Global warming may be causing ocean levels to rise twice as fast as previously expected, warns a climate physicist in Germany. Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has used sea-level and temperature data spanning the twentieth century to create a very simple model for predicting ocean levels. Then, by using temperatures from future global-warming scenarios published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he calculated that the sea level in 2100 will be 0.5-1.4 m higher than it was in 1990 (Science Express DOI: 10.1126/science.1135456).

—-from physicsweb.org (14 Dec 2006)

A physicist’s fantasy of owning a “tabletop” particle accelerator has been brought one step closer to reality according to research done in France. The accelerator uses two laser pulses to drive an electric field, thus producing monoenergetic electron energies of up to 250 MeV. But unlike previous attempts, the electron beams are stable enough to have practical applications in areas such as radiotherapy and radiography.
(Nature 444 737).