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By combining advanced laser technologies in a new way, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have generated microwave signals that are more pure and stable than those from conventional electronic sources. The apparatus could improve signal stability and resolution in radar, communications and navigation systems, and certain types of atomic clocks.

Physicists working at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Konstanz in Germany have developed a breakthrough in the use of diamond in quantum physics, marking an important step toward quantum computing. The results are reported in this week's online edition of Nature Physics.

The German Federal Ministry of Health has awarded more than one million euros in research and development funding for the efficient production of an important cancer diagnostic agent at the research neutron source FRM II. In a 2009 feasibility study, the Technische Universitaet Muenchen demonstrated that due to the high neutron flux the neutron source in Garching can produce about half of the European demand of the radioisotope molybdenum-99.

(PhysOrg.com) -- When a meteor impacts a planet or a moon, it always stops at a relatively shallow depth, even when impacting at high speeds.

Every Friday afternoon for several years in the 1970s, a group of underemployed quantum physicists met at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, in Northern California, to talk about a subject so peculiar it was rarely discussed in mainstream science: entanglement. Did subatomic particles influence each other from a distance? What were the implications?

In a paper published in Nature Photonics, U of T Engineering researchers report a new solar cell that may pave the way to inexpensive coatings that efficiently convert the sun's rays to electricity.

Scientists of the MINOS experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (June 24) the results from a search for a rare phenomenon, the transformation of muon neutrinos into electron neutrinos. The result is consistent with and significantly constrains a measurement reported 10 days ago by the Japanese T2K experiment, which announced an indication of this type of transformation.

The quantum mechanical entanglement is at the heart of the famous quantum teleportation experiment and was referred to by Albert Einstein as "spooky action at a distance". A team of researchers led by Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences used a system which does not allow for entanglement, and still found results which cannot be interpreted classically

Professor Jeremy O'Brien, Director of the University of Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics, and his Japanese colleagues have demonstrated a quantum logic gate acting on four particles of light -- photons. The researchers believe their device could provide important routes to new quantum technologies, including secure communication, precision measurement, and ultimately a quantum computer -- a powerful type of computer that uses quantum bits (qubits) rather than the conventional bits used in today's computers.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Although human vision is capable of perceiving objects in three dimensions (3D), we spend much of our day looking at two-dimensional screens. The latest televisions and monitors can trick us into perceiving depth, by presenting different images to our left and right eyes, but they require special-purpose glasses, or specialized large-area lenses applied directly to the screen.

Astronomers’ research on celestial bodies may have an impact on the human body. Ohio State University astronomers are working with medical physicists and radiation oncologists to develop a potential new radiation treatment – one that is intended to be tougher on tumors, but gentler on healthy tissue.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The eye of the peacock mantis shrimp has led an international team of researchers to develop a two-part waveplate that could improve CD, DVD, blu-ray and holographic technology, creating even higher definition and larger storage density.

Controlling a boiling plasma at several million degrees Celsius – that's the challenge of nuclear fusion, our great energy hope for the future. EPFL's Plasma Physics Research Center (CRPP) has just published two scientific articles that advance the state of knowledge in the domain.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The rule that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, c, is one of the most fundamental laws of nature. But since this speed limit has only been experimentally demonstrated for information carried by large groups of photons, physicists have recently speculated as to whether single photons and the information carried by them may be able to exceed the speed of light. In a new study, physicists have performed the difficult task of producing single photons with controllable waveforms, and have shown that single photons also obey the speed limit c.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The simplest, most sensible "Big Bang" universe, theoretical physicists believe, would be one in which equal numbers of particles and antiparticles are formed in pairs. As the universe cools, most of these particles would encounter their antiparticles, and they would annihilate.