Astronomers have published the first images from the new Rubin Observatory in Chile. They were taken by the world's largest digital camera, which has been put into service there. The camera has a resolution of 3,200 megapixels. At first glance, the images hardly seem to differ from those of other telescopes. But the photos in full resolution demonstrate the true strength of the gigantic camera. 

Every year on May 16, the world celebrates the International Day of Light to commemorate a milestone in science and technology - the birth of the first laser in 1960. On this day, exactly 65 years ago, physicist Theodore H. Maiman succeeded in generating coherent light for the first time, thus winning the international race to determine the feasibility of this project.

The most detailed map of the landscape under the Antarctic ice sheet to date was created by a team of international scientists led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and with the participation of the Alfred Wegener Institute. The map, called “Bedmap3”, covers more than six decades of survey data and imagery collected by aircraft, satellites, ships and dogsleds. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Antarctica was terra incognita. Until then, no one had managed to penetrate the interior of the white continent. Massive pack ice and extreme weather conditions thwarted any advance. But that was about to change. In 1901, the “Antarctic Year” was proclaimed. This marked the start of a legendary race. Three expeditions set off for the South Polar region: a British one led by Robert Falcon Scott, a Swedish one led by Otto Nordenskjöld and a German one led by geographer and geophysicist Erich von Drygalski.

What do you think? Is this text my own work or was artificial intelligence used? It’s hard to say. I have asked myself this question in many of the articles I have read recently. But rarely have I found a clear answer. The fact is that the advance of artificial intelligence in every area of our lives is unstoppable. Be it in journalism, art, or science. Teachers, educators, and university lecturers are faced with the dilemma of recognizing AI in examinations and submitted work and evaluating it accordingly. Especially in work that claims to have generated new knowledge, this can be a challenging search for clues.

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two scientists who have been working on the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) since the 1980s: John Hopfield from Princeton University and Geoffrey Hinton from the University of Toronto. Their research forms the foundation for machines to learn today and assist us in many areas, from language models like ChatGPT to medical applications.

After the successful live premiere weekend on June 29 and 30, 2024 at the “Münchner Wissenschaftstage / forscha” and the “Festival der Zukunft” at the Deutsches Museum, the third episode of the German language radio play " "Alice im Quantenland" is now available for listening on all common streaming portals. This time, Alice, Schrödinger and Rabbit go to the quantum funfair, where there are once again some unusual things to discover and experience.

Goethe's Dr Faust, in search of the nature of our existence, had desperately turned away from science to devote himself to magic and the devil, " that he may detect the inmost force, which binds the world, and guides its course." Almost 60 years ago, however, it was not the devil nor magic that was involved, but a number of clever minds. In three publications that appeared simultaneously in the summer of 1964 a total of six scientists published their theories as to why some elementary particles have mass and thus provided an explanation as to what holds our world together. According to this theory, certain initially massless elementary particles, the so-called gauge bosons, derive their mass from their interaction with a background field that pervades the entire universe. However, this field cannot be observed directly, so that its existence can only be proven indirectly. The theory of the origin of mass formed a central building block for the standard model of elementary particle physics in use today.

The latest issue of our attoworld magazine “pulse” is now available both as a printed version and online as a PDF.

Humanity originated in Africa. From there, Homo sapiens colonized the entire earth. From Europe and Asia to Australia and the islands of the Pacific. The last large land mass that modern man took possession of during his unprecedented expansion was the two parts of America. 

Fancy a touch of the exotic? Then you should pay a visit to the Munich Botanical Garden until March 17. Because they are fluttering again in the aquatic plant house (House 4 of the show greenhouses): the tropical butterflies. 

Ferenc Krausz received the Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf on Sunday afternoon. The scientist was honored at the Stockholm Concert Hall together with his co-laureates in physics, Pierre Agostini and Anne L'Huillier. The attosecond physics they developed "enables us to answer fundamental questions", it was said at the presentation of the physics laureates.

