People are writing more than ever with their keyboards and phones, but handwritten notes have become rare. Even signatures are going out of style. Most credit card purchases no longer require them, and if they do, you can ...
For some 30 years, scientists have used superconducting materials to record the tiniest specks of light imaginable—individual photons, or single particles of light. However, these detectors, which consist of ultracold wires ...
If you've been to your local beach, you may have noticed the wind tossing around litter such as an empty potato chip bag or a plastic straw. These plastics often make their way into the ocean, affecting not only marine life ...
Like conductors of a spooky symphony, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have "entangled" two small mechanical drums and precisely measured their linked quantum properties. Entangled ...
Like a chameleon of the night sky, the moon often changes its appearance. It might look larger, brighter or redder, for example, due to its phases, its position in the solar system or smoke in Earth's atmosphere. (It is not ...
In high-end 21st century communications, information travels in the form of a stream of light pulses typically traveling through fiber optic cables. Each pulse can be as faint as a single photon, the smallest possible unit ...
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators have demonstrated an atom-based sensor that can determine the direction of an incoming radio signal, another key part for a potential ...
After the optical frequency comb made its debut as a ruler for light, spinoffs followed, including the astrocomb to measure starlight and a radar-like comb system to detect natural gas leaks. And now, researchers have unveiled ...
More than 150 years ago, the Sun blasted Earth with a massive cloud of hot charged particles. This plasma blob generated a magnetic storm on Earth that caused sparks to leap out of telegraph equipment and even started a few ...
The secret to building superconducting quantum computers with massive processing power may be an ordinary telecommunications technology—optical fiber.
