New laser technique may be used to detect microbial life forms in Martian ice

September 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, scientists have determined that the technique of laser cooling could be used to create "exotic" states of matter. According to a report in National Geographic News, in a new technique, Martin Weitz and Ulrich Vogl of the University of Bonn in Germany used a laser to bring the temperature of dense rubidium gas far below the normal point at which the gas becomes a solid.

September 8th, 2009 LONDON - A British defence manufacturer has designed a laser gun that can be used to dazzle pirates, leaving them incapacitated, thus becoming the perfect weapon to fight Somali pirates. According to a report in the Telegraph, known as the 'Laser Dazzle System, the device is powerful enough to incapacitate pirates up to 1,000 yards away, while leaving them physically unscathed.

September 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has developed a new laser technology that has made it possible to turn light into sound. Developed by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, US, the technology has the potential to expand and improve both Naval and commercial underwater acoustic applications, including undersea communications, navigation and acoustic imaging.

August 31st, 2009 LONDON - The dentist's dreaded drill may soon be a thing of past, thanks to the laser tests University of Sydney scientists have developed to identify weaknesses in dental enamel. Currently, X-rays and metal probes are used to check cavities, but they fail to detect weaknesses in the enamel in time to repair the surface.

August 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has concluded that if there's any life on Mars, it's not likely to exist on or just below the planet's surface because rapid destruction of methane would make the Red Planet's environment too hostile to support life. The discovery of rich plumes of methane on Mars earlier this year fed theories that the planet could host underground colonies of microorganisms.

August 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have developed a laser technique that, in combination with standard techniques, would help to find supernovas. To find a supernova, the new technique would have to search for one single atom of a certain isotope of hafnium on Earth, which would prove that a supernova once exploded near our solar system.

July 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists is using laser light technology to create new forms of metal and enhance aircraft performance. The laser light technology is being used by AFOSR (Air Force Office of Scientific Research) funded researchers at the University of Rochester to help the military create new forms of metal that may guide, attract and repel liquids and cool small electronic devices.

July 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, scientists have found evidence that indicates the Martian climate was life-friendly more recently than thought. Matthew Balme, a research scientist with the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute and a research fellow at the United Kingdom's Open University, discovered signs of melting permafrost in images from NASA's HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, which is flying aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

June 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has found that the highest microbial life on Earth appears to be in South America, around vents near the rim of the Socompa volcano, which sits on the border between Argentina and Chile in the Atacama Desert. The newfound creatures, at a height of almost 19,850 feet (6,050 meters) above sea level, are the highest-altitude microbial communities known, Steve Schmidt, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, told National Geographic News.

June 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A single drop of blood could soon be able to identify various blood related metabolites-such as sugars, fatty acids, amino acids and other organic substances-from plant or animal tissue samples. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena and their colleagues from the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague have developed a new method to quickly and reliably detect metabolites from only a drop of blood.

May 28th, 2009 LONDON - Variation in sulphur concentration in the hair can reveal one's recent diet and the places one has been to. A new laser tool based on this can be very handy to investigators tracking terrorists.

May 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Navy physicists have announced that lasers, which can create loud bangs under the sea, might someday replace sonar for sending messages to submarines. Conventional sonar mapping uses pulses of sound, which require towed arrays of speakers and receivers.

April 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers may be able to find extraterrestrial life even before it leaves its home planet -- by looking for left or right-handed light. The technique they have developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for detecting life elsewhere in the universe will not spot aliens directly.

April 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has developed a technique that enables the creation of features 2500 times smaller than the width of a human hair, which is a significant advancement in the nanofabrication Process. The ability to create tiny patterns is essential to the fabrication of computer chips and many other current and potential applications of nanotechnology.

March 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say that they may have developed a new tool to enhance the way computer chips, LEDs, and transistors are built by reversing a process that converts electrical signals into sounds heard out of a cell phone. The researchers claim that this is the first time that any research team have converted the highest frequency sounds into light by reversing a process that converts electrical signals to sound.