"Back to the roots" is the motto of the maritime industry. People are once again turning to the wind as a traditional means of propulsion for ships. This is shown by the first drone photos of the "Pyxis Ocean". The freighter has been fitted with two enormous sails. The sails rise high above the deck of the freighter. The wind blows strongly, saving a lot of fuel.

Mars has never been seen in such color before. We have the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft to thank for this view of the Red Planet. Thanks to its four color channels and five panchromatic nadir, stereo and photometric channels, the stereo camera not only displays Mars in three dimensions, but also in color. 

You've never seen the wreck of the Titanic like this before. You can make out the finest details, see the bow in all its dimensions, and get a fascinating picture of the legendary ship that rammed an iceberg in April 1912 and sank in the freezing Atlantic on its maiden voyage.

With „Einstein und das Fußballmatch“("Einstein and the Soccer Match"), the second episode of the German language audio play series „Alice im Quantenland“ ("Alice in Quantum Land") is now available for listening on all popular streaming portals and here on the website! The audio play from the PhotonLab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics is an entertaining educational program aimed at interested children and young people who want to learn more about the phenomena and secrets of quantum physics in a playful and humorous way. This time, the focus is on one of the most famous experiments in physics: the double-slit experiment, packaged in the setting of a quirky and exciting soccer game. But besides Alice and Schrödinger's cat, this time the famous physicist Albert Einstein also has his say, talking to the two of them on the basis of original sound recordings!

State-of-the-art instruments for observing the universe meet ancient camera technology. This unusual image was taken by D. López Calvin and J. C. Muñoz Mateos with a pinhole camera. To do so, the two photographers from the European Southern Observatory ESO exposed the image for about eight months. 

What would the Roman goddess Minerva look like in the 21st century? That's what Berlin-based photographer and science communicator Gesine Born asked herself. In Roman times, Minerva was the goddess of wisdom, tactical warfare, art and shipbuilding, as well as the guardian of knowledge. Her faithful companion was the owl, which in ancient times was a symbol of wisdom.

Sunsets on Mars are amazingly atmospheric. This is shown in a photo taken by NASA's Curiosity rover earlier this year on the Red Planet. As the sun set behind the horizon, its light rays illuminated a cloud bank. 

Snake skin glows in ultraviolet light. Herpetologists use this to find the reptiles in the dark. But it can also be used to conjure up spectacular photos. Irina Petrova Adamatzky managed to do just that when she got the skin of a corn snake in front of her lens in ultraviolet light. Her photo made it to the finals of the Royal Photographic Society's (RPS) Woman Science Photographer of the Year 2023 competition. The Society launched the competition to celebrate the UN General Assembly-initiated "International Day of Women and Girls in Science" on February 10.

What do the world-famous physicist Albert Einstein, Queen singer Freddie Mercury and cult director Rainer Werner Fassbinder have in common? At first glance, little. But what they all share is that they lived for a time in Munich's trendy Glockenbach district. Today, on Holzplatz in Isarvorstadt, three larger-than-life likenesses commemorate the presence of these various exceptional talents. These portraits, rendered as lifelike graffiti, are attached to an abandoned, historically protected urinal dating from around 1900. Here, the grandees are among themselves and give each other the runaround. It would be hard to portray the highly praised idols in a more popular way than in this everyday street context.

When night fell, it didn't really get dark in the Roman cities of antiquity. Streets, alleys and forums were lit by torches. Lamps were lit in the houses and luxurious villas. Life continued to pulsate, people traded, visited temples or partied debauched until deep into the night. The Romans knew how to make light. To do this, they came up with quite artistic lighting. There seemed to be hardly any limits to their creativity. How do we know this so well? Well, the knowledge about the ancient lighting techniques comes not least from the still ongoing excavations of the cities of Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum on the Gulf of Naples, which were buried by the volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Welcome to the latest issue of “pulse”, the magazine of the attoworld team. As you browse through this issue, one thing will be sure to strike you: The range of topics covered in the articles has reached an enormous breadth.

Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger are the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize was awarded for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.

The school laboratory PhotonLab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics publishes the pilot episode of the German-language audio play series "Alice in Quantum Land". The series is aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 12 as well as their parents. It provides first insights into the fascinating world of quantum physics in a playful and entertaining way, with plenty of puzzling adventures.

Breathing without gills. That is actually not possible under water. But now scientists at the Faculty of Biology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich have created tadpoles without gills that produce vital oxygen through photosynthesis. Idea behind it: If the tadpoles actually produced their oxygen directly in the brain, the neurons could immediately use it to increase their neuronal activity.

Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Manabe are honoured for their fundamental contributions to climate research, Giogio Parisi for his research on disordered materials and random processes. Klaus Hasselmann developed a model that linked together weather and climate, demonstrating how short-term phenomena such as precipitation are related to long-term developments such as ocean currents. This helped to explain why climate models can deliver reliable predictions despite short-term weather fluctuations. His methods have been used to prove that the increased temperature in the atmosphere is due to human emissions of carbon dioxide.

A new comic heroine is conquering the world of science and future technologies. While Batman and Iron Man first have to invent the technologies that give them superpowers and still remain science fiction, it's the other way around for Lasergirl: her superpower really exists. It's science, not fiction. The science comic "Lasergirl" was invented by scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Photonic Technologies. Lasergirl's superpower is light. Her secret weapon is a sophisticated method for quickly detecting life-threatening infections.

Why hydrogen can also challenge sociopsychological theories and why the laser has been switched off for a change.

Like tracer bullets, mysterious flashes of light weave through the night in a forest in North Carolina, for these woods are home to the firefly species Phausis reticulata. Photographer Spencer Black has recorded their flight paths with a long exposure camera set-up. 

Why hard rock and lasers are the best medicine for heartache – an all kinds of other aches and pains.

Munich Kunstareal offers a special open-air attraction. Munich artist Betty Mü and her team play with light and video installations.

Since January 2019, well over 50,000 visitors have had the opportunity to view our exhibition "Lasers | Light | Life" at the ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre. Even though in 2020 the Covid-19 measures led to temporary closures of the show, as well as that the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the laser in May 2020 could only be celebrated virtually, we look back on a very successful project. The exhibition has now been dismantled.

Using a range of fluorescent markers, cell biologist Tagide deCarvalho gives a fascinating view of the insides of a tardigrade or water bear. But even this image does not solve all of the mysteries that surround these enigmatic organisms.

After the five-month closure of the ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre on the Garching research campus due to Covid-19, we are pleased to announce that our exhibition Lasers | Light | Life (on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the development of the laser) will be reopened on 5th August and extended until 1st November 2020! You, your family and friends will now have the opportunity again to learn about the fascinating world of laser technology and research.

The comet Neowise is paying a short visit to our celestial neighborhood over the next fortnight or so. It’s a rare opportunity for watchers of the skies. Neowise won’t be back for around 7000 years.

The laser was invented 60 years ago, which sounds like an eternity to me. I can’t remember that far back, because I wasn’t born yet and nor were my parents. But I work with lasers every day, all day long, so I know almost everything about that time. Well, “everything” books and biographies and articles. I would have loved to have been a lab assistant there in 1960 when American physicist Theodore Maiman demonstrated the first operable laser. He saw with his own eyes that the light beam behaved in exactly the same way that Albert Einstein had described in his theory of stimulated emission more than 40 years earlier!

Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology (MPIO) have investigated how the lighting of bat caves affects the behaviour of the animals and whether the colour of the light plays a role in this. Although red light irritates the small mammals a little less than white light, researchers believe that neither the entrance nor the interior of bat quarters should be illuminated. 

Light can be directed in different directions, usually also back the same way. Physicists from the University of Bonn and the University of Cologne have however succeeded in creating a new one-way street for light. They cool photons down to a Bose-Einstein condensate, which causes the light to collect in optical “valleys” from which it can no longer return. The findings from basic research could also be of interest for the quantum communication of the future. The renowned journal "Science" now presents the results. 

