photonics
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NASA’s Solar Sail Makes First Contact From Space Before Stretching Its Enormous Wings
Nearly a week after launching to space, a microwave-sized cubesat phoned home for the first time as it prepares to embark on its mission of sailing through low Earth orbit. NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) contacted ground operators on Tuesday at 2:30 a.m. ET as it passed over the ground hub located at…
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Why Are There so Many Lasers in James Bond Movies?
Half the appeal of James Bond movies are the action sequences — dramatic gunfights, daring car chases, the final showdowns that dismantle the villain’s masterfully laid plans for world domination at the last minute. The other half are the gadgets — watches that deploy circular saws, Aston Martins with machine guns behind the headlights, and…
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Researchers Create Free-Floating Animated Holograms That Bring Us One Step Closer to Star Trek’s Holodecks
Back in 2018, researchers from Brigham Young University demonstrated a device called an Optical Trap Display that used lasers to create free-floating holographic images that don’t need a display. That same team is now demonstrating a new technique that allows those holographic images to be animated: goodbye TVs, hello holodecks.
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Two Experiments Show Fourth Spatial Dimension Effect
To the best of our knowledge, we humans can only experience this world in three spatial dimensions (plus one time dimension): up and down, left and right, and forward and backward. But in two physics labs, scientists have found a way to represent a fourth spatial dimension.