Category Physics

Discovery promises to help physicists understand nature of universe’s most abundant particle. In a scientific first, a team led by physicists at the University of California, Irvine has detected neutrinos created by a particle collider. The discovery promises to deepen scientists’ understanding of the subatomic particles, which were first spotted in 1956 and play a key role in the process that makes stars burn.

The work could also shed light on cosmic neutrinos that travel large distances and collide with the Earth, providing a window on distant parts of the universe.

It’s the latest result from the For...

Physicists at Delft University of Technology have built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision—for example, underwater or for medical imaging.

Because the technology uses sound vibrations instead of light, it is useful for high-precision position measurements in opaque materials. The instrument could lead to new techniques to monitor the Earth’s climate and human health. The work is now published in Nature Communications.

Simple and low-power technolog...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, can help humans to tackle a variety of real-world problems; for instance, assisting them during military operations and search and rescue missions, delivering packages or exploring environments that are difficult to access. Conventional UAV designs, however, can have some shortcomings that limit their use in particular settings.

For instance, some UAVs might be unable to land on uneven terrains or pass through particularly narrow gaps, while others might consume too much power or only operate for short amounts of time. This makes them difficult to apply to more complex missions that require reliably moving in changing or unfavorable landscapes.

Researchers at Zhejiang University have recently developed a new unmanned, wheele...

In a major breakthrough in the fields of nanophotonics and ultrafast optics, a Sandia National Laboratories research team has demonstrated the ability to dynamically steer light pulses from conventional, so-called incoherent light sources.

This ability to control light using a semiconductor device could allow low-power, relatively inexpensive sources like LEDs or flashlight bulbs to replace more powerful laser beams in new technologies such as holograms, remote sensing, self-driving cars an...