Category Technology/Electronics

For decades, atomic clocks have been the pinnacle of precision timekeeping, enabling GPS navigation, cutting-edge physics research, and tests of fundamental theories. But researchers at JILA, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with the Technical University of Vienna, are pushing beyond atomic transitions to something potentially even more stable: a nuclear clock.

This clock could revolutionize timekeeping by using a uniquely low-energy transition within the nucleus of a thorium-229 atom. This transition is less sensitive to environmental disturbances than modern atomic clocks and has been proposed for tests of fundamental physics beyond the Standard Model.

This idea isn’t new in Ye’s laboratory...

We all know someone who seems to defy aging—people who look younger than their peers despite being the same age. What’s their secret? Scientists at Osaka University (Japan) may have found a way to quantify this difference...

Commuters in downtown Barcelona have been able to ride the bus for free this week. There’s just one catch: this mini-bus has no one at the wheel.

The bus pulls away from the stop with its passengers on its own, brakes before changing lanes and eases down one of Barcelona’s most fashionable boulevards.

Renault is testing a new driverless mini-bus in Barcelona this week. The autonomous vehicle is running on a 2.2-km (1.3-mile) circular route with four stops in the center of the Spanish city. Adventurous commuters can jump on free of charge.

The French carmaker has teamed up with WeRide...

Quantum holograms using polarized light and metasurfaces enable precise control over entangled holographic information, advancing practical applications in quantum communication and anticounterfeiting technologies

Quantum entanglement is a fundamental phenomenon in nature and one of the most intriguing aspects of quantum mechanics. It describes a correlation between two particles, such that measuring the properties of one instantly reveals those of the other, no matter how far apart they are. This unique property has been harnessed in applications such as quantum computing and quantum communication.

A common method for generating entanglement is through a nonlinear crystal, which produces photon pairs with entangled polarizations via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC)...