Tag Archive for 'Polarization'

Horse coats with patterns photographed in situ: (A) color photographs of the check, random check, black triangle, white triangle, gray and bark coat patterns; (B) polarization images of a bare horse (top), and black triangle (middle) and white triangle (bottom) coats; images on the left are monochrome photographs viewed through horizontally oriented polarizing filter; images on the right are false-colored according to the right-most scale to represent degree of polarization. Image credit: Caro et al., doi: 10.1242/jeb.244778.

New Research Reveals How Zebra Stripes Deter Horseflies

Feb 21, 2023 by News Staff

Stripes deter tabanid horseflies from landing on zebras and, while several mechanisms have been proposed, these hypotheses have yet to be tested satisfactorily....

The STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) acts like a giant 3D digital camera to track particles emerging from particle collisions at the center of the detector. Image credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory.

New Method Lets Physicists ‘See’ Details inside Atomic Nuclei

Jan 4, 2023 by News Staff

The novel method, developed by nuclear physicists at the STAR detector of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), relies on particles of light that...

This illustration shows the IXPE spacecraft (right) observing the blazar Markarian 501 (left). A blazar is a black hole surrounded by a disk of gas and dust with a bright jet of high-energy particles pointed toward Earth. The inset illustration shows high-energy particles in the jet (blue). When the particles hit the shock wave, depicted as a white bar, the particles become energized and emit X-rays as they accelerate. Moving away from the shock, they emit lower-energy light: first visible, then infrared, and radio waves. Farther from the shock, the magnetic field lines are more chaotic, causing more turbulence in the particle stream. Image credit: NASA / Pablo Garcia.

IXPE Spacecraft Examines Particle Acceleration in Blazar Jets

Nov 24, 2022 by News Staff

Blazars are active galactic nuclei with jets of magnetized plasma that point nearly along the line of sight. Most of the light from these extremely luminous...

An artist’s impression of a magnetar. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / S. Wiessinger.

Distant Magnetar Has Solid Surface with No Atmosphere

Nov 4, 2022 by News Staff

Magnetars are neutron stars with ultra-strong magnetic fields, which can be observed in X-rays. Polarization measurements could provide information on...

This composite image shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, a structure resulting from the explosion of a star in the constellation of Cassiopeia. The blues represent data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the turquoise is from IXPE, and the gold is courtesy of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA / CXC / SAO / NASA / MSFC / Vink et al. / STScI.

IXPE Maps Polarized X-Rays from Cassiopeia A

Oct 18, 2022 by News Staff

Cassiopeia A is a remnant that blew up as a supernova approximately 11,000 years ago. This composite image shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, a...

A section of the Large Magellanic Cloud, captured under normal conditions by SARAO’s MeerKAT radio telescope. It is detecting all radio light, and PSR J0523-7125 looks like just another source of radio light. Image credit: Yuanming Wang.

ASKAP Radio Telescope Discovers New Extragalactic Pulsar

May 3, 2022 by News Staff

PSR J0523-7125, a highly circularly polarized, variable, steep-spectrum pulsar located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, is the brightest extragalactic pulsar...

VLA image of the Messier 87 radio jet, made at multiple radio frequencies. The jet seen in this image is about 8,000 light-years long. This image clearly shows the corkscrew-like helical structure in the inner part of the jet, which originates at the bright spot at the left, at the core of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole resides. Image credit: Sophia Dagnello / NRAO / AUI / NSF / Pasetto et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac3a88.

Astronomers Spot Double-Helix Structure in Messier 87

Dec 8, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array have captured unprecedented high-fidelity radio images of a jet of material propelled from the...

Illustrated map of Milky Way Galaxy shown with the position and size of proposed filaments; inset shows a more detailed view of the Local environments, and the position of Local Bubble and various nearby dust clouds. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, SSC & Caltech / J. West.

Solar System May Be Surrounded by Tunnel-Like Magnetic Structure, Astronomers Say

Oct 19, 2021 by News Staff

The North Polar Spur and the Fan Region are two bright, large-scale radio structures that are seen on opposite sides of the sky. According to new research,...

