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Physical Measurement Laboratory

News and Updates

Displaying 626 - 650 of 1560
hydrogenation of magnesium-iron film

Hydrogen Storage Formulation Patented

The prospect of a "hydrogen economy" – in which vehicles powered by fuel cells would travel the nation's roadways emitting nothing from their tailpipes but...
diagram of gallium nitride

GaN Nanowires: Knowing Which End Is Up

Many people who have heard of gallium nitride (GaN) know it as the semiconductor used in bright light-emitting diodes for flashlights and energy-efficient light...
2015 SPS interns

SPS Interns Get the NIST Experience

It's not every day that undergraduate students contribute in a meaningful way to research at a national lab in the span of a few weeks. But that's what happened...
Dunamis Novem dance by Sam Mitchell.

Gaily Tread the [Quantum] Measure

Since quantum theory has been known to borrow from the arts—Murray Gell-Mann famously named "quarks" after a line from James Joyce—it's only fitting that...
Electron spin resonance illustration

The Incredible Shrinking ESR Machine

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have come up with a way to shrink a research instrument generally associated with large...
Sam Benz

Four PML Scientists Honored

In recent days, four scientists in the Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have been recognized...
Clock

Today, Pause for a Second

For the great majority of human history, the earth's rotation—the apparent motion of the sun and stars across the sky—kept time far more precisely than any...
vacuum fluctuations teaser image

Vacuum Fluctuations: Measuring the Unreal

In this universe, anything that can vibrate will vibrate, and no oscillator is ever truly at rest. Even when an object such as an atom or subatomic particle is...
Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Reading the Secrets of Ancient Light

Much of what we know about the origin and early history of the universe comes from a phenomenon discovered by accident 50 years ago: The cosmic microwave...
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