Page 5 - News tagged with optical sciences

Good vibrations: Researchers record first direct observations of quantum effects in an optomechanical system

A long-time staple of science fiction is the tractor beam, a technology in which light is used to move massive objects – recall the tractor beam in the movie Star Wars that captured the Millennium Falcon and pulled it into ...

New optical material offers unprecedented control of light and thermal radiation

A team led by Nanfang Yu, assistant professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, has discovered a new phase-transition optical material and demonstrated novel devices that dynamically control light over a much broader ...

Sensor on a chip: New technology holds potential for monitoring ecosystem, human health

University of Delaware researchers are developing sensors that they hope will allow real-time, in situ detection of water and air pollutants in an inexpensive and environmentally friendly manner.

Acoustic tweezers can position tiny objects

(PhysOrg.com) -- Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough to place on a chip, ...

First results from long-term, hi-res tracking of eruptions on Jupiter's moon Io

Jupiter's moon Io continues to be the most volcanically active body in the solar system, as documented by the longest series of frequent, high-resolution observations of the moon's thermal emission ever obtained.

Two Americans, one German win Chemistry Nobel for giving microscope sharper vision

World record for the entanglement of twisted light quanta

(Phys.org)—The Vienna research team led by Anton Zeilinger has achieved a new milestone in the history of quantum physics: The scientists were able to generate and measure the entanglement of the largest quantum numbers ...

Engineers' new metamaterial doubles up on invisibility (w/ Video)

(Phys.org) —The new material's artificial "atoms" are designed to work with a broad range of light frequencies. With adjustments, the researchers believe it could lead to perfect microscope lenses or invisibility cloaks.

A fast light detector made of two-dimensional materials

Two research groups at ETH Zurich have joined forces to develop a novel light detector. It consists of two-dimensional layers of different materials that are coupled to a silicon optical waveguide. In the future, this approach ...

Beyond Google Glass: Researcher looks to the future

(Phys.org) —A wearable display being developed by UA optical scientist Hong Hua could have capabilities even more advanced than those of the recently unveiled Google Glass, a pair of glasses with smartphone capabilities.