Physicists detect the enigmatic spin momentum of light

Ever since Kepler's observation in the 17th century that sunlight is one of the reasons that the tails of comets to always face away from the sun, it has been understood that light exerts pressure in the direction it propagates. ...

Physicists nudge atoms within less than a trillionth of a second

Scientists from Regensburg and Zurich have found a fascinating way to push an atom with controlled forces so quickly that they can choreograph the motion of a single molecule within less than a trillionth of a second. The ...

'Optical rocket' created with intense laser light

In a recent experiment at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, plasma electrons in the paths of intense laser light pulses were almost instantly accelerated close to the speed of light.

Nano fiber feels forces and hears sounds made by cells

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a miniature device that's sensitive enough to feel the forces generated by swimming bacteria and hear the beating of heart muscle cells.

Short wavelength plasmons observed in nanotubes

The term "plasmons" might sound like something from the soon-to-be-released new Star Wars movie, but the effects of plasmons have been known about for centuries. Plasmons are collective oscillations of conduction electrons ...

The origins of handedness in life

Handedness is a complicated business. To simply say life is left-handed doesn't even begin to capture the blooming hierarchy of binary refinements it continues to evolve. Over the years there have been numerous imaginative ...

Reactive optical matter: Light-induced motion

Newton's third law dictates that forces between interacting particles are equal and opposite for closed systems. In a non-equilibrium environment, the third law can be defied, giving rise to "nonreciprocal" forces. Theoretically, ...

Four years of calculations lead to new insights into muon anomaly

Two decades ago, an experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory pinpointed a mysterious mismatch between established particle physics theory and actual lab measurements. When researchers ...

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