By Achintya Rao
First images from NASA’s sun observation spacecraft
NASA’s Sun Dynamics Observatory, the first mission of the Living with a Star Program, has sent back the first high-resolution photographs of our sun, Sol. The photographs, with a resolution ten times better than high-definition television, will help scientists study with greater detail the influence the sun has on the earth.
The SDO was launched on 11 February this year and is expected to revolutionise our understanding of the processes of the sun, many of which relate to the sun’s magnetic field. The magnetic field is responsible for coronal mass ejections that cause magnetic storms in the earth’s atmosphere.
New image from the SDO. Image credit: NASA
Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. said, “SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society. This mission will have a huge impact on science, similar to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope on modern astrophysics.”
For more pictures and videos, visit the SDO’s official image and video gallery.
Scientists observe transparency in artificial atom
Scientists working at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute near Tokyo and the University of Loughborough in the UK have successfully observed the phenomenon of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in artificial atoms, made of a superconducting loop.
The phenomenon, so far observed only in atomic gases, requires the atoms to have three energy levels where one specific pair of levels cannot have a transition. In the given artificial atom, the energy levels were the three lowest ones – 1, 2 and 3 – with no transition allowed between levels 1 and 3, reports physicsworld.com.
Scientist Abdufarrukh Abdumalikov and his colleagues then fired “probe” microwaves with energy equal to the transition between levels 1 and 2, inducing oscillations between those levels. Most of the microwaves are reflected as a result of this oscillation. However, when “control” microwaves with an energy corresponding to the transition between levels 2 and 3 were fired, the oscillations due to these microwaves interfered destructively with the first oscillations. This causes the probe light to pass through the “atom”.
The results were published in the pre-print repository arXiv.org. The observation has far-reaching implications for the field of quantum information technology, as the scientists hope the device that could act like a switchable mirror for microwaves may one day operate in optical wavelengths.
Smallest 3D map of world created
A 3D map – so tiny that more than 250 million maps could fit on a sheet of A4 paper – has been developed by IBM scientists from three countries, reports PopSci.com. The results were published in the journals Science and Advanced Materials.
The miniscule map, which measures 22 micrometres by 11 micrometres, was created by scratching at the surface of a polymer substrate using a tiny heated silicon tip. Urs Duerig, one of the scientists on the team, said they realised that, instead of adding material to the existing substrate, it might be possible to create 3D shapes by removing bits of the material.
Smallest lens-less microscope developed
A UCLA assistant professor has used a lens-less imaging technology he developed to create a very small microscope that could be used to monitor diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, reports PhysOrg.com. Aydogan Ozcan, an engineer, had developed the LUCAS (Lens-less Ultra-wide-field Cell Monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging) technology that generates a holographic image using a light-emitting diode (LED) as a light-source and a digital sensor array to record the images.
The design of the microscope, with few movable parts and a large aperture, makes it suitable for use in remote areas with relative ease. It needs to be connected via USB to a smartphone or laptop for power. The computer can analyse the images automatically, making the device user-friendly to non-technicians.
In addition, the tiny microscope that weighs just 46 grammes can be modified to provide density information of the sample being analysed.
Ozcan’s report was published in the journal Lab on a Chip.