US company Access Laser is hoping to revolutionize dentistry with its DL-500 dental laser. Engineer Mike Adams explains why we won't have to be afraid of going to the dentist any more if this revolution takes hold.

For a long time, the Sun was the only light source that the human race had. Then, around 300,000 years ago, prehistoric man discovered fire as a source of heat and light. But the age of electric lighting only really began in 1879 – the year in which Thomas Alvar Edison "re-invented" the incandescent lamp. Today, every second outdoor luminaire and more than 30 percent of indoor luminaires are equipped with LED modules. Light has become increasingly dynamic.

Since 9th of January 2019, 45,000 visitors have visited the exhibition Lasers | Light | Life. From Science Fiction to HighTech- Photonics at the ESO Supernova on the campus in Garching near Munich. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the invention of the laser and due to the still high popularity, it will now be extended until the end of May 2020.

Members of the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics have explored the initial consequences of the interaction of light with molecules on the surface of nanoscopic aerosols.

Scientists have used precisely tuned pulses of laser light to film the ultrafast rotation of a molecule. The resulting “molecular movie” tracks one and a half revolutions of carbonyl sulphide (OCS) – a rod-shaped molecule consisting of one oxygen, one carbon and one sulphur atom – taking place within 125 trillionths of a second, at a high temporal and spatial resolution. The team headed by DESY’s Jochen Küpper from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) and Arnaud Rouzée from the Max Born Institute in Berlin are presenting their findings in the journal Nature Communications. CFEL is a cooperation of DESY, the Max Planck Society and Universität Hamburg.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School have introduced tiny lasing microparticles into living cells. On excitation with infrared light, each laser emits light of a single wavelength, allowing the team to track the cells individually.

The Planetary Society, an American non-profit organization, has sent a satellite into space, which is the first such craft to be powered by the pressure of solar light quanta alone.

Physicists create plasma for the first time using nanowires and long-wavelength ultrashort pulse laser.

A German-Israeli research team has developed a light-driven system for the generation of electricity in which the electrodes are coated with cyanobacteria. The truly novel feature of the new system is that no supplementary molecules are required for electron transport. The bacterial cells supply all the constituents required to complete the circuit.

We owe our ability to see to the molecule retinal. In the human retina, a light-activated alteration in the structure of retinal triggers the neuronal reaction that is the basis of the visual sense. Bacteria also make use of the reaction to transport protons or ions across the cell membrane, which allows light energy to be stored and later consumed as a biological fuel. In all these cases, the retinal molecule is bound to a specific protein that plays a central role in modulating its response to light, which occurs within 500 femtoseconds. This is one of the fastest reactions in biology (1 fs is equivalent to a millionth of a billionth of a second). Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have now taken snapshots of what happens in this minuscule interval. “No one has previously measured the light-activated response of a retinal-binding protein with such precision,” says Jörg Standfuss, Leader of the Time-Resolved Crystallography Group in the Division of Biology and Chemistry at the PSI.

Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) located in Argentina and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory in Chile to observe the galaxy MACS1149-JD1. They detected weak infrared emission characteristic of ionized oxygen. On its way to Earth, the wavelength of the radiation was stretched by a factor of more than 10, due to the ongoing expansion of the Universe. The magnitude of this redshift reveals that the signal left its source galaxy some 13.3 billion years ago, only 500 million years after the Big Bang. This makes MACS1149-JD1 the most distant stellar source of oxygen yet discovered. Moreover, the evidence for oxygen in its emission spectrum implies that the earliest stars in this galaxy must be significantly older still.

HOW THE LASER CAN SOLVE OUR ENERGY PROBLEMS — AND WHY WE CAN LOOK FORWARD TO WARP DRIVES OFFERING FASTER-THAN-LIGHT TRAVEL.

