Transforming Infrared Radiation into Visible Light and Other Future Tech

#HappyThursday! It’s another day of the latest science and technology news for the day. Let’s get started with the latest digest of the week.

Transforming Infrared Radiation into Visible Light

Light is radiation - what we see depends on whether the frequency falls within the visible spectrum. Till now, we were limited – but scientists from the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany have come up with a substance that has the ability to transform infrared light into visible light.

“There is a constant societal drive to develop new light sources that are both efficient and environmentally benign. Rosemann et al. developed an amorphous material that emits a broadband (warm white) spectrum of light upon excitation with an infrared laser via highly nonlinear processes,” reads their study in ScienceMag.

“Inorganic nanocrystals form the core of their material and are coated with organic ligands on the surface. When excited with infrared light, nonlinear optical processes cause the material to emit broadband white light.”

Second Blackhole Collision Detected by LIGO

After detecting gravitational waves from the collision of two massive black holes for the very first time on February 11, LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) has announced the detection of another collision between two black holes on December 26, 2015. These black holes were relatively smaller when compared to the results of the first detection – at 14 and 8 solar masses. The collision released gravitational wave energy that equals the total mass of our sun, and produced a final object of around 21 solar masses.

“With detections of two strong events in the four months of our first observing run, we can begin to make predictions about how often we might be hearing gravitational waves in the future. LIGO is bringing us a new way to observe some of the darkest, yet most energetic events in our universe,” says Albert Lazzarini, Deputy Director of LIGO.

Converting Electricity to Light

Graphene, which is made from a single layer of carbon atoms, has excellent electronic properties; some of these are also useful in photonic applications. Usually, only metals are able to confine light to the order of a few nanometers, which is much smaller than the wavelength of the light,” explains Choon How Gan of IHPC.

“At the surface of metals, collective oscillations of electrons, so-called 'surface plasmons', act as powerful antennae that confine light to very small spaces. Graphene, with its high electrical conductivity, shows similar behavior to metals so can also be used for plasmon-based applications.”

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