The Physics World Mystery
Now here’s a funny thing. The April and May 2023 editions of Physics World, shown above, published a month apart in the UK, arrived in the same day earlier this week in the post at my house in Maynooth. Both were correctly addressed. One took just over two weeks to cross the Irish Sea; the other took a whole month longer.
Can anyone provide a physical explanation for this phenomenon?
Follow @telescoper
In the Dark 
May 19, 2023 at 4:31 pm
I also received both of mine on the same day! Cormac
May 19, 2023 at 9:36 pm
Royal Mail seems to have not yet recovered from the Christmas chaos. They have also had enormous problems with overseas items – I believe for quite a while they were refusing to accept them. Apart from management failures (resulting in the CEO resignation) I understand they had an IT attack.
May 19, 2023 at 9:47 pm
Yes, but the IT attack was ages ago. The contrast is considerable with my Private Eye which regularly gets here on Thursday or Friday, just a day or two after publication on Wednesday the same week.
May 19, 2023 at 11:10 pm
.. so the critical piece of information is whether mainland UK deliveries were simultaneous too?
May 20, 2023 at 9:48 am
Are copies of Physics World bosons?
May 20, 2023 at 10:25 pm
They’re not identical so it doesn’t matter …
May 20, 2023 at 10:49 pm
It isn’t matter?
May 21, 2023 at 2:51 pm
I’ve just realised that my May Physics World hasn’t arrived in Shropshire!
May 21, 2023 at 2:52 pm
The plot thickens!
May 21, 2023 at 3:00 pm
And continuing to generalise the subject… ‘May’ evokes a question: did Brian May get any (joint?) papers out of his doctorate in astrophysics?
May 21, 2023 at 3:38 pm
He certainly had one Nature paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/240401a0
There May be others.
May 21, 2023 at 3:42 pm
There’s this which is rather later (published in MNRAS but on the arXiv)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.4759
May 22, 2023 at 12:58 am
Perhaps my May issue will arrive with my June issue?