Extremely thin laser mirror tested Scientists from the University of California at Berkeley have developed a very flat yet powerful mirror and successfully used it in a laser. As reported by Michael Huang, Ye Zhou and Connie Chang-Hasnain, the new mirror reflects 99.
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Electrons Ejected The LHC accelerator at Cern is not even in operation when the next major project, the ILC, is already looming on the horizon - with acceleration arms twelve kilometers long and threatening cost forecasts. Instead of sending particles through kilometers of tubes, just under a meter of ionized gas is sufficient.
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Light pulses in the Bose-Einstein shuttle For a good decade, physicists have had an exciting toy at their disposal: the Bose-Einstein condensate. Once you have it under control, you can not only slow down light, but even transmit optical information - the rules of quantum mechanics make it possible.
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Hydrodynamics in a coffee glass Today, the chef recommends for connoisseurs with a penchant for physics: latte macchiato the hydrodynamic way. Froth the milk and pour into a tall glass, then carefully pour in the freshly brewed espresso.
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Camera for the fastest films The complex is several kilometers in size and the object of interest is about one tenth of a billionth of a meter. This is what the dimensions look like when researchers want to observe how atoms react to laser beams.
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Shut up behind the demon How do salespeople get the store empty just before the store closes? Exactly: You only let customers out, but no new ones in. Molecules work the same way if you know where they are. Although the laws of thermodynamics should keep such demons out of practical life.
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First String Theory Test? American researchers think they have a good chance of proving string theory or disproving parts of it. Until now there has not been a particle accelerator with the required power, but with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this circumstance has been remedied and it can perhaps be checked as early as this year.
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A drum for the nano orchestra Cornell University's Paul McEuen and his colleagues built a tiny drum. To do this, they "stretched" two-dimensional layers of graphite over a frame made of silicon dioxide. Using laser light or applying an electrical voltage to a gold electrode, they were able to make the graphene "
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Circular accelerator for neutral particles Scientists from the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin succeeded in accelerating and focusing electrically neutral particles in a synchrotron for the first time. Cynthia Heiner's research group generated a beam of ammonia molecules three millimeters in diameter within this circular particle accelerator, which was only 25 centimeters in size.
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Sound breaks through the speed of light Using a surprisingly simple experiment, US researchers showed for the first time that sound pulses can travel at speeds beyond the speed of light in a vacuum. Using a special filter and simple PVC tubing, William Robertson and his colleagues at the University of Middle Tennessee constructed a loop in which the sound signal is split and then travels along two paths of different lengths.
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Difficult contact arrangement Actually, they live in separate worlds: neurons and computers. But both of them work electrically. Reason enough for Freiburg scientists to establish contact between the two. But how do you ensure that they find each other attractive over the long term?
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Precision measurement indicates lighter Higgs particle A high-precision mass determination of the W boson at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) suggests a lower mass of the previously undiscovered Higgs boson. In the Tevatron, currently the world's most energetic accelerator, the researchers analyzed collisions between protons, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, and their antiparticles.
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Major re-measurement They all come down - just wondering how fast. But this question can also be answered with a bit of calculation thanks to Newton's equations for gravitation. Provided one knows a sufficiently precise value for the gravitational constant.
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The snow is falling loudly You can go on the skis, even if Mother Hulda doesn't play along. Winter sports have been enjoying increasing popularity again for a number of years, but the operators of lifts, hotels and other infrastructure are under no illusions:
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Stable electron beam by laser light Particle accelerators that deliver a high-energy beam of matter are necessary for many applications that require high temporal or spatial resolution. However, these apparatuses are usually so large that by no means all the desired investigations and experiments can actually be carried out.
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Life AND logic don't go together, do they? In biochemistry, nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA have long been considered thread-like miracle molecules. Not only do they store information and pass it on to future generations, they also diligently remodel themselves.
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Precise measurement of ultra-short laser pulses Scientists from Imperial College London have succeeded in measuring pulses of electromagnetic waves lasting a few femtoseconds with unprecedented precision. To do this, John Tisch and his colleagues directed the laser pulses into a gas that, when excited, emitted X-ray pulses that lasted only a tenth of the laser pulse.
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Global Fridge Effect by Greenhouse Gas While the earth is getting warmer overall with increasing carbon dioxide levels, the upper layers of our atmosphere are cooling down more and more. Among other things, this will affect satellites and the navigation systems based on them, warn Jan Laštovička from the Prague Institute of Atmospheric Physics and his colleagues.
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Seismometers record underwater eruption A team of US geophysicists will easily get over the loss of two-thirds of their ocean floor seismometers: the instruments failed because an underwater volcano had erupted in their immediate vicinity.
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Iter international fusion project officially launched On Tuesday morning at the Elysée Palace in Paris, the research ministers of China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA signed the legal agreement to build the Iter fusion reactor ( I nternational T hermonuclear E xperimental R eactor) signed.
