Optics

Gravitational Lensing, A Cosmic Eye And Some New Light On Galaxy Formation

LBG J2135-0102 (also known as the "Cosmic Eye" due to its morphological similarity to the Egyptian "Eye of Horus") was discovered from a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image in an effort to survey high redshift galaxy clusters. This gala ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 11 2008 - 7:14pm

Novel Solid-State Laser Design Based On Synthetic Diamond From Element Six Opens Up New Applications

ASCOT, England, October 14 /PRNewswire/-- Researchers at the Institute of Photonics, University of Strathclyde, have started work on a 3.5 year project to develop a novel solid-state laser design incorporating CVD (chemical vapour deposition) diamond manu ...

Article - Anna Ohlden - Oct 14 2008 - 3:30am

Silicon Cores Advance Fiber Optic Technology

Optical science has taken another leap forward. Increasing amounts of technologies rely on the usage of optic fibers for transmission of phone calls, TV broadcasts, and the internet. Optical fibers allows a higher bandwidth which means faster downloads, an ...

Article - Erin Richards - Dec 15 2008 - 1:35am

Photonics Emerges From The Shadows

The name has been around for four decades, but only now is a recognizable photonics community emerging in Europe. A European study has documented a fast-growing sector of more than 2100 companies and 700 research laboratories. In 2005, Europe’s photonics s ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 16 2008 - 2:06pm

May The Photon Force Be With You: Harnessing Light To Drive Nanomachines

Science fiction writers have long envisioned sailing a spacecraft by the optical force of the sun’s light. But, the forces of sunlight are too weak to fill even the oversized sails that have been tried. Now a team led by researchers at the Yale School of E ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 26 2008 - 10:30am

Ultra Wideband Radio On A Beam Of Light

Multiple high-definition videos and other data-rich services may soon stream through homes, offices, ships and planes via new hybrid optical/ultra-wideband-radio systems developed by European researchers. Moshe Ran, Coordinator of the EU-funded project, UR ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 23 2008 - 2:13pm

Be More Visible By Learning About Invisibility

Research into the development of invisibility devices has spurred two physicists’ thought on the behaviour of light to overcome the seemingly intractable problem of optical singularities which could soon lead to the manufacturing of a perfect cat’s eye. A ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 28 2008 - 4:30am

Research Into Metamaterials May Pave The Road To Invisibility

It's an idea that has pervaded a huge amount of science fiction and fantasy stories, from Star Trek to Harry Potter, and there are few of us that would deny a couple of hours with one- but is an invisibility cloak actually possible? Although the light ...

Article - Chris Rollins - Dec 2 2008 - 3:52pm

Holograms, And Lasers And Nanoassembly, O My!

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a technique that uses a laser and holograms to precisely position numerous tiny particles within seconds, representing a potential new tool to analyze biological samples or create devices using nanoassembly. ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2010 - 6:54pm

Optical Lattice Stores Quantum Information For A 7-Millisecond Eternity

It may seem, at least to those of us who have been alive long enough to witness any of the advances in semiconductor technology, that computer power has been improving at breakneck speed. A quantum computer, however- a theoretical type of computer that uti ...

Article - Chris Rollins - Dec 9 2008 - 7:07pm