Category Physics

Student Erich Nygaard is depicted as a 3-D volumetric image, mimicking the popular Princess Leia hologram. Credit: Dan Smalley Lab

Nature study outlines method to make the images of science fiction. In the original Star Wars film, R2D2 projects an image of Princess Leia in distress. The iconic scene includes the line still famous 40 years later: “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” BYU electrical and computer engineering professor and holography expert Daniel Smalley has long had a goal to create the same type of 3D image projection. In a paper published this week in Nature, Smalley details the method he has developed to do so. “We refer to this colloquially as the Princess Leia project,” Smalley said...

Modulator researchers. Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University

Researchers at Oregon State University have designed and fabricated the world’s smallest electro-optic modulator, which could mean major reductions in energy used by data centers and supercomputers. An electro-optic modulator plays the key role in fiber optic networks. Just as a transistor is a switch for electronic signals, an electro-optic modulator is a switch for optical signals. Optical communication uses light, so the modulator turns on and off the light that sends a stream of binary signals over optical fibers.

The new modulator is 10 times smaller and can potentially be 100X more energy efficient than the best previous devices. It is roughly the size of a bacterium, measuring 0.6 by 8 microns...

Engineered carbon fibers embedded with active nanoparticles (top) can be fabricated into structural materials that are lightweight and flexible (bottom). Credit: UC Riverside

New material creates fuel cell catalysts at a hundredth of the cost. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, describe the development of an inexpensive, efficient catalyst material for a type of fuel cell called a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), which turns the chemical energy of hydrogen into electricity and is among the most promising fuel cell types to power cars and electronics.

The catalyst developed at UCR is made of porous carbon nanofibers embedded with a compound made from a relatively abundant metal such as cobalt, which is more than 100X less expensive than platinum...

Working principle of virtual vortices: intertwined short vortices of opposite directions are emitted to trap and stabilize the particle. Credit: University of Bristol

Acoustic tractor beams use the power of sound to hold particles in mid-air, and unlike magnetic levitation, they can grab most solids or liquids. For the first time University of Bristol engineers have shown it is possible to stably trap objects larger than the wavelength of sound in an acoustic tractor beam. This discovery opens the door to the manipulation of drug capsules or micro-surgical implements within the body. Container-less transportation of delicate larger samples is now also a possibility and could lead to levitating humans.

Researchers previously thought that acoustic tractor beams were fundamentally limited to ...