News tagged with optical

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An easy way to see the world's thinnest material

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Dec 23, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (10) | comments 1

It's been used to dye the Chicago River green on St. Patrick's Day. It's been used to find latent blood stains at crime scenes. And now researchers at Northwestern University have used it to examine the thinnest material ...


A New Method of Estimating Stellar Distances

A New Method of Estimating Stellar Distances

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 21, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (14) | comments 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- The star Chi Cygni is located about 550 light-years away, in the direction of the constellation of Cygnus the Swan. It is a notable star because, unlike the sun which still burns hydrogen ...


Silicon technology offers extended X-ray vision of high-energy cosmos

Silicon technology offers extended X-ray vision of high-energy cosmos

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Dec 21, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- As elements of the integrated circuits running our computers, phones and electronics, silicon wafers are everywhere. An ESA-led effort is establishing an out-of-this-world use for these ...


NASA NuSTAR Telescope Being Built at Nevis

NASA NuSTAR Telescope Being Built at Nevis

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Dec 17, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- It's an unlikely place to build a NASA telescope: a leafy estate in Irvington, N.Y., that once belonged to the son of Alexander Hamilton. Inside a hangar-like building on the site, which is ...


AOptix Technologies and NuCrypt demonstrate physical-layer quantum encryption

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 14, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (5) | comments 0

AOptix Technologies, a leading edge developer of ultra-high bandwidth laser communication solutions, and NuCrypt, a provider of technology for ultra-high security over optical communication networks, disclosed today the recent ...


Born in beauty: Proplyds in the Orion Nebula

Born in beauty: Proplyds in the Orion Nebula (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 14, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (9) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- A collection of 30 never-before-released images of embryonic planetary systems in the Orion Nebula are the highlight of the longest single Hubble Space Telescope project ever dedicated to ...


Computing with a wave of the hand

Computing with a wave of the hand (w/ Video)

Technology / Hi Tech

created Dec 11, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (14) | comments 7

(PhysOrg.com) -- The iPhone’s familiar touch screen display uses capacitive sensing, where the proximity of a finger disrupts the electrical connection between sensors in the screen. A competing approach, ...


Magnetic field measurements of the human heart at room temperature

Magnetic field measurements of the human heart at room temperature

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 11, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 1

A new optical sensor developed by the American National Institute of Standards and Technology was successfully tested by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (Germany) in the "magnetically best shielded ...


Galaxy Collision Switches on Black Hole

Galaxy Collision Switches on Black Hole

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 10, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (4) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- This composite image of data from three different telescopes shows an ongoing collision between two galaxies, NGC 6872 and IC 4970.


Absorbing Hydrogen Fluoride Gas to Enhance Crystal Growth

Absorbing Hydrogen Fluoride Gas to Enhance Crystal Growth

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Dec 10, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a method to control the buildup of hydrogen fluoride gas during the growth of precision crystals ...


RIT astronomer mines Spitzer Space Telescope data for massive starbursts

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 08, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Understanding the evolution of galaxies is one of the biggest questions confronting astronomers today. Looking at distant astronomical objects gives scientists important clues to the origins of the Milky Way Galaxy and other ...


Super cool atom thermometer

Super cool atom thermometer

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 07, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

As physicists strive to cool atoms down to ever more frigid temperatures, they face the daunting task of developing new, reliable ways of measuring these extreme lows. Now a team of physicists has devised ...


Space technology optimises windmill efficiency

Space technology optimises windmill efficiency

Technology / Engineering

created Dec 07, 2009 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (3) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A French start-up company from ESA's Business Incubation Centre in the Netherlands has developed a small instrument to measure wind speed and direction from the ground up to heights of 200 ...


Using lasers to cool and manipulate molecules

Using lasers to cool and manipulate molecules

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 07, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (13) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- "For years, we have been using laser cooling to trap and manipulate atoms," David DeMille tells PhysOrg.com. "This has been very useful for both basic science and many applications. Recent ...


New laser -- it's a gas, gas, gas... sensor

New laser -- it's a gas, gas, gas... sensor

Technology / Engineering

created Dec 04, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new generation of optical sensors is enabling the development of robust, long-lasting, lighting-fast trace gas detectors for use in a wide range of industrial, security and domestic applications.