Researchers at the University of Rochester have created the highest resolution optical image ever, revealing structures as small as carbon nanotubes just a few billionths of an inch across. The new method should open the door to previously inaccessible chemical and structural information in samples as small as the proteins embedded in a cell’s membrane. The research appears in today’s issue of Physical Review Letters.

“This is the highest resolution optical spectroscopic measuremen

For the first time, scientists have identified and analyzed single grains of silicate stardust in the laboratory. This breakthrough, to be reported in the Feb. 27 issue of Science Express, provides a new way to study the history of the universe.
“Astronomers have been studying stardust through telescopes for decades,” said first author Scott Messenger, Ph.D., senior research scientist in the Laboratory for Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “And they have derived models of wha

p> Using a sensitive new imaging instrument on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., have discovered a large and surprisingly dense gas cloud sharing an orbit with Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

Stretching millions of miles around Jupiter, the donut-shaped cloud, known as a “torus,” is believed to result from the uncommonly severe bombardment of ion radiation that Jupiter sends toward Europa. That radiatio

Marlan Scully, the Texas A&M University professor who applied quantum physics to the automotive engine and came up with a design that emits laser beams instead of exhaust, has been tinkering under the hood again. This time, he’s sized up the perfect engine — and improved it.

Scully, known as the “Quantum Cowboy” for his innovations in quantum physics and his Franklin Society prize-winning research into beef cattle production, has invented a theoretical design more efficient than the Carno

The quantum entanglement of three electrons, using an ultrafast optical pulse and a quantum well of a magnetic semiconductor material, has been demonstrated in a laboratory at the University of Michigan, marking another step toward the realization of a practical quantum computer. While several experiments in recent years have succeeded in entangling pairs of particles, few researchers have managed to correlate three or more particles in a predictable fashion.

The results were presented in a

University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have conducted the most sensitive search to date for gravitational-strength forces between masses separated by only twice the diameter of a human hair, but they have observed no new forces.

The results rule out a substantial portion of parameter space for new forces with a range between one-tenth and one-hundredth of a millimeter, where theoretical physicists using string theory have proposed that “moduli forces” might be detected, according to

Densely packed granular particles that inch past each other under tension interact in ways more complex and surprising than previously believed, two Duke University physicists have discovered.

Their observations, described in the Thursday, February 27, 2003, issue of the research journal Nature, could provide new insight into such geophysical processes as the behavior of a slowly moving glacier or an active earthquake fault, said Robert Behringer, a Duke physics professor who is one of the

The way a person taps a number into a cash machine or mobile phone, could, according to scientists at the University of Southampton, be used as a means of identification, and prove useful in the battle against fraud.

Professor Neil White of the University of Southampton’s Department of Electronics and Computer Science has developed an inexpensive sensor, which can be integrated into objects of various shapes and sizes, including smart cards and hand-held devices such as mobile phones.

Ever wonder where your favourite ESA Earth observation satellites are, right now?

Now that curiosity can be satisfied from your PC, thanks to ESA’s Satellites in Orbits website and the new addition of its Earth observation missions. The Earth Observation Orbits site displays real-time information and animations about the orbital tracks and current locations of ESA’s four Earth imaging satellites that were launched to help us better understand our own planet.

The interactive

Ten construction workers will often get a job done faster than one. But in digging a deep well, for instance, ten workers are a waste of human resources: the diggers can’t work simultaneously, as the second worker isn’t able to start digging until the first one has finished, and so on.

A similar challenge is encountered by scientists who study the structure and dynamics of molecules using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This technique serves as an essential tool in understand

Explosive detonations at speeds faster than current theories predict have been shown to be possible in a powerful new computer simulation developed by a physical chemist and an aerospace engineer at Penn State. James B. Anderson, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry and Physics, and Lyle N. Long, Professor of Aerospace Engineering, say their simulation points the way toward the production of ultrafast detonations, which could lead to innovative propulsion systems for space travel and a better understandi

On a semiconductor chip, one essential element is missing: a lightsource. An integrated lightsource can be very useful, however. In optical telecommunications, for example, or in lab-on-a-chip applications. University of Twente’s Phuong Le Minh developed a nanoscale integrated lightsourse. The principle of this tiny light source was discoverd by coincidence, performing semiconductor breakdown experiments. Le Minh succeeded in fabricating a micro channel

The nano-lightsource is formed by ‘con

Amid a fast game in a vast venue, sports photography seeks to freeze motion and isolate small portions of space for special consideration. In the scientific world of the ultrafast and ultrasmall, stroboscopic effects are achieved with greatly attenuated laser pulses. The advent of laser light served up in femtosecond (or 10^-15 second) bursts has helped to elucidate the molecular world by freezing their vibrational and rotational motions. Scientists would of course like to instigate and monitor even

In the years after the American Revolution, U.S. presidents were talking about the British a lot, and then about militias, France and Spain. In the mid-19th century, words like “emancipation,” “slaves” and “rebellion” popped up in their speeches. In the early 20th century, presidents started using a lot of business-expansion words, soon to be replaced by “depression.”

A couple of decades later they spoke of atoms and communism. By the 1990s, buzzwords prevailed.

Jon Kleinberg, a p

Physics gets strange when matter gets small. Take electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom, for example. If they did so with the same dynamics by which planets orbit the sun, classical physics predicts the electrons would spiral toward the nucleus and crash into it in a fraction of a second. But that doesn’t happen.

At very low temperatures, classical physics fails to explain phenomena at tiny scales. This is when quantum mechanics kicks in. Scientists are now chilling materials to ne

Austrian physicists report unusual light-metal interaction

A team under Professor Franz Aussenegg at the University of Graz in Austria is looking into unusual interactions between light and submicroscopic metal particles. The physicists’ findings represent a major advance towards the development of improved data storage media and optical sensors. They also confirmed theoretical predictions and merited publication in 13 international scientific journals. These are the impressive result