New Super lens Technique

Researchers have developed a potentially revolutionary superlens technique that once seemed impossible to see things four times smaller than even the most modern microscopes have seen before.

Known as the ‘diffraction limit’ because the diffraction of light waves at the tiniest levels has prevented microscopes from seeing things smaller than those waves, this barrier once seemed unbreakable.

Many have tried to peer below this optical barrier using a technique that researchers in the field term ‘superlensing,” including making customized lenses out of novel materials. But all have gathered too much light. 

Now, a team of physicists from the University of Sydney says they have discovered a viable path that peeks beyond the diffraction limit by a factor of four times, allowing researchers to see things smaller than ever seen before. And the way they did, it is like nothing anyone else has tried.

“We have now developed a practical way to implement superlensing without a super lens,” said Dr. Alessandro Tuniz from the School of Physics and University of Sydney Nano Institute and the study’s lead author, in a press release announcing the achievement.

To accomplish this feat, the researchers placed their light probe a distance from the sample they wanted to image and collected high-resolution and low-resolution information. 

According to the release, the probe gathered light “at terahertz frequency at millimetre wavelength, in the region of the spectrum between visible and microwave.”  READ MORE...

Manipulating Quantum Light

Albert Einstein's stimulated emission theory has been validated by large amounts of light, but never before by individual photons.

New research offers the ability to manipulate and identify single photons, allowing for the manipulation of quantum light.

Continued development of this technology has the potential to lead to huge advancements in quantum computing.

Scientists stand ready to manipulate quantum light, just as Albert Einstein envisioned in 1916.  Researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Basel successfully managed to manipulate and identify small numbers of interacting photons—packets of light energy. According to the team, this work represents an unprecedented landmark development for quantum technologies.

Stimulated light emission—a theory first proposed by Einstein in 1916 that helps explain how photons can trigger atoms to emit other photons—laid the basis for the invention of the laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). 

It’s long been understood for large numbers of photons, but this new research has allowed scientists to both observe and effect stimulated emission for single photons for the first time. Researchers measured the direct time delay between one photon and a pair of bound photons scattering off a single quantum dot, a type of artificially created atom.  READ MORE...

Manipulating Quantum LIght

Scientists stand ready to manipulate quantum light, just as Albert Einstein envisioned in 1916.

Researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Basel successfully managed to manipulate and identify small numbers of interacting photons—packets of light energy. 

According to the team, this work represents an unprecedented landmark development for quantum technologies.

Stimulated light emission—a theory first proposed by Einstein in 1916 that helps explain how photons can trigger atoms to emit other photons—laid the basis for the invention of the laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). 

It’s long been understood for large numbers of photons, but this new research has allowed scientists to both observe and effect stimulated emission for single photons for the first time. Researchers measured the direct time delay between one photon and a pair of bound photons scattering off a single quantum dot, a type of artificially created atom.

“This opens the door to the manipulation of what we can call ‘quantum light,’” Sahand Mahmoodian, of the University of Sydney School of Physics and joint lead author of a research paper published in Nature Physics, says in a news release. 

“This fundamental science opens the pathway for advances in quantum-enhanced measurement techniques and photonic quantum computing.  READ MORE...

Radio Signals From Milky Way

The radio telescope at the Parkes Observatory at sunset near the town of Parkes, Australia, July 15, 2019.  Stefica Nicol Bikes/Reuters


Mysterious radio waves emanating from the center of the galaxy have astronomers stumped.
Four objects have briefly emitted radio signals that don't resemble any known type of star.
Scientists think each of the four signals could come from a new type of object unknown to astronomy.

Ziteng Wang found a needle in an astronomical haystack.

Wang, a physics PhD student at the University of Sydney, was combing through data from Australia's ASKAP radio telescope in late 2020. His research team had detected 2 million objects with the telescope and was classifying each one.

