Category: Applied Physics

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29 May 1998 | ScienceNOW

Transmuting Light Into X-rays

by Science News Staff

Despite advances in laser technology, one dream remains elusive: a table-top instrument that can pump out a beam of high-intensity, coherent x-rays. Such a device would give researchers Superman-like eyes...

14 April 1998 | ScienceNOW

Making Light Work of Encryption

by Science News Staff

Researchers have developed a way to encode information transmitted by light. The advance, described today at the International Society for Optical Engineering's AeroSense 98 Conference in Orlando, Florida, could lead...

19 March 1998 | ScienceNOW

Magnetic Deep Freeze

by Science News Staff

LOS ANGELES--Refrigerator magnets are best known for holding shopping lists and old postcards onto refrigerator doors. But in a few years, much more powerful magnets could be the key to...

23 February 1998 | ScienceNOW

Secret Rhapsody in Infrared

by Science News Staff

Computers may someday have a new way of transmitting secret information--by scrambling it with chaotic static. In an experimental technique, physicists sent a series of infrared laser pulses through a...

4 February 1998 | ScienceNOW

Harder Than Diamond?

by Science News Staff

The only thing harder than diamond has been the task of coming up with an even tougher material. Despite physicists' predictions that some exotic materials should be harder, researchers have...

21 January 1998 | ScienceNOW

Transistor With a Heart of Gold

by Science News Staff

A new design for a superconducting transistor could revive the dream of circuits that would operate without electrical resistance. Such circuits might run much faster than conventional electronics and fit...

8 January 1998 | ScienceNOW

Little Hoops, Big Dreams

by Science News Staff

Stir a dash of salt together with the right polymer in a glass of solvent and add water. Like magic, the molecules will assemble themselves into a strange new structure--tiny...

6 January 1998 | ScienceNOW

Trapped by Lasers

by Science News Staff

The first scientist to use lasers to trap tiny spheres published his groundbreaking study 27 years ago this month. His research led to the development of "optical tweezers," laser-based devices...

27 October 1997 | ScienceNOW

Like a Laser, Only Better

by Science News Staff

Two research teams have created laserlike beams of light at wavelengths shorter than any laser. The results, reported in last week's Physical Review Letters (PRL) by a Michigan group and...

5 September 1997 | ScienceNOW

Laser in a Ring Senses Earth's Spin

by Science News Staff

In a cave in New Zealand, scientists are tuning up a giant laser gyroscope to keep track of Earth's rotation. The device, a block of glass 1.2 meters on each...

28 August 1997 | ScienceNOW

Nanoparticles Get Wired

by Science News Staff

Scientists have succeeded in the delicate feat of trapping a single metal particle, just 17 nanometers (billionths of meter) wide, and measuring its electrical properties. The handy technique, to be...

25 August 1997 | ScienceNOW

No Soft Serve From This Physicist

by Science News Staff

As top-ranked tennis players begin competing today at the U.S. Open, they bring to the court years of experience and lucrative endorsement contracts, but probably not much training in physics....

20 August 1997 | ScienceNOW

A Groovy Way to Beat Drag

by Science News Staff

Roughing up a surface sounds like an unpromising approach to making it glide more easily though air and water. But sometimes intuition can be completely wrong. In tomorrow's issue of...

17 July 1997 | ScienceNOW

The Chaos of the Fall

by Science News Staff

For centuries, physicists have had no trouble predicting the paths of cannonballs, but figuring out how a feather falls had them stumped. Now, a team of researchers has figured out...

9 July 1997 | ScienceNOW

His Invention Is Still Current

by Science News Staff

Nikola Tesla, a Croatian-American physicist and engineer who pioneered the use of alternating current electricity, was born at the stroke of midnight on this day in 1856. Believing he could...

26 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Accident Clouds U.S. Future on Mir

by Science News Staff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The gash ripped in the Mir space station yesterday may deflate more than just the science module that served as living quarters and laboratory for U.S. astronauts: A delicate...

24 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Swiss Bank On X-Rays

by Science News Staff

VENICE, ITALY--The Swiss government has given the green light to construction of a machine that is expected to produce the world's brightest and most coherent x-ray beam. The Swiss Light...

20 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Radiation Leak at Russian Reactor

by Science News Staff

A burst of radiation has seriously injured a physicist in one of Russia's restricted research cities, some 350 kilometers east of Moscow. The accident took place Tuesday in an underground...

18 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Mellifluous Superfluid

by Science News Staff

It may not sound as pretty as a harp, but a new instrument that picks up on vibrations in liquid helium is setting the laws of quantum mechanics to music....

16 May 1997 | ScienceNOW

A-Bomb Architect Calls for Weapons Freeze

by Science News Staff

A theoretical physicist who helped lead the U.S. effort to develop the atom bomb has launched an appeal for an end to all federal funding for new nuclear weapons. In...

12 May 1997 | ScienceNOW

G7 to Tackle Chernobyl Meltdown Threat

by Science News Staff

The G7 countries and Ukraine have agreed on a plan to reduce the risk of a second explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant's destroyed reactor. The $780 million project,...

22 April 1997 | ScienceNOW

Europe Considers Putting Two Missions on One Rocket

by Science News Staff

PARIS--The European Space Agency (ESA) has come up with an innovative strategy to ease the money problems plaguing its space science program: It plans to combine two astronomy missions by...

24 February 1997 | ScienceNOW

Three Mile Island's Cancer Legacy?

by Science News Staff

A new study suggests that people living near the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979, when it released radioactive gas into the air, may have suffered from a...