Using abstract mathematics and holograms, a team of physicists working at the universities of Bristol, Glasgow and Southampton, have been able to produce knotted optical vortices.

Understanding how to control light in this way has important implications for laser technology used in wide a range of industries.

Some videos, photos and history on ferrofluids. The company history of Ferrotec, which used to be Ferrofluidics Corp. states "Magnetic fluids, or ferrofluids, were developed in the 1960's through the sponsorship of NASA, to address the unique requirements of moving liquid fuel in a gravity-free outerspace environment.

By cooling the atoms down to near-zero temperatures, Harvard researchers have created a system capable of detecting individual atoms. As described in their recent submission to Nature, the team of researchers led by Markus Greiner cooled rubidium down to approximately 5 billionth of one Kelvin.

The LCROSS ( Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) project was developed in 2006, aimed at discovering if water and ice are present in the moons crust. Today Friday October 9th there are two reported impacts, making the mission a success. One of the goals cited in the press release from NASA was to gather photos and video from amatuer astromomers from around the world.

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics will be shared by physicists who each made important contributions to our understanding of light. Applications of these contributions have proven to be particularly influential on modern life, including such innovations as digital cameras and the internet itself.

University of Illinois researchers have designed a new system for studying bacterial locomotion. As described in the September issue of Nature Methods, physics professors Yann Chemla and Ido Golding, designed a microfluidic chamber in which the bacteria could swim, and allow the researchers to introduce stimuli - such as chemical attractants - to observe directional changes.

Japanese researcher Motoichi Ohtsu, a pioneer in the field of nanophotonics, will be the 2009 recipient of the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics. His work in near-field optics - the pursuit of imaging at magnifications beyond those allowed by the diffraction limit of conventional microscopes - has made significant contributions to our understanding of light at the nanometer scale.

Goofing around on Google Trends, is always fun, and obviously we have a strong interest in science literacy and sharing hopefully a bigger picture of the world. SO! Could it be that my small U.S. city of Portland, Oregon is only half the volume of the term "science" in general. I was also surprised to see that science as a search term has steadily declined since 2004.

Purdue's School of Nuclear Engineering has seen positive results when matching super computer simulations with real world experiments in the laboratory around laser produced plasma beams. The research goal is to develop new methods for etching electronic components that are much narrower then current technology.

A fundamental ingredient for life has been discovered in a comet sample, supporting the idea that such icy objects seeded early Earth with the stuff needed to whip up living organisms.

New research firms up past suggestions of glycine, the simplest amino acid used to make proteins, inside samples from the comet Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt 2").