/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Last year, we celebrated 50 years since the first papers on fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) were published. It wasn't a wild celebration with masses on the streets, nor was it widely celebrated in universities, but rather a quiet admiration by people in the field for one of the cornerstone methods that has advanced our understanding of many processes at the molecular scale. /news/2025-10-analysis-year-problem-molecular-fluorescence.html Biochemistry Analytical Chemistry Wed, 08 Oct 2025 12:29:13 EDT news679145341 Cornell researchers have built a programmable optical chip that can change the color of light by merging photons, without requiring a new chip for new colors. /news/2025-10-programmable-optical-chip-merges-photons.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 08 Oct 2025 12:00:04 EDT news679143601 An international team of researchers has developed a novel technique to efficiently excite and control highly-confined light-matter waves, known as higher-order hyperbolic phonon polaritons. Their method not only sets new records for the quality and propagation distance of these waves but also uses a sharp boundary to create a form of pseudo-birefringence, sorting and steering the waves by mode into different directions. /news/2025-10-exotic-nanolight.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 07 Oct 2025 12:09:04 EDT news679057741 A team of researchers at the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has created a new breakthrough in photonics: the design of the first optical device that follows the emerging framework of optical thermodynamics. /news/2025-10-device-based-optical-thermodynamics-route.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Optics & Photonics Tue, 07 Oct 2025 10:29:04 EDT news679051742 From computer chips to quantum dots—technological platforms were only made possible thanks to a detailed understanding of the used solid-state materials, such as silicon or more complex semiconductor materials. This understanding also includes being able to identify and control irregularities in the crystal lattice of such materials. /news/2025-10-physicists-quantum-sensor-atomic-lattice.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 07 Oct 2025 10:12:19 EDT news679050735 A few years ago, researchers in Michal Lipson's lab noticed something remarkable. They were working on a project to improve LiDAR, a technology that uses lightwaves to measure distance. The lab was designing high-power chips that could produce brighter beams of light. /news/2025-10-powerful-precise-multi-lasers-chip.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:22:04 EDT news679047721 Ultrathin structures that can bend, focus, or filter light, metasurfaces are reshaping how scientists think about optics. These engineered materials offer precise control over lights behavior, but many conventional designs are held back by inefficiencies. Typically, they rely on local resonances within individual nanostructures, which often leak energy or perform poorly at wide angles. These shortcomings limit their usefulness in areas like sensing, nonlinear optics, and quantum technologies. /news/2025-10-waveguide-physics-metasurfaces-advanced.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:37:03 EDT news678983821 Researchers from the University of Arizona, working with an international team, have captured and controlled quantum uncertainty in real time using ultrafast pulses of light. Their discovery, published in the journal Light: Science & Applications, could lead to more secure communication and the development of ultrafast quantum optics. /news/2025-10-quantum-uncertainty-captured-real-femtosecond.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 06 Oct 2025 13:40:03 EDT news678975908 An international team of researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany), Tohoku University (Japan), and École Polytechnique de Montréal (Canada) has made a significant discovery in semiconductor science by revealing the remarkable spin-related material properties of Germanium-Tin (GeSn) semiconductors. /news/2025-10-harnessing-gesn-semiconductors-tomorrow-quantum.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 06 Oct 2025 12:07:04 EDT news678971222 Spirals of solar wind can spin off larger solar eruptions and disrupt Earth's magnetic field, yet they are too difficult to detect with our current single-location warning system, according to a new study from the University of Michigan. /news/2025-10-solar-probe-space-tornadoes-earlier.html Astronomy Planetary Sciences Mon, 06 Oct 2025 12:00:01 EDT news678707582 Optical lattice clocks are emerging timekeeping devices based on tens of thousands of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice (i.e., a grid of laser light). By oscillating between two distinct quantum states at a particular frequency, these atoms could help to measure time with much higher precision than existing clocks, which would be highly advantageous for the study of various fundamental physical processes and systems. /news/2025-10-strontium-optical-lattice-clock-high.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Optics & Photonics Mon, 06 Oct 2025 11:20:05 EDT news678968109 Recently, the iGaN Laboratory led by Professor Haiding Sun at the School of Microelectronics, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), together with the team of academician Sheng Liu from Wuhan University, has successfully developed the world's first miniaturized ultraviolet (UV) spectrometer chip and realized on-chip spectral imaging. /news/2025-10-miniaturized-ultraviolet-spectrometer-chip.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 06 Oct 2025 09:54:52 EDT news678963281 MIT chemists have designed a new type of fluorescent molecule that they hope could be used for applications such as generating clearer images of tumors. /news/2025-10-chemists-red-fluorescent-dyes-enable.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Mon, 06 Oct 2025 09:10:31 EDT news678960627 Quantum technologies demand perfection: one photon at a time, every time, all with the same energy. Even tiny deviations in the number or energy of photons can derail devices, threatening the performance of quantum computers that someday could make up a quantum internet. /news/2025-10-molecular-coating-noisy-quantum.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 03 Oct 2025 14:00:04 EDT news678637901 A team of scientists from the University of Chicago, the University of California Berkeley, Argonne National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has developed molecular qubits that bridge the gap between light and magnetism—and operate at the same frequencies as telecommunications technology. The advance, published today in Science, establishes a promising new building block for scalable quantum technologies that can integrate seamlessly with existing fiber-optic networks. /news/2025-10-molecular-qubits-communicate-telecom-frequencies.