Optics

Superfast Data Using Radio Waves Rather Than Optics

Using twisted light to send data at almost unimaginable speeds is not new but researchers have developed a similar technique using radio waves- high speeds without the hassles that go with optical systems.  ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 16 2014 - 10:44pm

Light Can Play Seesaw At The Nanoscale

Electrical engineering researchers have developed a unique nanoscale device that demonstrates mechanical transportation of light. The nanoscale device that can capture, measure and transport fundamental particles of light- photons. The tiny device is just ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 22 2014 - 3:00pm

Predicting Landslides With Light

Optical sensors are used all around the world to monitor the condition of difficult-to-access places like the underbellies of bridges, the exterior walls of tunnels, the feet of dams, long pipelines and railways in remote areas. ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 29 2014 - 2:00pm

Optogenetics: Manipulating Memories With Light

Look into the light- unless you want to keep your memories. UC Davis psychologists have used light to erase specific memories in mice and proved a basic hypothesis fpr how different parts of the brain work together to retrieve episodic memories. Optogenet ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 10 2014 - 8:00am

Magic Magnetic Mirrors Reflect Light In Uncanny Ways

In Lewis Carroll's  Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, the 1871 sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the title character finds a mirror that behaves in a surprising and unexpected way.   Now bizarre mirrors have become ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 17 2014 - 8:00am

New Tractor Beam Can Repel And Attract

A long-distance optical tractor beam can move tiny particles- one fifth of a millimeter in diameter- a distance of up to 20 centimeters, which is almost 100 times further than previous experiments. The hollow laser beam is bright around the edges and dark ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 20 2014 - 4:45pm

Researchers Created A Laser Bullet To See What It Would Look Like- And Here It Is

Laser-powered weapons have been a staple of science-fiction movies for so long we think we know what they would look like, but we really don't. Researchers at the Laser Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences a ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 22 2014 - 11:51am

Microwave Electron Guns: A Field-Emission Plug-And-Play Solution

On a quest to design an alternative to the complex approaches currently used to produce electrons within microwave electron guns, a team of researchers have demonstrated a plug-and-play solution capable of operating in a high-electric-field environment wi ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 19 2014 - 9:30am

The Walls Can Talk: New Technique Extracts Audio From Video

A new optical technique by which audio information can be extracted from high-speed video recordings, by using an image-matching process based on vibration from sound waves. The technique is based on the fact that sound waves are mechanical waves that cau ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2014 - 1:42pm

Weighing Trees- Now With Lasers

A terrestrial laser scanning technique that allows the structure of vegetation to be 3D-mapped to the millimeter is more accurate in determining the biomass of trees and carbon stocks in forests than current methods, according to a paper in Methods in Ecol ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2014 - 3:00pm