The breakthrough technique supercools plasma with lasers before trapping them in a magnetic field; allowing physicists to study the northern lights, white dwarves and nuclear fusion in ever greater detail. Source: https://www.livescience.com/laser-cooled-plasma-trapped.html
Tag: lasers
Can air pollution help us find alien life?
To find alien life in our universe, scientists have considered searches for optical lasers or even giant energy-harvesting structures known as Dyson spheres. Now they’re suggesting a more mundane sort of search, a hunt for air pollution in exoplanet atmospheres. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/can-pollution-help-us-find-alien-life…
Quantum leap: how we discovered a new way to create a hologram
Once, holograms were just a scientific curiosity. But thanks to the rapid development of lasers, they have gradually moved center stage, appearing on the security imagery for credit cards and bank notes, in science fiction movies—most memorably Star Wars—and even “live” on stage when long-dead rapper Tupac reincarnated for fans at the Coachella music festival in 2012. …
Firing Lasers to Tame the Sky
Why do stars twinkle? Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html…
Zapping quantum materials with lasers tells us how atoms relate
Phase transitions are a fundamental piece of physics and chemistry. We’re all familiar with different phases of water, for example, but this idea of a system of particles changing what it looks like and how it behaves is really ubiquitous in science. And while we know the outcome of water changing into ice, the precise process leads to many different kinds…
Scat scans: How lasers are teasing secrets from ancient poo
Coprolites, or fossilised faeces, have always been slippery customers. But now we can use X-rays to see inside them, they are yielding fresh insights into ancient ecosystems Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833133-400-scat-scans-how-lasers-are-teasing-secrets-from-ancient-poo/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
New type of atomic clock could help scientists detect dark matter and study gravity’s effect on time
Atomic clocks are the most precise timekeepers in the world. These exquisite instruments use lasers to measure the vibrations of atoms, which oscillate at a constant frequency, like many microscopic pendulums swinging in sync. The best atomic clocks in the world keep time with such precision that, if they had been running since the beginning of the universe, they would only…
High-Frequency Traders Push Closer To Light Speed With Cutting-Edge Cables
High-frequency traders are using an experimental type of cable to speed up their systems by billionths of a second, the latest move in a technological arms race to execute stock trades as quickly as possible. From a report: The cable, called hollow-core fiber, is a next-generation version of the fiber-optic cable used to deliver broadband internet to homes and businesses. Made…
Light-Based Quantum Computer Exceeds Fastest Classical Supercomputers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: For the first time, a quantum computer made from photons — particles of light — has outperformed even the fastest classical supercomputers. Physicists led by Chao-Yang Lu and Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Shanghai performed a technique called Gaussian boson sampling with their quantum…
Earth is fighting a laser duel with the exploding Carina Nebula
An epic photo shows the ESO’s Very large Telescope firing four orange lasers at a distant star system. Source: https://www.livescience.com/carina-nebula-laser-explosion.html