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 02 Oct 2025 17:02:04 EDT news678643321 In the era of instant data exchange and growing risks of cyberattacks, scientists are seeking secure methods of transmitting information. One promising solution is quantum cryptography—a quantum technology that uses single photons to establish encryption keys. /news/2025-10-quantum-key-method-urban-infrastructure.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:37:04 EDT news678631021 Over the past few years, engineers and material scientists have been trying to devise new optical systems in which light particles (i.e., photons) can move freely and in useful ways, irrespective of defects and imperfections. Topological phases, unique states of matter that are not defined by local properties, but by non-local and global features, can enable the robust movement of photons despite material defects. /news/2025-09-floquet-chern-insulators-based-nonlinear.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Thu, 02 Oct 2025 06:30:02 EDT news678368479 A new study reveals that spontaneous emission, a key phenomenon in the interaction between light and atoms, manifests in a new form within a photonic time crystal. This research, led by a KAIST team, not only overturns existing theory but further predicts a novel phenomenon: spontaneous emission excitation. The findings are published in the journal Â鶹ÒùÔºical Review Letters. /news/2025-10-spontaneous-emission-contrary-photonic-crystals.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 01 Oct 2025 12:53:03 EDT news678541981 A new platform developed by Illinois Grainger engineers demonstrates the utility of a ytterbium-171 atom array in quantum networking. Their work represents a key step toward long-distance quantum communication. /news/2025-10-parallel-atom-photon-entanglement-paves.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 01 Oct 2025 11:47:17 EDT news678538033 The future of computing lies in the surprising world of quantum physics, where the rules are much different from the ones that power today's devices. Quantum computers promise to tackle problems too complex for even the fastest supercomputers running on silicon chips. To make this vision real, scientists around the world are searching for new quantum materials with unusual, almost otherworldly properties. /news/2025-10-extreme-pressure-honeycomb-crystal-quantum.html Condensed Matter Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 01 Oct 2025 10:33:04 EDT news678533581 Whether an asteroid is spinning neatly on its axis or tumbling chaotically, and how fast it is doing so, has been shown to be dependent on how frequently it has experienced collisions. The findings, presented at the recent EPSC-DPS2025 Joint Meeting in Helsinki, are based on data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission and provide a means of determining an asteroid's physical properties—information that is vital for successfully deflecting asteroids on a collision course with Earth. /news/2025-09-gaia-mystery-asteroids-probe-interiors.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 30 Sep 2025 13:30:07 EDT news678457179 An international research team led by the University of Bayreuth has discovered a metal that combines electrical conductivity with internal polarity. This enables it to exhibit second harmonic generation—an optical effect typically observed only in non-metals. The finding is of particular interest for sensors and electrical engineering. The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. /news/2025-09-metal-combining-electrical-optical-frequency.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Tue, 30 Sep 2025 13:19:38 EDT news678457171 When you think of telescopes in space, you probably think of the Hubble Space Telescope and its younger, larger sibling, the James Webb Space Telescope. /news/2025-09-tiny-satellite-tracks-star-collisions.html Astronomy Tue, 30 Sep 2025 10:30:06 EDT news678446925 For centuries, people have described strange blue balls of light floating around in marshes, wetlands, and even cemeteries. It's no surprise that these mysterious flames, termed "will-o'-the-wisps" or ignis fatuus, have spurred countless ghostly explanations, but even the more scientific theories were speculative in nature and lacked experimental support. /news/2025-09-microlightning-sought-explanation-wisps.html Earth Sciences Tue, 30 Sep 2025 10:30:01 EDT news678446905 The metamorphosis of butterflies from larvae to pupae to adulthood is a natural wonder. By investigating the developmental processes that occur within the pupa, transforming it into a butterfly, scientists have discovered a new twist in a process that forms an intricate nanostructure responsible for the vibrant green colors of their wings. /news/2025-09-braided-nanostructures-reveal-3d-tapestry.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Tue, 30 Sep 2025 09:53:03 EDT news678444781 Plants lack nerves, yet they can sensitively detect touch from other organisms. In the Venus flytrap, highly sensitive sensory hairs act as tactile sensing organs; when touched twice in quick succession, they initiate the closure cascade that captures prey. However, the molecular identity of the touch sensor has remained unclear. /news/2025-09-venus-flytrap-response-specialized-ion.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 30 Sep 2025 05:00:08 EDT news678377162 The SOAR Telescope, located on Cerro Pachón in Chile, has received a major upgrade with the installation of the SOAR Telescope Echelle Spectrograph (STELES). The long-awaited instrument achieved first light in August with observations of the binary star system Eta Carinae, along with 13 other targets. SOAR is part of U.S. National Science Foundation Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab. /news/2025-09-instrument-soar-remarkable-binary-star.html Astronomy Mon, 29 Sep 2025 12:50:04 EDT news678368907 The terahertz (THz) band of the electromagnetic spectrum holds immense promise for next-generation technologies, including high-speed wireless communication, advanced encryption, and medical imaging. However, manipulating THz waves has long been a technical challenge, since these frequencies interact weakly with most natural materials. /news/2025-09-electrically-tunable-metasurface-real-thz.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 29 Sep 2025 12:21:04 EDT news678367261 In a recent Nature study, scientists have demonstrated an electrically driven perovskite laser using a dual-cavity design, addressing a challenge that has persisted in the field for over a decade. /news/2025-09-scientists-electrically-driven-perovskite-laser.html Optics & Photonics Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:00:01 EDT news678107757 Understanding what happens inside a material when it is hit by ultrashort light pulses is one of the great challenges of matter physics and modern photonics. A new study published in Nature Photonics and led by Politecnico di Milano reveals a hitherto neglected but essential aspect, precisely the contribution of virtual charges, charge carriers that exist only during interaction with light, but which profoundly influence the material's response. /news/2025-09-perspectives-interaction-virtual-material-responses.html Condensed Matter Optics & Photonics Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:01:03 EDT news678106861