The computer identified most of the stars, and the stage of life or death they were in. It picked out telltale signs of a pulsar (a rapidly rotating dead star), for example, or a supernova explosion. But one object in the center of our galaxy stumped the computer and the researchers.

The object emitted powerful radio waves throughout 2020 — six signals over nine months. Its irregular pattern and polarized radio emissions didn't look like anything the researchers had seen before.

Even stranger, they couldn't find the object in X-ray, visible, or infrared light. They lost the radio signal, too, despite listening for months with two different radio telescopes.

It reappeared suddenly, about a year after they first detected it, but within a day, it was gone again.  READ MORE...

Space Plane with 3D Printed Engine

A hypersonic 'spaceplane' dubbed Delta Velos (pictured) has been developed in inner Sydney by a team of dedicated engineers

A hypersonic 'spaceplane' is being developed in inner Sydney, but the passengers will be gadgets not people. Named Delta Velos, the sleek vehicle will be powered by four green-hydrogen fuelled scramjet engines to send small satellites into orbit.

Engineer Simon Ringer and his team at the University of Sydney are working with Australian aerospace engineering startup Hypersonix Launch Systems on the zero-emissions spaceplane.

'There will be this Australian-made vehicle which is just a complete leap in technology, travelling at hypersonic speeds,' Professor Ringer told AAP on Thursday.

With the development of sophisticated 3D printers, the so-called additive manufacturing tools, objects have jumped from fun and wacky to industrial and useful.

Additive manufacturing will be used to make flight-critical parts of the spaceplane, which will be powered by the world's first 3D printed scramjet engine.  READ MORE...

Cannibal TOADS

The cane toad (Rhinella marina) is an invasive species in Australia, where its tadpoles have become voracious cannibals. (Image credit: Jason Edwards via Getty Images)

The hatchlings of the invasive cane toad in Australia don't stand a chance against their deadliest predator: cannibal tadpoles who guzzle the hatchlings like they're at an all-you-can-eat buffet. But now, the hatchlings are fighting back.

They're developing faster, reducing the time that hungry tadpoles have to gobble them up, a new study finds.

"If cannibals are looking for you, the less time you can spend as an egg or hatchling, the better," said study lead researcher Jayna DeVore, who did the research as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney and is now a biologist for the Tetiaroa Society, a nonprofit conservation organization in French Polynesia.

Developing quickly, however, has its pitfalls. Compared with typically growing hatchlings, those that grew faster fared worse when they reached the tadpole stage of life, the researchers found. 

So it isn't "worth it to try to defend yourself in this way unless cannibals are definitely coming for you," DeVore told Live Science. READ MORE

The Edge of Chaos

Researchers have demonstrated how to keep a network of nanowires in a state that's right on what's known as the edge of chaos – an achievement that could be used to produce artificial intelligence (AI) that acts much like the human brain does.

The team used varying levels of electricity on a nanowire simulation, finding a balance when the electric signal was too low when the signal was too high. If the signal was too low, the network's outputs weren't complex enough to be useful; if the signal was too high, the outputs were a mess and also useless.

"We found that if you push the signal too slowly the network just does the same thing over and over without learning and developing. If we pushed it too hard and fast, the network becomes erratic and unpredictable," says physicist Joel Hochstetter from the University of Sydney and the study's lead author.

Keeping the simulations on the line between those two extremes produced the optimal results from the network, the scientists report. The findings suggest a variety of brain-like dynamics could eventually be produced using nanowire networks.

Conceptual image of randomly connected switches. (Alon Loeffler)

"Some theories in neuroscience suggest the human mind could operate at this edge of chaos, or what is called the critical state," says physicist Zdenka Kuncic from the University of Sydney in Australia. "Some neuroscientists think it is in this state where we achieve maximal brain performance."

For the simulations, nanowires 10 micrometers long and no thicker than 500 nanometers were arranged randomly on a two-dimensional plane. Human hairs can be up to around 100,000 nanometers wide, for comparison.  TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...