attenuation

A laser beam passes through a glass cell filled with cesium vapor. The atoms in the vapor dart around chaotically, like a crowd at a train station: each one enters the beam, spends a moment there, and flies back out. Their internal state, something like the orientation of a tiny magnet, changes under the influence of light. If all atoms were identical and stationary, the signal would be steady.

Physicists have achieved three-dimensional Anderson localization of electromagnetic waves — a phenomenon where waves become permanently entangled in a random labyrinth of metal particles and cease to propagate.

Gravitational wave detectors are microphones listening to the trembling of space. But their own noise drowns out weak signals. To hear more, physicists add special "squeezed" light to the instrument: it reduces quantum noise, like noise cancellation in headphones.

A high-speed camera capable of capturing the motion of electrons is an attosecond interferometer. It sends two laser pulses at a substance with a tiny delay. The first, ultraviolet, acts like a flash, knocking an electron out of the molecule. The second, infrared, like an invisible hand, gently nudges or slows this electron in flight.

Each vowel sound is a distinct shape of the mouth, tongue, and throat. When you say 'ah,' 'ee,' or 'oo,' not only does the air inside your head change, but so does the way radio waves pass through it. Researchers peered into this process using MRI scans taken right during speech and built a precise computer model of the head — from bones to soft tissues.