Watching electrons using extreme ultraviolet light

A new technique developed by a team at MIT can map the complete electronic band structure of materials at high resolution. This capability is usually exclusive to large synchrotron facilities, but now it is available as a ...

Star nearing death offers a preview of our Sun's fate

An international team of astronomers has witnessed a rare dynamic event foreshadowing the death of a red giant star for the first time – a discovery that reinforces predictions about our Sun's ultimate demise.

One of the world's fastest cameras captures motion of electrons

During the conversion of light into electricity, such as in solar cells, a large part of the input light energy is lost. This is due to the behaviour of electrons inside of materials. If light hits a material, it stimulates ...

Detecting the birth and death of a phonon

Phonons are discrete units of vibrational energy predicted by quantum mechanics that correspond to collective oscillations of atoms inside a molecule or a crystal. When such vibrations are produced by light interacting with ...

Recreating conditions inside stars with compact lasers

The energy density contained in the center of a star is higher than we can imagine - many billions of atmospheres, compared with the 1 atmosphere of pressure we live with here on Earth's surface.

Why cryptophyte algae are really good at harvesting light

In an algae-eat-algae world, it's the single-celled photosynthetic organisms at the top (layer of the ocean) that absorb the most sunlight. Underneath, in the sublayers, are cryptophyte algae that must compete for photons ...

Controlling electrons in time and space

In an electron microscope, electrons are emitted by pointy metal tips, so they can be steered and controlled with high precision. Recently, such metal tips have also been used as high precision electron sources for generating ...

X-rays capture electron 'dance'

(Phys.org)—The way electrons move within and between molecules, transferring energy as they go, plays an important role in many chemical and biological processes, such as the conversion of sunlight to energy in photosynthesis ...

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