Category Physics

The next generation of optical fiber could be a step closer as a new study has shown that fibers with a hollowed out center, created in Southampton, could reduce loss of power currently experienced in standard glass fibers.

The COVID-19 crisis has seen people all over the world rapidly move their work and social lives online and communities have never relied on the internet more. The ever-increasing number of Zoom calls and webinars has highlighted the need to keep advancing the technology that has made this possible.

For over 50 years, optical fibers made of silica glass have been the transmission med...

Going beyond the anti-laser may enable long-range wireless power transfer. Charging a smartphone wirelessly nowadays is not a big deal. You have to put your smartphone on a charging pad. But usable long-range wireless power transfer, like from one room to another or even across the building, is still in progress.

Most of the development methods involve focusing narrow beams of energy and aiming them at their intended target. These methods have had some success but are, so far, not very efficient. And having focused electromagnetic beams flying around through the air is unsettling.

Scientists from the University of Maryland (UMD), in collaboration with a colleague at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, have developed an improved technique for wireless power transfer...

The quantum sensing abilities of nanodiamonds can be used to improve the sensitivity of paper-based diagnostic tests, potentially allowing for earlier detection of diseases such as HIV, according to a study led by UCL researchers in the i-sense McKendry group.

Paper-based lateral flow tests work the same way as a pregnancy test in that a strip of paper is soaked in a fluid sample and a change in colour — or fluorescent signal — indicates a positive result and the detection of virus proteins or DNA...

The CNO energy-production mechanism in the universe is detected. An international team of about 100 scientists of the Borexino Collaboration, including particle physicist Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, report in Nature this week detection of neutrinos from the sun, directly revealing for the first time that the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) fusion-cycle is at work in our sun.

The CNO cycle is the dominant energy source powering stars heavier than the sun, but it had so far never been directly detected in any star, Pocar explains.

For much of their life, stars get energy by fusing hydrogen into helium, he adds. In stars like our sun or lighter, this mostly happens through the ‘proton-proton’ chains...