U.S. and Italian engineers have demonstrated the first nanophotonic platform capable of manipulating polarized light 1 trillion times per second.

“Polarized light can be used to encode bits of information, and we’ve shown it’s possible to modulate such light at terahertz frequencies,” said Rice University’s Alessandro Alabastri, co-corresponding author of a study published this week in Nature Photonics.

“This could potentially be used in wireless communications,” said Alabastri, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in Rice’s Brown School of Engineering. “The higher the operating frequency of a signal, the faster it can transmit data. One terahertz equals 1,000 gigahertz, which is about 25 times higher than the operating frequencies of commercially available optical polarization switches.”

In a new experiment, a team of French scientists created a levitating fluid that allows a tiny boat to float both on top of it — and another below it, seemingly flipping gravity on its head.

“That was a fun experiment,” Emmanuel Fort, professor at ESPCI Paris and co-author of a paper about the project published today in the journal Nature, told The New York Times. “Everything worked well. And I’m still amazed by the results.”

The high-speed assault teams would rapidly swarm and board ships.

Looks like we will have wooden glass in the future. 😃

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University of Maryland scientists made a transparent wood nearly as clear as glass to make stronger, better insulating windows.

Leave it be! There a few benefits of keeping leaves on your lawn through the winter.

Google has an inventive new song finding feature! 😃

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Google has launched an app that finds the song that’s been stuck in your head. Read more to find out what you have to do for it to figure it out in seconds.