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Physical Measurement Laboratory

News and Updates

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Transforming Welding with Comprehensive NIST Metrology

February 2, 2016

Welding has been around, in some form, for centuries. Today it enables a large percentage of the U.S. economy,* thanks to its role in the creation of a diverse...

The complete Primary Mirror Backplane Support Structure for the James Webb Space Telescope. The inset shows the location of the four support mounts of the type that NIST measured.

NIST Performs Critical Measurements for James Webb Space Telescope

February 1, 2016

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has accurately measured parts designed for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, the long-awaited...

Thinking Outside the Cuvette: To Measure Dimensions of Skinny Glass Container, PML Scientists Get Creative

February 1, 2016

Let's say you're a biotechnologist working to develop new medicines or a better test for forensic analysis. You might find yourself frequently using absorbance...

New 'Quick Test' Station May Speed Commercialization of Photonic Thermometers

January 29, 2016

Physicists in NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) have been working on a new class of chip-based photonic thermometers that measure temperature with...

Quantum Information Transfer: From Microwaves to Motion to Light

January 28, 2016

When a long-awaited quantum information network finally arrives, in whatever form, it will incorporate two essential technologies: a method of generating and...

HID Lamps: Getting Brighter Faster

January 6, 2016

NIST has been issued a patent for a novel method to improve the performance and utility of the sort of high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps used for stadium and...

NIST Featured in Media's Top Science Stories of 2015

January 6, 2016

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is featured in several of the news media's lists of the top science stories of 2015. NIST's change at...

Colorized micrograph of a NIST single-photon detector

Less Jitter, More Bits: New Material for Detecting Photons Captures More Quantum Information

January 5, 2016

Detecting individual particles of light just got a bit more precise—by 74 picoseconds to be exact—thanks to advances in materials by National Institute of...

PML Expertise and Collaborations Lead to Portable Test Solution for Laser Trackers

December 28, 2015

A collaboration between NIST researchers and a private-sector firm has led to development of a commercial device to fill a critical need in industry: field...

'Squeezed' Motion in a Massive Object

December 22, 2015

Everyone expects objects at the atomic scale to follow the weird rules of quantum mechanics. But in the past few years, scientists at NIST and elsewhere have...

Ringing in a New Way to Measure and Modulate Trapped Light

December 22, 2015

Researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a novel way to noninvasively measure and map how and where...

NIST Adds to Quantum Computing Toolkit with Mixed-Atom Logic Operations

December 16, 2015

BOULDER, Colo.–Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have added to their collection of ingredients for future quantum...

NIST's Cryogenic Flow Measurement Facility at Boulder, CO

The Once and Future Cryogenic Flow Facility

December 14, 2015

As recently as a few months ago, somebody who needed an internationally recognized calibration for a flow meter that operates with very low-temperature fluids...

Seeing Into Cells More Clearly

December 7, 2015

NIST scientists, with collaborators at the University of Michigan, have designed and demonstrated a new and easily tunable, high-contrast scattering agent for...

Measuring Nanoscale Features with Fractions of Light

December 2, 2015

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers are seeing the light, but in an altogether different way. And how they are doing it just might...

Nanoparticle Manufacturing Workshop

November 24, 2015

Following decades of research and development, commercial products enabled by nanoparticles are poised to have broad impact in diverse sectors of the global...

Measuring Smokestack Emissions Accurately

November 23, 2015

Society is increasingly concerned about exactly how much carbon dioxide and other pollutants are coming out of smokestacks. But current measurements are clouded...

On the Road to a Neutron Microscope: First Light for World-Class Neutron Imaging Facility

November 20, 2015

Neutrons, the charge-less constituents of atomic nuclei, are nifty imagers. Since the 1950s, scientists have been using these particles' eerie ability to non...

RFPs: The Best and the Brightest

November 20, 2015

How, precisely, does disease begin and progress in a single cell? To fully understand such processes on the smallest scales, scientists need a way to peer deep...

NIST physicist Krister Shalm with the photon source used in the Bell test

NIST Team Proves 'Spooky Action at a Distance' is Really Real

November 10, 2015

BOULDER, Colo.—Einstein was wrong about at least one thing: There are, in fact, "spooky actions at a distance," as now proven by researchers at the National...

How NIST Detected Spooky Actions at a Distance

November 10, 2015

This graphic describes how researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) used pairs of light particles to perform a "Bell test,"...

It's a Beauty: JILA's Quantum Crystal is Now More Valuable

November 5, 2015

Physicists at JILA have made their "quantum crystal" of ultracold molecules more valuable than ever by packing about five times more molecules into it. The...

New Ballistics Control Chart for Forensic Imaging

October 28, 2015

You've probably seen it on TV: To determine whether a single weapon was used in multiple crimes, forensics labs run images of a spent bullet through a database...

Measuring Optical Power with Single-Photon Detectors

October 27, 2015

Precise measurements of optical power enable activities from fiber-optic communications to laser manufacturing and biomedical imaging — anything requiring a...

Fundamental Constants: The Latest . . . and the Last?

October 26, 2015

In a world of incessant change, some things have to stay the same. One is the set of values for the fundamental physical constants – such as the speed of light...

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