Physics Today - August 2016

Physics Today is the membership magazine of the American Institute of Physics that was established in 1948. It is provided to the members of ten physics societies, including the American Physical Society. Although its content is scientifically rigorous and up to date, it is not a true scholarly journal in the sense of being a primary vehicle for communicating new results. Rather, it is more of a hybrid magazine that informs readers about important developments in the form of overview articles written by experts, shorter review articles written internally by staff, and also discusses the latest issues and events of importance to the science community such as science politics. The physics community's main vessel for new results are the Physical Review suite of scientific journals published by the American Physical Society and Applied Physics Letters published by the American Institute of Physics.

The magazine provides a historical resource of events associated with physics, including debunking the physics behind the Star Wars program of the 1980s, and the state of physics in China and the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1970s.