Philip Ball Research Articles

In search of claritons

Do breakthroughs in physics occur through sudden “light-bulb moments”, or are they more often the result of solid, hard graft? Philip Ball talks to physicists who have experienced success to find out

Diffract, then destroy

A new implementation of X-ray diffraction using free-electron lasers can take snapshots of biological molecules that are inaccessible via X-ray crystallography. As Philip Ball reports, the technique can even be used to create stop-motion films of dynamic molecular processes

How wet can you get?

Some concepts are useful but difficult to quantify, as Philip Ball illustrates with the property of hydrophobicity.

No result, no problem?

If you try to do an experiment or a calculation and it doesn't work out, should you tell other researchers about it? Or just move on to something more promising as quickly as you can? Philip Ball explores the pros and cons of publicizing “null results” in science.

Physics: Radiant realms

Philip Ball enjoys two explorations of light, spanning wonders from Newton's spectrum to the aurora borealis.

History: Archive of wonders

Philip Ball browses remnants of the celebrated library of mathematician and occultist John Dee.

New chemistry revives elementary question.

The periodic table is a public symbol of chemistry. But as it grows larger, we must stress that science is not just about producing lists, says Philip Ball.

Chemistry: Why synthesize?

Philip Ball ponders the many reasons that chemists make molecules, and weighs what is lost, and gained, when they don't.

Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler - by Philip Ball

Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler - by Philip Ball

Invisible: the dangerous allure of the unseen

If you could be invisible, what would you do? The chances are that it would have something to do with power, wealth or sex. Perhaps all three. But there's no need to feel guilty. Impulses like these have always been at the heart of our fascination with invisibility: it points to realms beyond our senses, serves as a receptacle for fears and dreams, and hints at worlds where other rules apply. Invisibility is a mighty power and a terrible curse, a sexual promise, a spiritual condition. This is a history of humanity's turbulent relationship with the invisible. It takes on the myths and morals of Plato, the occult obsessions of the Middle Ages, the trickeries and illusions of stage magic, the auras and ethers of Victorian physics, military strategies to camouflage armies and ships and the discovery of invisibly small worlds. From the medieval to the cutting-edge, fairy tales to telecommunications, from beliefs about the supernatural to the discovery of dark energy, Philip Ball reveals the universe of the invisible.

Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler, by Philip Ball

<i>Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler</i>, by Philip Ball

History of science: The crucible of change

Philip Ball gets to grips with a revolutionary history of the scientific revolution.

Going rogue

Once thought to be the stuff of exaggeration by seafaring folk, we now know that giant “rogue” waves that soar to heights of up to 30 m really do occur at sea. But scientists can't yet agree on why they happen, as Philip Ball reports.

Serving the Reich: the struggle for the soul of physics under Hitler

After World War II, most scientists in Germany maintained that they had been apolitical or actively resisted Nazi regime, but true story is much more complicated. In Serving Reich, Philip Ball takes a fresh look at that controversial history, contrasting career of Peter Debye, director of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, with those of two other leading physicists in Germany during Third Reich: Max Planck, elder statesman of physics after whom Germany's premier scientific society is now named, and Werner Heisenberg, who succeeded Debye as director of institute when it became focused on development of nuclear power and weapons. Mixing history, science, and biography, Ball's gripping exploration of lives of scientists under Nazism offers a powerful portrait of moral choice and personal responsibility, as scientists navigated the grey zone between complicity and resistance. Ball's account of different choices these three men and their colleagues made shows how there can be no clear-cut answers or judgement of their conduct. Yet, despite these ambiguities, Ball makes it undeniable that German scientific establishment as a whole mounted no serious resistance to Nazis, and in many ways acted as a willing instrument of state. Serving Reich considers what this problematic history can tell us about relationship of science and today. Ultimately, Ball argues, a determination to present science as an abstract inquiry into nature that is above politics can leave science and scientists dangerously compromised and vulnerable to political manipulation.

A Viking saga

Did Norse seafarers really find their way across stormy oceans with the aid of a delicate crystal? Philip Ball unravels a tangled tale

Op-ed sees 2015 as possibly "the year we confirm both the virtues and the limits of general relativity"

In the International New York Times, Philip Ball tells the world about coming tests of probably the most beautiful of all existing theories.

Theatre: Atomic tragedian

Philip Ball sees something of Macbeth in a play about J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project.

History of chemistry: Words into gold

Philip Ball finds much wrestling with ideas in alchemists' scribbled-over texts.

Resources: Silt, dams and hydraulic heroes

A study of China's Yellow River shows how water shapes the nation, finds Philip Ball.

One rule of life: do we all exist at the border of order?

There are signs that all living things sit on the knife-edge of criticality, says Philip Ball .