Laser emits multi-wavelength light
Semiconductor lasers are usually monocromatic because the electrons stored in energy bands do not emit any photons unless they move out of the semiconductor’s conduction band. Federico Capasso a...
Magnetic resonance sniffs out bad wine
Recent developments in the use of high magnetic fields and pulsed NMR techniques have made it possible to probe the structure of organic compounds as complex as proteins. Imaging machines based on the...
Wet weather on Titan
Planetary physicists hope to use atmospheric data from Titan to provide clues to the behaviour of our own atmosphere. The difficulty with studying Earth’s atmosphere is that it is affected by ex...
Physics fights terrorism
Bill Richardson, head of the DOE, says that Livermore “will provide critical new technologies to counter the threat of weapons of mass destruction [and provide] the FBI with new capabilities tha...
Quasar images confirm potential of virtual telescopes
HALCA was launched by Japanese astronomers in 1997 to detect radio signals at wavelengths that that are difficult to detect from the ground. In addition to conducting their own observations, the HALCA...
Electronics with single atoms
Scheer and colleagues used a scanning tunnelling microscope, a mechanically controlled break junction, and lithography to fabricate various simple electronic circuits. These devices measured the effec...
France cuts back SPOT programme
The French space agency CNES is hoping to follow in the footsteps of NASA’s Discovery mission programme by using smaller, cheaper spacecraft instead of larger, more expensive missions. SPOT Imag...
Amplification of matter waves
Bose-Einstein condensation itself was only observed for the first time in 1995. There has been intense interest in the process ever since because of the unique quantum behaviour displayed by matter in...
Still moving images
When we walk across a room, our eyes automatically adjust to keep objects in focus. The eyeballs swivel in their sockets to compensate for the movement. Professional camera operators use a harness con...