He was the most famous scientist of our time. Stephen Hawking‘s fame can only be compared to that of the superstars of popular music and sports. On March 14th, the world’s best known cosmologist died in Cambridge at the age of 76.

How superman’s super-senses allowed engineers’ imaginations to take flight — and why Lois Lane can handle more than any laser processing head.

A new study carried out by botanists at Tübingen University shows that plants are able to evaluate the density and height of neighboring vegetation and modify their own growth habits accordingly.

The Munich-based geologist, photographer and tour operator, Florian Becker, has fallen in love with the volcanically active regions/landscapes of the world. For over 20 years his travels have been leading him to active volcanoes like Stromboli, Vulcano and Mount Etna as well as to Iceland. To this day Florian Becker is as fascinated by the orangey red glow of the Stromboli lava flows on pitch black nights and by the northern lights in the deep Icelandic winters as he was when he was a young student with a developing passion for travel. On his website photonworld.de he explains what exactly it is about these special places that fascinate him and how he is able to capture the different qualities of light with his camera.

An international team of researchers based at the universities of Vienna, Duisburg-Essen and Tel Aviv have succeeded in using polarized laser light to rotate a nanorod in a controlled fashion, providing a stable micromechanical oscillator for an electronic timekeeper. With the aid of laser beams, the group led by Stefan Kuhn, James Millen and Markus Arndt of the University of Vienna trapped a silicon nanorad, less than one-thousandth of a millimeter long, in a vacuum. The two counter-propagating light beams effectively keep the rod in suspension, and a third laser is used to rotate the rod by means of pulses of polarized light. Since the rotation is locked to the pulse frequency, the rotation period is sufficiently stable to act as a high-precision clock. Over a period of 4 days, this clock loses no more than a millionth of a second.

Researchers at the Technical University of Vienna have developed the theoretical basis for a cloaking technology which suggests that objects could be concealed from sight at the flick of a switch.

In addition to interplanetary dust, space debris presents a significant threat to working satellites. A team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering has developed a new tool to track this hazardous waste – a fibre laser that determines the positions and trajectories of uncontrolled flying objects.

Researchers at Rice University in Houston have synthesized molecular motors that can kill cancer cells by drilling holes in them when activated by UV light.

Physicists at the University of Ottawa have managed to encode more than single bits of information in light quanta, and have successfully transmitted the encrypted data over a distance of 300 meters in a turbulent urban setting.

The graphical representation of experimental data in the field of attosecond physics has produced a new genre of geometric art, characterized by aesthetically pleasing forms depicted in all the colours of the rainbow. Outlined against an ink-black background, brightly tinted concentric circles and stellar shapes reveal the fascination of the enigmatic quantum world.

In simulations of the conditions that prevailed on the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, teams based at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and the Sorbonne in Paris observed the formation of the canonical ribonucleobases specifically under the influence of lightning – and shock waves that mimic the effects of asteroid impacts.

In the Technical University of Munich’s new TUM-AlgaeTec Center, researchers are exploring the use of microalgae for production of biofuels by exposing the cells to a variety of light levels and temperatures.

Built by Munich geophysicists, the world’s first 3-D ring laser for the detection of rotational ground movements is now in operation.

A team at Washington University in St. Louis has imaged – for the first time in real time -- the effect of a laser pulse propagating in a scattering medium.

Light teased from calcite minerals helps to date humanity’s conquest of the Tibetan Plateau

Some fish send out red light deep in the water. That gives them some advantages in their hard fight for survival and in reproduction.

On the path to faster electronics, the electron flow within a circuit plays a decisive role. Conventional methods such as batteries can be used to generate electron oscillation up to the gigahertz range. Using ultrafast laser pulses, researchers have now managed to move electrons in solid matter at a rate as fast as eight million billion oscillations per second – about one million times faster than previously possible. To measure this extremely fast current flow, the scientists relied on techniques from attosecond physics, since electronic detectors fail to read at such fast rates. They reported on their approach in the journal “Nature”. Franziska Konitzer of Welt der Physik spoke to Eleftherios Goulielmakis from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, who was involved in the research.

