Physicists in Germany have made the first direct measurements of the “critical Casimir effect”, a classical analogue of the strange quantum effect that draws two conducting surfaces together in a ...

Spooky science Scientists have used the spooky properties of quantum physics to create light out of empty space. Researchers including Professor Tim Duty from the University of New South Wales in ...

In the quantum realm, nothing is nothing. Even “empty” space, when we shrink down to the weird world where the laws of quantum mechanics reign supreme, is not really empty, but is filled with virtual ...

The so-called Casimir force or Casimir effect is a quantum mechanical phenomenon resulting from fluctuations in the electromagnetic field between two conducting or dielectric surfaces that are a short ...

Since the 1950s physicists have been able to show that quantum fluctuations in a vacuum will cause two surfaces to attract one another, a phenomenon known as the Casimir effect. Now researchers in the ...

The dynamical Casimir effect describes the generation of real particles or photons from the quantum vacuum in response to a rapid, non-adiabatic change of boundary conditions or system parameters. In ...

“One of the most surprising predictions of modern quantum theory is that the vacuum of space is not empty. In fact, quantum theory predicts that it teems with virtual particles flitting in and out of ...

Now, the secretive DARPA, a research agency of the U.S. Department of Defense that often dabbles in far-out technologies – and that also brought us the Internet's predecessor ARPANET – is soliciting ...

For the first time, a group led by Nobel laureate Eric Cornell at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado in Boulder has confirmed a 1955 prediction, by ...

Metamaterials are exotic substances designed to steer electromagnetic waves in ways that are impossible with ordinary stuff. One of their more exciting properties is that they can bend light in a way ...