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Researchers Trap Ions to Analyze How Matter was Created After the Big Bang

Research groups at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Physical-Technical Federal Institute (PTB) in Braunschweig, working in collaboration with scientists at the University of Ulm and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, have been investigating the formation of defects occurring when a Coulomb crystal of ions is driven through a second-order phase transition.

14 Aug 2013

Researchers Measure Light Emitted by Photoluminescence from Optically Levitated Nano Diamond

Researchers at the University of Rochester have measured for the first time light emitted by photoluminescence from a nanodiamond levitating in free space. In a paper published this week in Optics Letters, they describe how they used a laser to trap nanodiamonds in space, and – using another laser – caused the diamonds to emit light at given frequencies.

13 Aug 2013

Laser-Excited Celestial Meteor Pollution Helps View the Universe with Unprecedented Clarity

“Celestial Pollution” from meteors like this weekend’s Perseid Meteor Shower sprinkle sodium high up in our atmosphere and give astronomers what they need to see the universe in much greater detail.

12 Aug 2013

Hubble Space Telescope Helps Solve 40-Year-Old Origin Mystery of Magellanic Stream

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have solved the 40-year-old mystery of the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around the Milky Way. New Hubble observations reveal that most of this stream was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud some two billion years ago, with a smaller portion originating more recently from its larger neighbour.

12 Aug 2013

Gemini’s FLAMINGOS-2 Reveals Magnificent Near-Infrared Images of Swan Nebula

Gemini Observatory’s latest instrument, a powerful infrared camera and spectrograph at Gemini South, reveals its potential in a series of striking on-sky commissioning images released today.

12 Aug 2013

Novel Compact Miniature Spectrometer to Measure Terahertz Waves

The chair for RF engineering at Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden) and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) recently embarked on a new joint effort with the goal of developing improved diagnostic tools for use in accelerators. Using a novel compact miniature spectrometer, the researchers are planning on measuring terahertz waves at ELBE, the HZDR’s electron accelerator.

12 Aug 2013

Higgs Boson May Help Explain Attributes of Enigmatic Dark Energy

One of the biggest mysteries in contemporary particle physics and cosmology is why dark energy, which is observed to dominate energy density of the universe, has a remarkably small (but not zero) value. This value is so small, it is perhaps 120 orders of magnitude less than would be expected based on fundamental physics.

12 Aug 2013

Atomic Clock Used as Quantum Simulator

Researchers at JILA have for the first time used an atomic clock as a quantum simulator, mimicking the behavior of a different, more complex quantum system.

9 Aug 2013

Mystery of Magellanic Stream Solved by Hubble Space Telescope

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have solved a 40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy.

9 Aug 2013

Miniature Silicon System Produces Light With Fewer Quantum Fluctuations

One of the many counterintuitive and bizarre insights of quantum mechanics is that even in a vacuum—what many of us think of as an empty void—all is not completely still. Low levels of noise, known as quantum fluctuations, are always present. Always, that is, unless you can pull off a quantum trick. And that's just what a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has done.

9 Aug 2013