Athanassios Kaliudis, editor-in-chief of the Trumpf company magazine, outlines in his guest commentary a thrilling scenario on how the laser could help us to become nearly immortal.

LMU physicists working with Harald Weinfurter will participate in the international Big Bell Test, which tests the fundamentals of quantum physics. Everyone is invited to make a random entry in a browser-based game on November 30th and thus contribute to scientific experiments.

When light strikes electrons in atoms, their state can change unimaginably quickly. The laser physicists at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have measured such a phenomenon – namely that of photoionization, in which an electron exits a helium atom after excitation by light – for the first time with zeptosecond precision. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a of a second (10^-21 seconds). This is the greatest accuracy of time determination of an event in the microcosm ever achieved, as well as the first absolute determination of the timescale of photoionization.

Athanassios Kaliudis, editor-in-chief of the Trumpf company magazine „Laser Community“, writes in our guest commentary about a famous film scene from the 1960s. Back then one was still looking for possible applications for the laser. Hollywood already had a suggestion.

A second picture is hiding under a portrait painting by Edgar Degas from 1778. A team in Melbourne made it visible by using X-rays at the Australian Synchrotron.

At the beginning of the 19th century one was able to understand better what light was about from a physical point of view. This was as well reflected in the art of painting and later on in the photography. One who was able to paint light like no other, was William Turner.

Quantum physicists have entangled three photons in three dimensions. This breakthrough opens up new perspectives for quantum cryptography and data storage in the future.

Defying the fate of Ikaros, two intrepid pilots recently completed a round-the-world flight powered by the rays of the Sun. Their specially designed aircraft, Solar Impulse2, completed the trip without consuming a drop of fossil fuel.

Just how dark does it have to be before our eyes stop working? Research by a team from Rockefeller University and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Austria has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light. Previous studies had established that human subjects acclimated to the dark were capable only of reporting flashes of five to seven photons.

A solar thermal power plant is under construction in Israel’s Negev Desert, which will use thousands of mirrors to focus concentrated sunlight onto the highest solar energy tower in the world. German researchers are also working to perfect the technology.

Bioengineers from Harvard University constructed a ray-like robot made from a gold skeleton and living cells. They control it with light.

A Team of the University of Southampton developed a system that is capable of storing data up to five billion years.

In the future gamers will be able to engage with hologram hordes not just on flatscreens, but in 3D – as soon as light-based computers become available. These machines will process data 100,000 times faster than today’s models. Physicists are actively seeking ways to overcome the technical obstacles that currently stand in the way of optoelectronic computing. A possible solution to the problem of heat dissipation has now been demonstrated.

A group of researchers including physicist Stephen Hawking plans to launch laser-powered mini-satellites to our nearest stellar neighbour within the next 15 years.

The year is 2060, and thanks to technical advances in production procedures, drugs will be highly specific – and exceptionally effective in extremely small doses. For it is now possible to manipulate the atoms in organic molecules at will – by means of laser light. Physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics and at LMU Munich are now laying the foundations for the realization of such a revolutionary approach to chemical synthesis.

A small group of scientists from the Laboratory of Attosecond Physics created a chain reaction device to tell the story of light.

The sun is the most important source of energy for life on earth. This energy, in the form of sunlight, is harnessed and fully exploited by nature with its own systems: think of plants growing, flowering and producing fruit, the changing seasons, and our own circadian rhythms. The resourceful human race has used sunlight since the beginning of our history, too: for example, for warmth, for preserving and drying food, and for removing salt from seawater to create freshwater. But human innovation has recently uncovered ways in which we can maximize the sun’s massive energy potential even more.

Light seems to be infinitely fast. A lamp alights in the moment one flips the switch, and the exchange of information around the world using glass fibers happens without noticeable delay. But are there situations in which we recognize a limitation of the speed of light? On which scales can we prove its finiteness?