A look back at 50 years of lasers
FOX News
This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the invention of the first working laser. Today, lasers can be found almost everywhere, from telephone lines to cutting edge scientific research, supermarket scanners, and even cat toys.More

Black hole 'hurled out of galaxy'
BBC News
A supermassive black hole may have been observed in the process of being hurled from its parent galaxy at high speed. The finding comes from analysis of data collected by the US Chandra space X-ray observatory. However, there are alternative explanations for the observation. More

It's high-NOON for five photons
PhysicsWorld
Physicists in Israel are the first to entangle five photons in a NOON state -- the superposition of two extreme quantum states. Unlike previous schemes for creating such states, the researchers claim that their new technique can entangle an arbitrarily large number of photons -- so called "high-NOON states", which could be used to improve the precision of a range of different measurements."More

Glass electrode powers smallest pump
Nature News
A team of engineers has created the world's smallest pump. The minute device, similar in size to a human red blood cell, is powered by an electrode made from something that doesn't usually conduct electricity -- glass. More

Government dispatches crack scientist team to Houston to solve oil leak
Popular Science
A crack team of physicists, mining engineers and even a hydrogen bomb expert is the latest brain trust to tackle the Deepwater Horizon undersea oil disaster. Energy Secretary Steven Chu hand-picked the five scientists, who each have experience in solving complex problems, to figure out how to stop the oil leak. He also wants them to come up with "plan B, C, D, E and F," Bloomberg reports. More

Planets in nearby system are off-kilter, measurements show
ScienceNews
Like bugs glued to a phonograph record, the solar system's planets all orbit the sun in nearly the same plane. A new finding shatters the notion that planetary systems around other stars all have a similarly flattened arrangement. Newly reported measurements reveal that the two outermost planets known to circle a nearby sunlike star called Upsilon Andromedae are wildly misaligned, orbiting the star in different planes separated by 30 degrees.More

Quantum space monster leaps from a gravity well
NewScientist
Gravity may have the power to create quantum monsters. A strong gravitational field can induce a runaway effect in quantum fluctuations in apparently empty space, resulting in a burgeoning concentration of energy that may explode stars or create black holes. So say Daniel Vanzella and William Lima at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Read the associated APS Physics Synopsis.More

Graphene transistor could advance nanodevices
PhysOrg
New research is a significant step forward in the progress toward practical, graphene-based nanoelectronics.More