Optics

Einstein Cross- Microlensing Gets Us A Better Look At The Cosmic Mirage

A team of astronomers from Europe and the US studied the "Einstein Cross", a famous cosmic mirage. This cross-shaped configuration consists of four images of a single very distant source. The multiple images are a result of gravitational lensing ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 13 2008 - 9:55am

Boosting Solar Cells With Nanoparticles

Deriving plentiful electricity from sunlight at a modest cost is a challenge with immense implications for energy, technology, and climate policy. A paper in a special energy issue of Optics Express, describes a relatively new approach to solar cells: laci ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 23 2008 - 9:55pm

Nano Tractor Beam Of Light Traps DNA

Using a beam of light shunted through a tiny silicon channel, researchers have created a nanoscale trap that can stop free floating DNA molecules and nanoparticles in their tracks. By holding the nanoscale material steady while the fluid around it flows fr ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 1 2009 - 7:24pm

Galileo's Telescope Recreated

In 1609, 400 years ago, Galileo revolutionized humankind's understanding of our position in the Universe when he used a telescope for the first time to study the heavens and sketched radical new views of the moon and also discovering the satellites o ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 9 2009 - 1:13am

Picture: Sundog

Picture: Sundog on the right, the Sun on the left. Picture was taken in Finland, Lahti  3.1.2008. Sundogs exist, when there is ice in atmosphere which reflects the Sun light. The phenomenon is not that rare, but usually you do not have camera with you. Th ...

Blog Post - Pasi Hakkarainen - Jan 9 2009 - 1:01pm

Unraveling The Mysteries Of Camouflage

Uniform and mottle patterns are what most people recognize as camouflage and those patterns function by resembling the background.    True background matching is not simple, though, and Roger T. Hanlon and colleagues say they are making one of the first ef ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 15 2009 - 2:58pm

Metamaterials Boost Means Next Generation Cloaking Device

'Cloaking' devices bend electromagnetic waves, such as light, in such a way that it appears as if the cloaked object is not there. In the latest laboratory experiments by Duke researchers, a beam of microwaves aimed through the cloaking device at ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 15 2009 - 4:18pm

Slicing Light For Datastreams Of 640 Gbits/second

Sliced light is how we communicate now. Millions of phone calls and cable television shows per second are dispatched through fibers in the form of digital zeros and ones formed by chopping laser pulses into bits. This slicing and dicing is generally done w ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 2 2009 - 11:59am

Refraction, The Speed Of Light In Beer, And How To Pop A Cap In A Carp

If you haven’t the infinite ammo of the late Hunter S. Thompson or the lightning-fast trigger finger (and impressive spray radius) of a recent Vice President, it actually takes considerable skill to shoot a fish in a barrel (exact difficulty proportional t ...

Article - Garth Sundem - Apr 3 2015 - 5:22pm

Ultrafast Laser Inscription Could Enable A 42-Meter Telescope To See The First Galaxies

Demands on telescope technology are rapidly increasing as astronomers look at fainter and fainter objects in the night sky. The large amount of light collection area required to view very dim objects poses a number of significant engineering problems to fu ...

Article - Chris Rollins - Feb 9 2009 - 6:17pm