NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has successfully integrated the mission’s deployable aperture cover — a visor-like sunshade that will help prevent unwanted light from entering the telescope — to the outer barrel assembly, another structure designed to shield the telescope from stray light in addition to keeping it at a stable temperature.

Our cells constantly receive DNA damage from factors such as ultraviolet rays, irradiations, toxins and chemicals. For women, that can lead to poor egg quality, which in turn can cause infertility, miscarriage, birth defects or genetic disorders.

Researchers at the University of Missouri are now working to better understand a process that can help repair that damage.

Researchers from the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society and the Institute of Radiation Physics at Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf have developed a novel experimental platform to measure the electric fields of light trapped between two mirrors with a sub-cycle precision. These electro-optic Fabry-Pérot resonators will allow for precise control and observation of light-matter interactions, particularly in the terahertz (THz) spectral range. By developing a tunable hybrid-cavity design, and measuring and modeling its complex sets of allowed modes, the physicists can switch between nodes and maxima of the light waves exactly at the location of interest. The study opens new avenues for exploring quantum electrodynamics and ultrafast control of material properties.

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that negative refraction can be achieved using atomic arrays - without the need for artificially manufactured metamaterials.

Scientists have long sought to control light in ways that appear to defy the laws of Nature.

Negative refraction - a phenomenon where light bends in the opposite direction to its usual behaviour - has captivated researchers for its potential to revolutionise optics, enabling transformative technologies such as superlenses and cloaking devices.

Now, carefully arranged arrays of atoms have brought these possibilities a step closer, achieving negative refraction without the need for artificially manufactured metamaterials.