Quantum physics and plant biology seem like two branches of science that could not be more different, but surprisingly they may in fact be intimately tied. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame used ultrafast spectroscopy to see what…
Researchers have trapped a rainbow – slowing light to a near-stop – in an array of 25,000 “invisibility cloaks”, each smaller than a hair’s breadth. A report in the New Journal of Physics shows how the quest for an invisibility cloak is leading to cleverer ways to use and manipulate light. The trick could aid…
A new dolphin speaker device could one day help us talk with these remarkably intelligent life forms, scientists say. Dolphins live in a world of sound far beyond our own. They can distinguish very small differences in the frequency or pitch of sound waves, and can hear and generate low-frequency sounds below 20 kilohertz that…
‘Tractor beams’ of light that pull objects towards them are no longer science fiction. Haifeng Wang at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute and co-workers have now demonstrated how a tractor beam can in fact be realized on a small scale. Tractor beams are a well-known concept in science fiction. These rays of light are often…
Species don’t hang around forever. Homo sapiens has already notched up a mind-boggling 200,000 years on Earth. Is the end nigh? The geological statistics suggest not – the average mammal species celebrates its millionth birthday long before it begins to slip towards oblivion. But we are no average species, and there has long been a…
Electrons rule our world, but not so long ago they were only an idea. May marks the 120th anniversary of a profound and influential creation, the electron theory of Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. His electron was not merely a hypothesized elementary particle; it was the linchpin of an ambitious theory of nature. Today, physicists…
Researchers have encoded a form of rewritable memory into DNA. The arduous work involved in building the system is almost as notable as the achievement itself, says Drew Endy of Stanford University in California who led the work, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Synthetic biologists have long sought to…
Some NASA supporters are mourning what they see as the decline of U.S. leadership in space. But they should really be celebrating the dawn of a new era. After all, we’ve been stuck in low Earth orbit for several decades now, at considerable cost. Visionary plans for genuine space exploration have gathered dust at NASA,…
After 50 years of searching, physicists have spotted the fingerprint of radioactive plutonium, revealing the secrets of this complex molecule behind nuclear weapons. The researchers found the “plutonium signal” using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which is often used to peer into the electronic structure of atoms and molecules. Their findings, detailed in a recent issue…
Researchers have revealed details of a promising way to make a fundamentally different kind of computer memory chip. The device is a “memristor”, a long-hypothesised but only recently demonstrated electronic component. A memristor’s electronic properties make it suitable for both for computing and for far faster, denser memory. Researchers at the European Materials Research Society…