Water droplets float in a hot pan because of the so-called Leidenfrost effect. Now, physicists have discovered a variation: the elastic Leidenfrost effect. It explains why hydrogel balls jump around on a hot plate making high-pitched sounds. They have published the results of their study in Nature Physics. Most of the time, research arises through the gradual advancement of science.

Leiden physicists have manipulated light with large artificial atoms, so-called quantum dots. Before, this has only been accomplished with actual atoms. It is an important step toward light-based quantum technology. The study was published in Nature Communications. When you point a laser pointer at the screen during a presentation, an immense number of light particles races through the air at a billion kilometers per hour.

A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) microscope gives researchers an improved instrument to study fundamental physical processes. It also offers new possibilities for medical science—for example, to better study proteins in Alzheimer's patients' brains. The development has been reported in Physical Review Applied. If you get a knee injury, physicians use an MRI machine to look into the joint and determine the problem.

Leiden physicists describe a method to measure so-called surface plasmons, which could lead to the latest light-based technologies, including faster internet. When audiences watch a new Game of Thrones episode, they usually don't think about the billions of flashes of light that race through a worldwide optical fiber network each second, resulting in images on the screen. Those flashes of light encounter numerous nodes, among them, the router ins...