Fish Feel the Flow from Science News Special sensory cells in fish respond reliably to swirly wakes, allowing fish to hunt down prey or join a friendly school by reading the watery traces, a paper to appear in Physical Review Letters suggests. Full Article Panel Wants Deep Space, Not Landings as U.S. Goal from The New York Times A panel examining the future of the United States' human spaceflight program will suggest that the Obama administration may want to skip the part about landing on other worlds. Full Article Putting the Pressure on Light from ScienceNews Light's speed slows in plywood, clouds, bones and other composite materials, but measuring by how much it slows has been a difficult task. Now scientists have found a way to determine the speed of light in such a material by varying its pressure, according to a report to appear in an upcoming Physical Review Letters. Full Article

Centuries-old Sketches Solve Sunspot Mystery
from NewScientist
A second look at sunspot drawings from the 1700s has clarified a puzzling episode in the sun's history, and could lead to more accurate forecasts of dangerous solar outbursts. The sun sometimes hurls clouds of plasma our way, which can fry satellites and knock out power grids on Earth. Full Article

A Groundbreaking Caltech Experiment May Detect Quantum Physics Where Classical Mechanics Has Ruled Sovereign
from Seed Magazine
From the level of human existence down to the nanoscale, we're governed by Newtonian laws. You drop something, it falls; you push something, it moves. On the level of atoms, those rules cease to apply: Atoms can exist in two states at once; they maintain connections with a sister atom across miles of empty space; they tunnel across surfaces. Full Article

Comet Formation Theory May Not Be Set in Stone (or Ice)
from Scientific American
A few times a year, a visitor from deep space swings by Earth's neighborhood. Usually coming in peace, these interlopers pass by close enough to be seen, then continue on their way. Full Article

Closing the Terahertz Gap Could Lead to Better Nanodevices
from PhysOrg
"The terahertz regime has become of particular interest simply because it may allow us to look into materials in a completely new way," Diego Kienle tells PhysOrg.com. "This regime, which lies between microwave and optical frequencies is known as the terahertz gap. What one would like to have are devices which can operate - simply speaking - within this intermediate regime of conventional electronics and photonics." Full Article

Physicists Trap Light in a Bottle
from Ars Technica
Over the past three decades, scientists have been working on making light and matter interact strongly. This may come as a surprise, since nearly every bit of color we see around us is generally due to the interaction of light and matter. But this interaction is quite weak, and what we see is the result of light interacting billions and billions of times. Full Article