Laserati

Modern aircraft have been fabulously successful with rigid wings and rotors. But just imagine the flying machines that would be possible if we could understand and harness the most efficient and acrobatic airfoils in nature: the flexible wings of the bat.

Of all the possible ways of reducing future greenhouse gas emissions, one of the most immediately feasible is carbon dioxide "sequestration," which involves compressing the gas into a liquid and piping it deep underground instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. The Earth has abundant geological formations known as saline aquifers that would seem to be ideal storage bins for such sequestered carbon.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering have discovered a new lead-free material, bismuth samarium ferrite (BSFO), for use in products ranging from biomedical imaging devices to airbag sensors to inkjet printers. If implemented commercially, it could replace a common lead-based material found in these and other electronic devices, keeping lead out of landfills and the ecosystem.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The promise of quantum computing is that it will dramatically outshine traditional computers in tackling certain key problems: searching large databases, factoring large numbers, creating uncrackable codes and simulating the atomic structure of materials.

Imagine yourself swimming in a pool: It's the movement of your arms and legs, not the viscosity of the water, that mostly dictates the speed and direction that you swim.

Oil spills are a major environmental problem because they often occur at sea and in remote, ecologically-sensitive areas where their impact on birds, sea mammals and subsurface life may last for years.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists announced Wednesday the discovery of a previously unidentified nearby source of high-energy cosmic rays. The finding was made with a NASA-funded balloon-borne instrument high over Antarctica.

(PhysOrg.com) -- When atoms in a crystal are struck by laser light, their electrons, excited by the light, typically begin moving back and forth together in a regular pattern, resembling nanoscale soldiers marching in a lockstep formation. But according to a new theory developed by Johns Hopkins researchers, under the right conditions these atoms will rebel against uniformity. Their electrons will begin moving apart and then joining together again repeatedly like lively swing partners on a dance floor.

Our blood, sweat and tears are three precious fluids that can answer lots of questions about the state of our health but testing small amounts of bodily fluids, without contaminating them through contact with solid surfaces or other fluids, is something that fluid mechanics have long pondered.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear.

As the global population continues to grow exponentially, our social connections to one another remain relatively small, as if we're all protagonists in the Kevin Bacon game inspired by "Six Degrees of Separation," a Broadway play and Hollywood feature that were popular in the 1990s.

Researchers created an ultracold plasma with molecules, rather than atoms, which opens a new window into the dynamics of this strange state of matter.

Image: Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 155003 (2004)

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new approach to calibrating quantum mechanical measurement has been developed with particular applications in optics and super-secure quantum communication.

(AP) -- Fixing the world's largest atom smasher will cost at least 25 million francs ($21 million) and may take until early summer, its operator said Monday.

Physicists in the USA and at the London Centre for Nanotechnology have found a way to extend the quantum lifetime of electrons by more than 5,000 per cent, as reported in this week's Physical Review Letters. Electrons exhibit a property called 'spin' and work like tiny magnets which can point up, down or a quantum superposition of both. The state of the spin can be used to store information and so by extending their life the research provides a significant step towards building a usable quantum computer.

(PhysOrg.com) -- "There are a number of different proposals for quantum computing," Andrew Daley tells PhysOrg.com. "These include solid state or semiconductor as well as atomic and molecular systems. We are considering atomic systems, and more specifically alkaline earth metals."

Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have demonstrated experimentally and theoretically that the surface plasmon resonances of metal nanoparticles in a periodic array can have considerably narrower spectral widths than those of isolated metal nanoparticles. Further, as the optical fields are significantly more intense in a periodic array, the method could improve the sensitivity of detecting molecules at low concentrations.

Theoretical physicist Uwe Thumm and his colleagues Feng He and Andreas Becker not only work with some of the smallest molecules in the universe, but they now have found a way to control the motion of the molecules' building blocks, electrons and nuclei.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Soeren Prell and a team of Iowa State University researchers are part of an international research team testing a theory that led to a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for Japanese researchers Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are decoding the mysterious mechanisms behind the high-temperature superconductors that industry hopes will find wide use in next-generation systems for storing, distributing and using electricity. In two new papers on a recently discovered class of high-temperature superconductors, they report that the already complicated relationship between magnetism and superconductivity may be more involved than previously thought, or that a whole new mechanism may drive some types of superconductors.