Retinal TV
The growth of virtual reality has increased demand for more realistic video displays, but existing head-up display helmets are expensive and difficult to use. Gerard de Wit and Joseph Braat at Delft h...
Missiles by day, planets at night
The $40 million Magdalena Ridge Observatory will use optical interferometry to merge light signals from three new telescopes into a single image. Researchers also hope to test new adaptive optics tech...
Organic laser breakthrough
Organic lasers are attractive for optical applications because they are inexpensive to manufacture, can be grown as thin films and have good temperature stability. Results from the Princeton team sugg...
Physicist shares Japan Prize
Leo Esaki, the physicist who is president of the University of Tsukuba, is one of the joint winners of this year's Japan Prize
Replicating objects by laser light
One of the biggest changes in CAD design in the past five years is the creation of models direct from the CAD package using machine controlled tools. Recently, this design process took another leap fo...
Empire strikes back
The US Army Space and Strategic Defense Command has fired its Miracl laser at an American satellite orbiting 260 miles above the Earth. The powerful laser, an offshoot of the Strategic Defence Initiat...
Laser-cooled Nobel prize
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Steve Chu, and Bill Phillips have won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics
Bench-top support
That was the conclusion drawn by John Enderby of Bristol University who gave a presentation on “Experimental physics in the UK: problems and promise” at the British Association‘s sci...
US Star Wars test fails
(Updated 13 Oct)
Laser highlights
The many achievements and uses of the electron have been widely celebrated this year. Photonics has not yet had the impact of electronics, although the interdisciplinary subject of optoelectronics und...