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New Frostblast Theory The hitherto common textbook opinion on the crushing of rock by the expansive force of water during freezing may need to be revised. According to Julian Murton of the University of Sussex in Brighton and his colleagues, the current mechanism does not work under natural conditions, at least at latitudes near the poles.
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High-tech in ancient armories In its day, Damascus steel was a fearsome high-tech material. The blades of Muslim warriors demonstrated the superior art of oriental blacksmiths to western crusaders. The weapons of that time even contained the most modern nanostructures of today.
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Reading out quantum information with the laser One of the main difficulties in developing quantum computers is extracting the valuable information without disturbing the system too much. Engineers around David Awschalom from the University of California in Santa Barbara have now presented a method that evaluates the changed polarization of laser light.
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The cylinder lock Modern locking systems are works of art of precision engineering, but even they do not offer absolute security. Locking technology, that's how the technical jargon soberly describes a competition: With a mix of modern materials technology, physics and mathematics, manufacturers of security systems such as cylinder locks make life difficult for thieves and burglars.
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Computer program should recognize image motifs Searching for images on the Internet is intended to make it easier in the future to use software newly developed by researchers at Pennsylvania State University. In the program presented by Jia Li and James Wang, the searchable selection criterion is not the caption, but the image content itself.
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Nuclear Database Humanity likes to play with fire, and that is one of the reasons why nuclear weapons are stored in the arsenals of the official and unofficial nuclear powers, which could destroy the planet several times over. Just one of them in the hands of unscrupulous terrorists, the consequences would be unimaginable.
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Harry Potter's Microwave Invisibility Cloak Being able to fly, see into the future, be invisible - three of the biggest dreams we humans have. Daring pioneers realized the first more than 100 years ago. On the second, meteorologists and stock market speculators try their hand at new things every day.
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Element 118 created A research team from the United States and Russia has succeeded in synthesizing the chemical element with atomic number 118 for the first time. It is thus the heaviest representative in the periodic table and is located at the bottom right under the noble gas radon.
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New Light for Catalyzed Reactions Some processes never get going without outside help. For example, chemical reactions often only start in the presence of the appropriate catalyst. But it is sometimes difficult to find. Perhaps the use of lasers could end the difficulties in the lab.
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Germanium nanocrystals show shifted phase transitions Germanium nanocrystals enclosed in glass only become liquid at around 200 degrees above the melting point. The second surprise for the investigating researchers was that the molten element only crystallizes out again at around 200 degrees below the usual freezing point.
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Nuclear Bomb Test On Monday, October 9, 2006, North Korea shocked the world by announcing that the country had successfully tested a nuclear explosive device - a report that was made later in the day with reservations from the South Korean, US and Russian sides has been confirmed.
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No more spooks The concept of quantum teleportation was first experimentally realized between two different light beams. This was later also achieved with other objects. Now another important step followed: the transfer of the quantum states of a light pulse to a material object.
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Well-Tempered Collective Magnetic oscillations in a solid already form a quantum mechanical unit at room temperature. Experts are not yet in complete agreement as to whether it is a Bose-Einstein condensate or a special form of a laser. A good eighty years ago, Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein predicted an extremely unusual state of special matter.
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New record for particle accelerator A particle accelerator based on laser-driven plasma waves supplies charged particles with energy of one billion electron volts over a distance of just 3.3 centimetres. This makes it the first of its kind to come close to the energies used in conventional systems.
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Cages from the Flask Electronic components owe their computing power and storage capacity to semiconductors such as silicon. In the future, a special form of germanium, in which its structure is made up of a network of spacious cages, could serve as the starting material for electronic components - at least that's what theoretical studies predict.
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Sometimes turbulent Technicians don't like them at all: turbulence. After all, these turbulences increase the frictional resistance and make flowing systems unpredictable. But the wild river can also be steered back into calmer channels. Wall!
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Cheap Catalysts for Fuel Cells Two researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a low-cost catalyst for fuel cells: instead of the usual noble metal platinum, their reaction accelerators are based on a chemical compound in which the much cheaper metal cob alt is the active component.
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Journey to the Island of Stability Lead is heavy. However, if you bombard it with calcium atoms, it can become even heavier - even super heavy. Unfortunately, the resulting new element disintegrates within a short time. Nevertheless, for some physicists this opportunity is enough to take a look inside and gain valuable insights into the world of giant atoms.
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New non-slip material Gecko feet served researchers at the University of California in Berkeley led by Ronald Fearing as a model for a new, very non-slip material. Applied to the surface of a coin, it prevents it from sliding off a nearly right-angled glass plate without sticking it.
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Soap with switch If you want to mix water and oil, you can only bring the two together with the help of surfactants. Separating them afterwards is far more difficult. A new variant of the surface-active substances makes the task easier. It can easily be switched on and off.
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