News tagged with beams of light

Photonics: Beam me up

'Tractor beams' of light that pull objects towards them are no longer science fiction. Haifeng Wang at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute and co-workers have now demonstrated how a tractor beam can in fact be realized on a ...

Physics / General Physics

created May 24, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 0

NASA engineers testing Webb telescope's OSIM and BIA instruments

(Phys.org) -- Several critical items related to NASA's next-generation James Webb Space Telescope are being tested in the giant thermal vacuum test chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Apr 12, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 1

Measuring magnetic fields

(Phys.org) -- Polarized light is a familiar phenomenon, as people who prefer polarized sunglasses can testify. The electric field in a beam of light can vibrate either left-right or up-down, and the scattering ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 09, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Ultrafast sonograms shed new light on rapid phase transitions

An international team of physicists has developed a method for taking ultrafast 'sonograms' that can track the structural changes that take place within solid materials in trillionth-of-a-second intervals ...

Physics / General Physics

created Mar 08, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Novel link between optical fibers, nanometer-scale silicon structures could aid development of integrated optical circui

Silicon is a unique material that has revolutionized electronics; it enables engineers to put millions of electrical devices onto a single chip. Replacing the electrical currents in this technology with beams ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Feb 17, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Virtual ghost imaging: New technique enables imaging even through highly adverse conditions

Ghost imaging (GI), and its even more oddly named cousin virtual ghost imaging (VGI), seem to contradict conventional wisdom by being able to image an object by simply counting photons in a "light bucket." This non-intuitive ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 15, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (7) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Physicists build highly efficient 'no-waste' laser

A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (23) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Nanometer-scale growth of cone cells tracked in living human eye

Humans see color thanks to cone cells, specialized light-sensing neurons located in the retina along the inner surface of the eyeball. The actual light-sensing section of these cells is called the outer segment, which is ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Dec 20, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 15

U of Toronto experiment named top breakthrough of 2011 by Physics World

Aephraim Steinberg and colleagues at the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control at the University of Toronto had the top physics breakthrough of the year according to Physics World magazine.

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 16, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 19

A serendipitous gravitational lens

(PhysOrg.com) -- The path traveled by a light beam will bend in the presence of matter. This remarkable prediction, reached by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, was confirmed by observations of ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 21, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (6) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Switching light on and off - with photons

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cornell researchers have demonstrated that the passage of a light beam through an optical fiber can be controlled by just a few photons of another light beam.

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Nov 09, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (7) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

Millisecond pulsar in spin mode

Astronomers have tracked down the first gamma-ray pulsar in a globular cluster of stars. It is around 27,000 light years away and thus also holds the distance record in this class of objects. Moreover, its ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 03, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

Scientists take fresh look at 'faster-than-light' experiment

Scientists who threw down the gauntlet to physics by reporting particles that broke the Universe's speed limit said on Friday they were revisiting their contested experiment.

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 28, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (22) | comments 146

Erasing history? Temporal cloaks adjust light's throttle to hide an event in time

Researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., have demonstrated for the first time that it's possible to cloak a singular event in time, creating what has been described as a "history editor." In a feat of Einstein-inspired ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Oct 12, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (15) | comments 14 | with audio podcast

Developing more accurate cold atom accelerometers

For the first time, a team of French physicists, supported by CNES and ESA, has succeeded in developing a vibration-resistant cold atom accelerometer. Tested in parabolic flight, this prototype was able to ...

Physics / General Physics

created Sep 26, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 4