Category Physics

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...

May lead to devices with ‘unmatched’ energy efficiency and memory storage density. University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers, along with a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), have developed a breakthrough process for making spintronic devices that has the potential to become the new industry standard for semiconductors chips that make up computers, smartphones, and many other electronics...

Researchers have shown how energy disappears in quantum turbulence, paving the way for a better understanding of turbulence in scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary.

Dr Samuli Autti from Lancaster University is one of the authors of a new study of quantum wave turbulence together with researchers at Aalto University.

The team’s findings, published in Nature Physics, demonstrate a new understanding of how wave-like motion transfers energy from macroscopic to microscopic length scales, and their results confirm a theoretical prediction about how the energy is dissipated at small scales.

Dr Autti said: “This discovery will become a cornerstone of the physics of large quantum systems.”

Quantum turbulence at large scales – such as turbulence around moving aeropla...