Helicopter-light-beams -- A new tool for quantum optics

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Storing light in a bottle is easier than one might think: Laser light can be coupled into an optical glass fiber in such a way that it does not travel along the fiber but rather spirals around it in a bulged, bottle-like section. In such a bottle microresonator light can be stored for about ten nanoseconds, corresponding to 30,000 revolutions around the fiber. This is long enough to enable interactions between the light and single atoms, which are brought very close to the fiber surface.

Climate researchers discover new rhythm for El Niño

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El Niño wreaks havoc across the globe, shifting weather patterns that spawn droughts in some regions and floods in others. The impacts of this tropical Pacific climate phenomenon are well known and documented.

A mystery, however, has remained despite decades of research: Why does El Niño always peak around Christmas and end quickly by February to April?

Canadian High Arctic bacterium offers clues to possible life on Mars

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The temperature in the permafrost on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high Arctic is nearly as cold as that of the surface of Mars. So the recent discovery by a McGill University led team of scientists of a bacterium that is able to thrive at –15ºC, the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth, is exciting.

The bacterium offers clues about some of the necessary preconditions for microbial life on both the Saturn moon Enceladus and Mars, where similar briny subzero conditions are thought to exist.

Pinpointing how nature's benefits link to human well-being

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What people take from nature – water, food, timber, inspiration, relaxation – are so abundant, it seems self-evident. Until you try to quantitatively understand how and to what extent they contribute to humans.

In today's world, where competition for and degradation of natural resources increases globally, it becomes ever more crucial to quantify the value of ecosystem services – the precise term that defines nature's benefits, and even more important to link how different types of ecosystem services affect various components of human well-being.

Researchers explain magnetic field misbehavior in solar flares

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When a solar flare filled with charged particles erupts from the sun, its magnetic fields sometime break a widely accepted rule of physics. The flux-freezing theorem dictates that the magnetic lines of force should flow away in lock-step with the particles, whole and unbroken. Instead, the lines sometimes break apart and quickly reconnect in a way that has mystified astrophysicists.

The tropical upper atmosphere 'fingerprint' of global warming

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In the tropics at heights more than 10 miles above the surface, the prevailing winds alternate between strong easterlies and strong westerlies roughly every other year. This slow heartbeat in the tropical upper atmosphere, referred to as the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO), impacts the winds and chemical composition of the global atmosphere and even the climate at Earth's surface.

Scientists narrow global warming range

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Australian scientists have narrowed the predicted range of global warming through groundbreaking new research.

Dr Roger Bodman from Victoria University and Professors David Karoly and Peter Rayner from the University of Melbourne have generated what they say are more reliable projections of global warming estimates at 2100.

Their paper, published in Nature Climate Change today, found that exceeding 6 degrees warming was now unlikely while exceeding 2 degrees is very likely for business-as-usual emissions.

Understanding the past and predicting the future by looking across space and time

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MADISON, Wis. – Studying complex systems like ecosystems can get messy, especially when trying to predict how they interact with other big unknowns like climate change.

In a new paper published this week (May 20) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and elsewhere validate a fundamental assumption at the very heart of a popular way to predict relationships between complex variables.

The ascent of man: Why our early ancestors took to 2 feet

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A new study by archaeologists at the University of York challenges evolutionary theories behind the development of our earliest ancestors from tree dwelling quadrupeds to upright bipeds capable of walking and scrambling.

The researchers say our upright gait may have its origins in the rugged landscape of East and South Africa which was shaped during the Pliocene epoch by volcanoes and shifting tectonic plates.

UAF researchers contribute to global glacier study

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Fairbanks, Alaska— Alaska's melting glaciers remain one of the largest contributors to the world's rising sea levels, say two University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists.

Anthony Arendt and Regine Hock, UAF Geophysical Institute geophysicists, joined 14 scientists from 10 countries, who combined data from field measurements and satellites to get the most complete global picture to date of glacier mass losses and their contribution to rising sea levels.