The 50 most-cited articles in Physics Today, 2017

With their hyperfine states serving as two-level qubits, atoms can be packed into closely spaced, laser-cooled arrays and be individually addressed using laser pulses.

How much new science will it take to design a vehicle that can routinely fly at many times the speed of sound?

Quasiparticles of light and matter may be our best hope for harnessing the strange effects of quantum condensation and superfluidity in everyday applications.

The first medical device to restore a human sense, a cochlear implant converts sound into a train of current pulses that directly stimulate the auditory nerve of a profoundly deaf ear.

The imprimatur bestowed by peer review has a history that is both shorter and more complex than many scientists realize.

Whether they end up in industrial, governmental, business, or academic settings, college graduates need plenty of skills beyond an ability to solve problem sets.

Lens-free on-chip imaging devices provide cost-effective, compact, and wide-field microscopy solutions for fieldwork and global health applications.

The Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in 2015, harbors both threats and opportunities for physics education in the US.

The same connections that give a network its functionality can promote the spread of failures and innovations that would otherwise remain confined.

Six decades after the belts’ discovery in 1958, scientists are still finding mysterious features.

Initiated in 2013, the American Physical Society Bridge Program has assisted more than a hundred underrepresented racial and ethnic minority students to pursue PhDs in physics.

The spin Hall effect and its companion, the inverse spin galvanic effect, have evolved from topics of academic interest to efficient means for fabricating microelectronic magnetic memories.

Suspensions of metallic nanoparticles can harvest valuable heat from sunlight that would otherwise go to waste in a photovoltaic cell.

At just the right locations in parameter space, resonant frequencies are ultrasensitive to tiny changes in conditions.

In some ways, the hit TV show reinforces popular stereotypes about scientists. In others, notably in its affectionate portrayals, it plays against type.

Many physiological systems must work together to enable movement in animals and other organisms. Neuromechanics explores how those systems interact with each other and the environment.

The approach can develop undergraduates’ skills in teamwork, communications, entrepreneurship, and tackling real-life problems.

Notwithstanding the awe-inspiring diversity of living creatures, the forms and processes of life are limited by universal principles that act at large and small scales.

Whether long-range magnetic order could survive in the 2D limit was an open and fundamental question. The answer is that it can, but it has some surprises in store.

When nuclei at particle accelerators just miss each other, the short-range strong force is mitigated and photon interactions come to the fore.

Oliver Rosten believes the postdoctoral system played a role in his friend’s suicide. Disseminating that opinion in a scientific journal took perseverance.

The physics preprint server now has a place for papers that link physics and technology. The physics preprint server now has a place for papers that link physics and technology.

Combining the principles of interferometry, holography, and microscopy, quantitative phase imaging has emerged as a unique tool for live-cell and tissue imaging.

With a few simple instructions, participants at the Atlanta Science Festival mimicked a phenomenon that can have fatal consequences in biological systems.

Was the first Soviet thermonuclear device really a step in the wrong direction?

Although the cost of fuel cells has rapidly decreased, the lack of a fueling infrastructure limits their use in vehicles.

Over the past several decades, solar physicists have made steady progress in answering the two long-standing questions, but puzzles remain.

Proteins frozen in vitreous ice are now being imaged with atomic resolution.

The space agency views reactors as options both for propulsion to Mars and as a power source for life on the red planet.

The search for extraterrestrial life is increasingly informed by our knowledge of exoplanets. Within three decades, we may know whether extrasolar life is rare.

For the first time, researchers have probed the energy difference between two orbital states of an antimatter atom.

A density pattern created by acoustic waves in the early universe can be seen in the distribution of galaxies and used as a standard ruler with which to measure cosmological expansion.

The observation of a checkerboard pattern in a lattice of ultracold atoms is a sign of even more exciting experiments to come.

Recent findings are challenging much of what we thought we knew about Earth’s nearest neighbor.

By dipping their oars into the water asynchronously, a rowing crew can reduce the friction on their racing shell. Experiments with robots determine whether that trick increases the boat’s speed.

Inexpensive ingredients and scalable processes yield a material that can emit more energy than it absorbs, even under direct sunlight.

As the planet warms and winds strengthen, the poleward flow of tropical waters is predicted to also intensify. But observations tell a different story.

Gravitational and electromagnetic radiation expose a merger that triggered a gamma-ray burst and manufactured heavy elements.

Coal use in China has jumped sharply over the past 15 years. The concomitant nitrogen oxide emissions have left their subtle mark on a remote island.

Topological defects trigger the death and removal of cells.

The orbiters, landers, and rovers that have probed the red planet over the past two decades reveal it to be chemically complex, historically watery, and suitable as a home for life.

Unlike a rubber balloon, a kamifusen has a hole left open to the surrounding air. So why doesn’t it collapse when you bat it around?

Researchers report forgoing salaries and taking on fewer graduate students to cope with volatile prices for liquid helium.

Three architects of LIGO are honored for their successful effort to directly detect gravitational waves.

When an extremely influential leader leaves behind little documentation of his work and ideas, memories of the man fill the gap for surviving colleagues.

Personal letters, not formal referee reports, communicated suggestions for improving an 1861 paper on the physics of heat.

Whether the CERN facility goes ahead will depend on community support for it in the next European strategy for particle physics.

I share Matt Stanley’s view that studying the history of our subject enriches our perspectives as practicing physicists (“Why should physicists study history?,” Physics Today, July 2016, page 38). In my talks to the nontechnical public and in presentations of new results to colleagues, I try to emphasize the complex network of chance influences, mistakes, collaborations, and controversies that lie behind discoveries conventionally caricatured by attributing them to one person.Stanley and I part company when he complains about those who interpret the science of the past in terms of what we know today: “the bugbear of … Whig history.” Of course, it is essential to study scientific advances in the social, economic, and cultural context of their times, as professional historians do. But Whig history is a complementary activity, justifiable on several grounds.Our scientific predecessors are celebrated largely because of the science that their discoveries led to; that is why they are important, and why historians study them. And the significance of their science changes with time, so it…