Schematic representation of the key steps of the teleportation protocol and its verification: (1) realization of an EPR source: the Stokes scattering of a pair of nanobeams results in an entangled state between the photon polarization state and the phonon population state in the nanobeams; (2) an arbitrary input state is encoded in the polarization basis of a weak coherent state; (3) a BSM of the polarization teleports the input state onto the joint mechanical memory state; (4) a short anti-Stokes pulse maps the teleported state (ψout) back onto the photon polarization for verification. Image credit: Fiaschi et al., doi: 10.1038/s41566-021-00866-z.

Scientists Demonstrate Optomechanical Quantum Teleportation

Oct 14, 2021 by News Staff

Quantum teleportation of an unknown input state from an outside source onto a quantum node is considered one of the key components of long-distance quantum...

An artist’s impression of the ASKAP J173608.2-321635 source. Image credit: Sebastian Zentilomo.

Astronomers Find Strange Source of Radio Waves near Milky Way’s Center

Oct 12, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using CSIRO’s ASKAP and South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s MeerKAT radio telescopes have discovered and characterized ASKAP J173608.2-321635,...

This EHT image shows the polarized view of the black hole in Messier 87. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

EHT Captures Polarized-Light Image of Messier 87’s Supermassive Black Hole

Mar 24, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes (ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-m telescope,...

As the CMB light (left image) travels through the Universe until observed on Earth (right image), the direction in which the electromagnetic wave oscillates (orange line) is rotated by the angle β; the rotation could be caused by dark matter or dark energy interacting with the CMB light, which changes the patterns of polarization (black lines inside the images); the red and blue regions in the images show hot and cold regions of the CMB, respectively. Image credit: Y. Minami / KEK.

Astrophysicists Find Hints of Beyond-Standard-Model Physics in Universe’s Oldest Light

Nov 30, 2020 by News Staff

Using the polarization data from ESA’s Planck satellite, a mission that have studied the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest light in the Universe,...

An artist’s impression of BDR J1750+3809. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar / ASTRON.

LOFAR Radio Telescope Directly Detects New Brown Dwarf

Nov 9, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope have discovered a new brown dwarf, a substellar object not quite massive enough to fuse...

Metasurface laser produces super-chiral light with orbital angular momentum up to 100. Image credit: University of the Witwatersrand.

Newly-Developed Metasurface-Enhanced Laser Emits Super-Chiral Light

Apr 28, 2020 by News Staff

A team of scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand, Harvard University and the National University of Singapore has come up with a new metasurface-enhanced...

An artist’s impression of the GRB 190114C jet over time, and the small patches of magnetic fields. Image credit: Laskar et al.

Astronomers Capture First Polarized Radio Signal from Gamma-Ray Burst

Jun 21, 2019 by News Staff

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions in the Universe, beaming out mighty jets which travel through space at 0.99 times the speed of...

The globally distributed dishes of the European VLBI Network are linked with each other and the 305-m William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Together they have localized FRB121102’s exact position within its host galaxy. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar, www.artsource.nl.

Fast Radio Burst Source Linked to Extreme Magnetic Environment

Jan 11, 2018 by News Staff

Using the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, astronomers have gained new insight into the extreme home of...

An artist’s impression of an accretion disk around a black hole. Image credit: XMM-Newton / ESA / NASA.

X-Rays from Accretion Disks around Rotating Black Holes Can Act as Carriers of Quantum Information

Nov 17, 2017 by News Staff

In a paper published in the journal New Astronomy, theoretical physicist Ovidiu Racorean suggests that X-ray photons emitted by accretion disks around...

A metasurface uses circularly polarized light to generate and control new and complex states of light, such swirling vortices of light. Image credit: Second Bay Studio / Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Newly Developed Metasurface Generates Structured Light Beams

Nov 9, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers has developed a new tool that can produce complex states of light. The research appears in the journal Science. A metasurface uses...

Regulus. Image credit: DSS / Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD.

Astronomers Detect Polarized Light from Regulus

Sep 18, 2017 by News Staff

Nearly five decades after it was first predicted that rapidly rotating hot stars would emit polarized light, astronomers have succeeded in observing the...

Numerically calculated and experimentally observed optical polarization Möbius strips. Image credit: Thomas Bauer et al, 10.1126/science.1260635.

Physicists Create Möbius Strips out of Light

Jan 30, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of physicists, led by Dr Thomas Bauer from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and the Friedrich-Alexander-University...