The word laser usually conjures up an image of a strongly concentrated and continuous light beam. Lasers that produce such light are, in fact, very common and useful. However, science and industry often also require very short and strong pulses of laser light.

These pulses can be used to machine materials or to create high harmonic frequencies up to X-rays, which can help to make extremely fast processes in the attosecond range (a billionth of a billionth of a second) visible.

A team of researchers at ETH Zurich led by Ursula Keller, professor at the Institute for Quantum Electronics,...

A NASA spacecraft is ready to set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.

Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon’s icy crust where an ocean is thought to be sloshing fairly close to the surface. It won’t search for life, but rather determine whether conditions there could support it. Another mission would be needed to flush out any microorganisms lurking there.

“It’s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today—right now,” said program scientist Curt Niebur.

Its massive solar ...

A team of engineers at AI inference technology company BitEnergy AI reports a method to reduce the energy needs of AI applications by 95%. The group has published a paper describing their new technique on the arXiv preprint server.

As AI applications have gone mainstream, their use has risen dramatically, leading to a notable rise in energy needs and costs. LLMs such as ChatGPT require a lot of computing power, which in turn means a lot of electricity is needed to run them.

As just one example, ChatGPT now requires roughly 564MWh daily, or enough to power 18,000 American homes...

When lightning strikes, the electrons come pouring down. In a new study, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, led by an undergraduate student, have discovered a novel connection between weather on Earth and space weather. The team utilized satellite data to reveal that lightning storms on our planet can dislodge particularly high-energy, or “extra-hot,” electrons from the inner radiation belt—a region of space enveloped by charged particles that surround Earth like an inner tube.

The team’s results could help satellites and even astronauts avoid dangerous radiation in space. This is one kind of downpour you don’t want to get caught in, said lead author and undergraduate Max Feinland.

“These particles are the scary ones or what some people call ‘killer electrons,'...