Slicing the Beams

By laser-slicing beams of x-rays so that each pulse is only a few millionths of a billionth of a second long, researchers at the Advanced Light Source have performed spectroscopy on a material that changes from an insulator to a conductor, and from transparency to reflectivity, in 80 femtoseconds flat...

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Television Signals Plug the Holes in GPS

Today’s Global Positioning System is great for tracking tanks in the desert, but turn on your Garmin in New York City or inside virtually any building, and you’ll be staring at satellite static—GPS doesn’t perform well indoors or in urban canyons. Now a new technology is poised to pick up where GPS satellite signals cut out...

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