Latest Resonance Stories

In this month's issue of Physics World, an international group of researchers propose a new technology that could divert vibrations away from load-bearing elements of bridges to avoid catastrophic collapses. Michele Brun, Alexander Movchan, Ian Jones and Ross McPhedran describe a "wave bypass" technique that has many similarities to those being used by researchers looking to create Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaks, which exploit man-made materials known as metamaterials to bend light...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team of researchers has created ionized xenon atoms so positively charged that scientists involved in the study are now saying the existing theories need to be reexamined. Using the world’s most powerful laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, the physicists were able to kick out up to 36 electrons from a xenon...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Scientists at the University of Minnesota have invented a unique microscale optical device that could dramatically increase download speeds while lowering bandwidth costs. The device uses the force generated by light to rapidly turn a mechanical switch of light on and off, a breakthrough that offers advances in computation and signal processing using light instead of electrical current – offering greater performance and lower...

Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley researchers record first direct observations of quantum effects in an optomechanical system A long-time staple of science fiction is the tractor beam, a technology in which light is used to move massive objects – recall the tractor beam in the movie Star Wars that captured the Millennium Falcon and pulled it into the Death Star. While tractor beams of this sort remain science fiction, beams of light today are being used to mechanically manipulate atoms or...

Switching light with light: only 140 photons are needed An optical switch developed at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) spurs the prospective integration of photonics and electronics. What, isn't electronics good enough? Well, nothing travels faster than light, and in the effort to speed up the processing and transmission of information, the combined use of light parcels (photons) along with electricity parcels (electrons) is desirable for developing a workable opto-electronic protocol....

Pitt physicists able to obtain higher-precision measurements with “single-electrons in-diamond” approach Quantum computing—considered the powerhouse of computational tasks—may have applications in areas outside of pure electronics, according to a University of Pittsburgh researcher and his collaborators. Working at the interface of quantum measurement and nanotechnology, Gurudev Dutt, assistant professor in Pitt’s Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Kenneth P. Dietrich...

Physicists in Low Temperature Laboratory of Aalto University have shown how a nanomechanical oscillator can be used for detection and amplification of feeble radio waves or microwaves. A measurement using such a tiny device, resembling a miniaturized guitar string, can be performed with the least possible disturbance. The results were recently published in the most prestigious scientific arena, the British journal Nature. The researchers cooled the nanomechanical oscillator, thousand...

[ Watch the Video ] NASA said on Monday that scientists have discovered lightning-made waves in Earth's atmosphere that leaked into space. The space agency's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite has detected Schumann resonance from space. Schumann resonance happens if waves are just the right wavelength from lightning, combining and increasing in strength to create a repeating...

Showcasing new tools for widespread development of quantum circuits made of mechanical parts, scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a flexible, broadly usable technique for steadily calming the vibrations of an engineered mechanical object down to the quantum "ground state," the lowest possible energy level.Described in a Nature paper posted online July 6, the NIST experiments nearly stop the beating motion of a microscopic...

A microlaser no bigger than a pinprick can accurately detect and count individual viruses, the particles that jumpstart cloud formation or those that contaminate the air we breathe.By Diana Lutz, Washington University in St. LouisA tiny doughnut-shaped laser is the latest marvel of silicon microminiaturization, but instead of manipulating bits it detects very small particles. Small particles play a big "” and largely unnoticed "” role in our everyday lives. Virus particles make us sick,...