ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• NASA Mars Curiosity rover prepares to study martian soil
• Star discovered racing around black hole at center of our galaxy: Crucial to revealing fabric of space and time
• The Helix Nebula: Bigger in death than life
• More certainty on uncertainty's quantum mechanical role
• Bacterium in a laser trap: Light tube can grab and scan even tiniest of unicellular organisms
• Multi-photon approach in quantum cryptography implemented
• Hi-fi single photons
• Vehicle construction: Tape laying gets closer to series production
• Heat-conducting composites for seawater desalination
• Unforgeable quantum credit cards in sight

NASA Mars Curiosity rover prepares to study martian soil Posted: 04 Oct 2012 12:53 PM PDT NASA's Curiosity rover is in a position on Mars where scientists and engineers can begin preparing the rover to take its first scoop of soil for analysis.

Star discovered racing around black hole at center of our galaxy: Crucial to revealing fabric of space and time Posted: 04 Oct 2012 11:17 AM PDT Astronomers report the discovery of a remarkable star that orbits the enormous black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy in a blistering 11-and-a-half years, the shortest known orbit of any star near this black hole.

The Helix Nebula: Bigger in death than life Posted: 04 Oct 2012 09:18 AM PDT A dying star is refusing to go quietly into the night, as seen in a combined infrared and ultraviolet view from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core.

More certainty on uncertainty's quantum mechanical role Posted: 04 Oct 2012 09:16 AM PDT Researchers are presenting findings that observation need not disturb systems as much as once thought, severing the act of measurement from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Bacterium in a laser trap: Light tube can grab and scan even tiniest of unicellular organisms Posted: 04 Oct 2012 07:40 AM PDT Scientists have constructed an innovative new optical trap that can grab and scan tiny elongated bacteria with the help of a laser. The physicists created a kind of light tube that traps the agile unicellular organisms. Optical tweezers could previously only be used to grab bacteria at one point, not to manipulate their orientation. Researchers have now succeeded in using a quickly moving, focused laser beam to exert an equally distributed force over the entire bacterium, which constantly changes its complex form. At the same time, they were able to record the movements of the trapped bacterium in high-speed three-dimensional images by measuring miniscule deflections of the light particles.

Multi-photon approach in quantum cryptography implemented Posted: 04 Oct 2012 06:35 AM PDT Move over money, a new currency is helping make the world go round. As increasing volumes of data become accessible, transferable and, therefore, actionable, information is the treasure companies want to amass. To protect this wealth, organizations use cryptography, or coded messages, to secure information from "technology robbers." This group of hackers and malware creators increasingly is becoming more sophisticated at breaking encrypted information, leaving everyone and everything, including national security and global commerce, at risk.

Hi-fi single photons Posted: 04 Oct 2012 06:32 AM PDT A trade-off between photon source settings and detector specific requirements allows the generation of high-fidelity single photons. Many quantum technologies-such as cryptography, quantum computing and quantum networks-hinge on the use of single photons. Researchers have now identified the extent to which photon detector characteristics shape the preparation of a photon source designed to reliably generate single photons.

Vehicle construction: Tape laying gets closer to series production Posted: 04 Oct 2012 06:32 AM PDT New approaches are needed for vehicle construction. While vehicles to date have mostly been built using metals such as aluminum and steel, the approaching era of electromobility will require light-weight construction. That means that new materials must be found. Fiber-reinforced plastics offer significant potential. These are fibers that are impregnated with a plastic matrix and are utilized as composite materials. These materials offer a rigidity similar to that of metals.

Heat-conducting composites for seawater desalination Posted: 04 Oct 2012 06:32 AM PDT Drinking water is a scarce commodity – a fact no longer limited to the desert regions of the world. During the hot summer months, drinking water is a valuable commodity in Mediterranean countries such as Spain and Portugal, too. As a result, industrial plants that can desalinate seawater and convert it to drinking water are on the rise.

Unforgeable quantum credit cards in sight Posted: 04 Oct 2012 06:30 AM PDT Physicists have developed a scheme for noise tolerant and yet safely encrypted quantum tokens.

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