloodCounts! project, which uses maths to make optimal use of the billions of blood tests performed every year around the globe.