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Metasurfaces show promise in boosting AR image clarity and brightness

Researchers have designed and demonstrated a new optical component that could significantly enhance the brightness and image quality of augmented reality (AR) glasses. The advance brings AR glasses a step closer to becoming as commonplace and useful as today’s smartphones.

“Many of today’s AR headsets are bulky and have a short battery life with displays that are dim and hard to see, especially outdoors,” said research team leader Nick Vamivakas from the University of Rochester. “By creating a much more efficient input port for the display, our work could help make AR glasses much brighter and more power-efficient, moving them from being a niche gadget to something as light and comfortable as a regular pair of eyeglasses.”

In an article published in the journal Optical Materials Express, the researchers describe how they replaced a single waveguide in-coupler—the input port where the image enters the glass—with one featuring three specialized zones, each made of a material, to achieve improved performance.

Non-harmonic two-color femtosecond lasers achieve 1,000-fold enhancement of white-light output in water

Scientists at Japan’s Institute for Molecular Science have achieved a 1,000-fold enhancement in white-light generation inside water by using non-harmonic two-color femtosecond laser excitation. This previously unexplored approach in liquids unlocks new nonlinear optical pathways, enabling a dramatic boost in supercontinuum generation. The breakthrough lays a foundation for next-generation bioimaging, aqueous-phase spectroscopy, and attosecond science in water.

This work appears in Optics Letters.

Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (NINS, Japan) and SOKENDAI have discovered a new optical principle that enables dramatically stronger light generation in water, achieving a 1,000-fold enhancement in broadband white-light output compared to conventional methods.

One Part of Earth Is at Higher Risk of Impact by an Interstellar Object

We know of three interstellar objects (ISO) that have visited our inner Solar System. Oumuamua was the first one, and it came and went in 2017.

2l/Borisov, an interstellar comet, was next, appearing in 2019. And right now, the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas is enjoying a visit to the Sun-warmed inner Solar System.

A massive number of ISOs must have passed through our Solar System during its long, 4.6 billion-year history. It’s possible that some of them slammed into Earth.

Did 3I/ATLAS Just Break-Up Near the Sun?

Let me start this quantitative discussion with the conservative assumption that the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, and work out its properties based on its latest post-perihelion image.

The large-scale image of 3I/ATLAS reported here on November 9, 2029 shows multiple jets reaching out to ~1 million kilometers towards the Sun and ~3 million kilometers in the opposite direction, as discussed here.

For a natural comet, the outflow velocity of the jets is expected to be 0.4 kilometers per second, of order the sound speed of gas at the distance of 3I/ATLAS from the Sun. At that speed, the jets must have persisted over a timescale of 1–3 months.

Self-Replicating Probes Could be Operating Right now in the Solar System. Here’s How We Could Look for Them

A new study proposes how we could look for signs of self-replicating (Von Neumann) probes that would prove that the Solar System has been explored by an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI).

Universe’s expansion ‘is now slowing, not speeding up’

The universe’s expansion may actually have started to slow rather than accelerating at an ever-increasing rate as previously thought, a new study suggests.

“Remarkable” findings published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society cast doubt on the long-standing theory that a mysterious force known as ‘dark energy’ is driving distant galaxies away increasingly faster.

Instead, they show no evidence of an accelerating universe.

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