Tag Archives: second

Flawed Diamonds Promise Sensory Perfection

Berkeley Lab researchers and their colleagues extend electron spin in diamond for incredibly tiny magnetic detectors

From brain to heart to stomach, the bodies of humans and animals generate weak magnetic fields that a supersensitive detector could use to pinpoint illnesses, trace drugs – and maybe even read minds. Sensors no bigger than a thumbnail could map gas deposits underground, analyze chemicals, and pinpoint explosives that hide from other probes.

Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley, working with colleagues from Harvard University, have improved the performance of one of the most potent possible sensors of magnetic fields on the nanoscale – a diamond defect no bigger than a pair of atoms, called a nitrogen vacancy (NV) center. (more…)

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Supercomputer Helps Planck Mission Expose Ancient Light

Like archeologists carefully digging for fossils, scientists with the Planck mission are sifting through cosmic clutter to find the most ancient light in the universe.

The Planck space telescope has created the most precise sky map ever made of the oldest light known, harking back to the dawn of time. This light, called the cosmic microwave background, has traveled 13.8 billion years to reach us. It is so faint that Planck observes every point on the sky an average of 1,000 times to pick up its glow. (more…)

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Freezing Electrons in Flight

Using the world’s fastest laser pulses, which can freeze the ultrafast motion of electrons and atoms, UA physicists have caught the action of molecules breaking apart and electrons getting knocked out of atoms. Their research helps us better understand molecular processes and ultimately be able to control them in many possible applications.

In 1878, a now iconic series of photographs instantly solved a long-standing mystery: Does a galloping horse touch the ground at all times? (It doesn’t.) The images of Eadweard Muybridge taken alongside a racetrack marked the beginning of high-speed photography.

Approximately 134 years later, researchers in the University of Arizona department of physics have solved a similar mystery, one in which super-excited oxygen molecules have replaced the horse, and ultrafast, high-energy laser flashes have replaced Muybridge’s photo emulsion plates. (more…)

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Experience The Magic of The Theatre!

The theatrical history of London’s West End stretches more than three and a half centuries. The first theatre in this area of London, the Theatre Royal opened in 1663 and housed small productions until it was destroyed by fire some years later. While still mainly a pastime of the aristocracy, appreciation for theatre was widespread. Productions occurred in courtyards of public houses, in churches and in small parks for all to enjoy.

In 1843 the passage of the Theatres Act allowed for more theatres to be established in the West End. Several of the venues you pass on the street in what the locals affectionately call “Theatreland” today were part of this movement. (more…)

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