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I’ve been immersed in quantum physics this week at the Helgoland 2025 meeting, which is being held to mark Werner Heisenberg’s seminal development of quantum mechanics on the island 100 years ago.
But when it comes to science, Helgoland isn’t only about quantum physics. It’s also home to an outpost of the Alfred Wegener Institute, which is part of the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and named after the German scientist who was the brains behind continental drift.
Dating back to 1892, the Biological Institute Helgoland (BAH) has about 80 permanent staff. They include Sebastian Primpke, a polymer scientist who studies the growing danger of microplastics and microfibres on the oceans.
Microplastics, which are any kind of small plastic materials, generally range in size from one micron to about 5mm. They are a big danger for fish and other forms of marine life, as Marric Stepehens reported in this recent feature.
Primpke studies microplastics using biofilms attached to a grid immersed in a tank containing water piped continuously in from the North Sea. The tank is covered with a lid to keep samples in the dark, mimicking underwater conditions.
Deep-sea spying A researcher looks at electron micrographs to spot microfibres in seawater samples. (Courtesy: Matin Durrani)
He and his team periodically take samples from the films out, studying them in the lab using infrared and Raman microscopes. They’re able to obtian information such as the length, width, area, perimeter of individual microplastic particles as well as how convex or concave they are.
Other researchers at the Hegloland lab study microfibres, which can come from cellulose and artifical plastics, using electron microscopy. You can find out more inforation about the lab’s work here.
Primpke, who is a part-time fire-fighter, has lived and worked on Helgoland for a decade. He says it’s a small community, where everyone knows everyone else, which has its good and bad sides.
With only 1500 residents on the island, which lies 50 km from the mainland, finding good accommodation can be tricky. But with so many tourists, there are more amenities than you’d expect of somewhere of that size.
What makes the squid eye so powerful? From giant eyeballs to bioluminescence detection, learn how squid evolved to thrive in the darkest depths of the ocean.
House Democrats sent letters to the potential buyers of the genetic testing company, asking how they plan to protect customer genetic data under a change of ownership.
In this week's episode of Space Minds, we explore how microgravity accelerates aging—and guest Dr. Nadia Maroouf shares her insights on the phenomenon and what she’s doing to help protect astronauts.
In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we explore the career opportunities open to physicists and engineers looking to work within healthcare – as medical physicists or clinical engineers.
Physics World’s Tami Freeman is in conversation with two early-career physicists working in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). They are Rachel Allcock, a trainee clinical scientist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, and George Bruce, a clinical scientist at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. We also hear from Chris Watt, head of communications and public affairs at IPEM, about the new IPEM careers guide.
This episode was created in collaboration with IPEM, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. IPEM owns the journal Physics in Medicine & Biology.
This episode is supported by Radformation, which is redefining automation in radiation oncology with a full suite of tools designed to streamline clinical workflows and boost efficiency. At the centre of it all is AutoContour, a powerful AI-driven autocontouring solution trusted by centres worldwide.
Four-year-old small satellite maker Muon Space announced $89.5 million in new funding June 12 to scale production and acquire propulsion startup Starlight Engines, bringing a potential supply chain bottleneck in-house.
Jack Harris, a quantum physicist at Yale University in the US, has a fascination with islands. He grew up on Martha’s Vineyard, an island just south of Cape Cod on the east coast of America, and believes that islands shape a person’s thinking. “Your world view has a border – you’re on or you’re off,” Harris said on a recent episode of the Physics World Stories podcast.
It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that Harris is one of the main organizers of a five-day conference taking place this week on Helgoland, where Werner Heisenberg discovered quantum mechanics exactly a century ago. Heisenberg had come to the tiny, windy, pollen-free island, which lies 50 km off the coast of Germany, in June 1925, to seek respite from the hay fever he was suffering from in Göttingen.
According to Heisenberg’s 1971 book Physics and Beyond, he supposedly made his breakthrough early one morning that month. Unable to sleep, Heisenberg left his guest house just before daybreak and climbed a tower at the top of the island’s southern headland. As the Sun rose, Heisenberg pieced together the curious observations of frequencies of light that materials had been seen to absorb and emit.
Where it all began This memorial stone and plaque sits at the spot of Werner Heisenberg’s achievements 100 years ago. (Courtesy: Matin Durrani)
While admitting that the real history of the episode isn’t as simple as Heisenberg made out, Harris believes it’s nevertheless a “very compelling” story. “It has a place and a time: an actual, clearly defined, quantized discrete place – an island,” Harris says. “This is a cool story to have as part of the fabric of [the physics] community.” Hardly surprising, then, that more than 300 physicists, myself included, have travelled from across the world to the Helgoland 2025 meeting.
Much time has been spent so far at the event discussing the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, which might seem a touch self-indulgent and esoteric given the burgeoning (and financially lucrative) applications of the subject. Do we really need to concern ourselves with, say, non-locality, the meaning of measurement, or the nature of particles, information and randomness?
Why did we need to hear from Juan Maldacena from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton getting so excited talking about information loss and black holes? (Fun fact: a “white” black hole the size of a bacterium would, he claimed, be as hot as the Sun and emit so much light we could see it with the naked eye.)
But the fundamental questions are fascinating in their own right. What’s more, if we want to build, say, a quantum computer, it’s not just a technical and engineering endeavour. “To make it work you have to absorb a lot of the foundational topics of quantum mechanics,” says Harris, pointing to challenges such as knowing what kinds of information alter how a system behaves. “We’re at a point where real-word practical things like quantum computing, code breaking and signal detection hinge on our ability to understand the foundational questions of quantum mechanics.”
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This episode is supported by Radformation, which is redefining automation in radiation oncology with a full suite of tools designed to streamline clinical workflows and boost efficiency. At the centre of it all is AutoContour, a powerful AI-driven autocontouring solution trusted by centres worldwide.SpaceNews
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