The new tiny modulator drives data at higher speeds and lower costs.
Credit: Second Bay Studios/Harvard SEAS

A research team comprising members from City University of Hong Kong (CityU), Harvard University and renowned information technologies laboratory has successfully fabricated a tiny on-chip lithium niobate modulator, an essential component for the optoelectronic industry. The modulator is smaller, more efficient with faster data transmission and costs less. The technology is set to revolutionise the industry.

The electro-optic modulator produced in this breakthrough research is only 1 to 2 cm long and its surface area is about 100 times smaller than traditional ones...

New research shows that ancient Mars likely had ample chemical energy to support the kinds of underground microbial colonies that exist on Earth.
Credit: NASA / JPL

A new study shows evidence that ancient Mars probably had an ample supply of chemical energy for microbes to thrive underground. “We showed, based on basic physics and chemistry calculations, that the ancient Martian subsurface likely had enough dissolved hydrogen to power a global subsurface biosphere,” said Jesse Tarnas, a graduate student at Brown University and lead author of a study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. “Conditions in this habitable zone would have been similar to places on Earth where underground life exists.”

Earth is home to what are known as subsurface lithotrophic microbial ecosystems – Sli...

Sun-like stars rotate differentially, with the equator rotating faster than the higher latitudes. The blue arrows in the figure represent rotation speed. Differential rotation is thought to be an essential ingredient for generating magnetic activity and starspots. Credit: MPI for Solar System Research/MarkGarlick.com

Equators of Sun-like stars rotate up to two and a half times as fast as higher latitudes. Scientists have measured the differential rotation on Sun-like stars for the first time, and their findings challenge current science on how stars rotate. Until now, little was known about the precise rotational patterns of Sun-like stars, only that the equator spins faster than at higher latitudes, similar to the Sun.

Scientists at the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Space Science used observat...

A laser pulse hits a tungsten surface on which iodine atoms have been depositied. Both the tungsten atoms and the iodine atoms lose electrons, which can then be measured.
Credit: TU Wien

Quantum jumps are usually regarded to be instantaneous. However, new measurement methods are so precise that it has now become possible to observe such a process and to measure its duration precisely – for example the famous ‘photoelectric effect’, first described by Albert Einstein.

It was one of the crucial experiments in quantum physics: when light falls on certain materials, electrons are released from the surface. Albert Einstein was the first to explain this phenomenon in 1905, when he spoke of “light quanta” – the smallest units of light that we call photons today.

In tiny fractions of a second, an e...