Photonics for a Better World

Who knew … until last year: Three African-American women working — in obscurity — for NASA as mathematicians played a vital role in the mission that sent astronaut John Glenn into orbit around Earth and brought him back again, in 1962. Publication of Margot Lee Shetterly 's book Hidden Figures and the subsequent release of the acclaimed 2016 film brought the story of the important roles played by Katherine Johnson , Dorothy Vaughan , and Mary Jackson to light for the first time for many. Among key findings in a 2017 photonics industry survey, respondents cited higher percentages of men in management and senior academic positions, with the largest gaps in later career. While their story may have been little known for decades, struggles for opportunity and inclusion are familiar to many women and to members of under-represented minorities or other groups working to make a career in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) field. Findings on ...

The future happens at SPIE Optics + Photonics What will the future look like? For technologists, policy makers, and venture capitalists alike this is the million-dollar — really billion-dollar — question. For scientists and engineers working on the technology that will fuel this future, the question is more about where to secure funding, where to publish, and where to present their research. SPIE’s Optics + Photonics symposium in San Diego this August is the choice of many of these top researchers to present their latest iterations on future-impacting technology. The future of medicine Technology will most certainly play a large role in the future of healthcare, from innovative imaging techniques and personalized medicine to further understanding of the brain and how it functions and malfunctions. While not a major focus of the symposium, many healthcare-enabling technologies will be presented. A group of Italian researchers will be presenting their work utilizi...

Optics and photonics technologies are at work improving our lives in many ways. These technologies are what provide sustainable lighting and energy-generation systems. Nanoparticles are used to rapidly diagnose disease or derive 3D images of living, functioning cells. Optical resonators detect counterfeit or pirated goods. Airborne telescopes probe deep into the Universe while optical fibers send messages instantly across the globe. Engineers and scientists from around the world meet every August at SPIE Optics + Photonics in San Diego to advance research in several broad areas of optics and photonics. A few of the 3,000+ researchers who will present reports next week have provided previews via articles they have authored recently for the SPIE Newsroom. “ Multicolor rapid diagnostics for infectious disease ,” Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli, Chunwan Yen, Helena de Puig, José Goméz-Marquéz, Irene Bosch and Lee Gehrke [ref. 9923-28, Tuesday 30 August, 9 a.m.] Recent epidemic o...

If you never thought something as small as a paint chip could have the potential to destroy the International Space Station, think again. Traveling at speeds upwards of 17,500 mph, the ISS could be torn apart by debris smaller than a marble in an instant. NASA is currently tracking more than 500,000 objects orbiting Earth including non-operational satellites and obsolete disengagements from past rocket missions. But the greatest risk to active satellites and space missions comes from the millions of pieces of debris that are nearly impossible to track. 7 mm chip on ISS window caused by a small fragment of space debris no larger than a few microns across An article from 12 May 2016 in the Washington Post reported the International Space Station’s recent collision with “something as unassuming as a flake of paint or a metal fragment just a few thousandths of a millimeter across.” The fragment left a 7-millimeter chip in a window of the European-built Cupola module. ESA as...

Next week, on 3 April, a new era will begin in remote-sensing-aided disaster response. The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that the Sentinel-1A radar satellite will be launched from the European spaceport in French Guiana. Sentinel-1, the first in the family of Copernicus satellites, will be used to care for many aspects of our environment, from detecting and tracking oil spills and mapping sea ice to monitoring movement in land surfaces and mapping changes in the way land is used. It will also play a crucial role in providing timely information to help respond to natural disasters and assist in emergency response. Photo: ESA/ATG media lab Sentinel-1 is designed for responding rapidly to aid emergencies and disasters such as flooding and earthquakes. The first satellite carries an advanced radar sensor to image Earth’s surface through cloud and rain and regardless of time of day. Each Sentinel mission is based on a constellation of two sat...

Here’s a way photonics could create a better world: by preventing our earth from being pulverized by an asteroid. The terrifying arrival of a meteorite in Chelyabinsk, Russia earlier this year raised awareness (again) of the potential for a catastrophic, much bigger object to threaten earth. This one was “only” estimated at 17-20 meters in size, weighing about 10,000 tons. Nearly 1500 people sought medical attention for injuries – flying glass was the main culprit. Also, 7000 buildings were damaged. The entry into the atmosphere created a shock wave that circled the earth twice . So it’s good news that people are applying their creativity to the problem of even bigger objects that might threaten earth – the ones we can see coming. How to destroy them before they destroy us, or simply redirect them into a new path away from our planet? It seems like a job for lasers, doesn’t it? A NASA press release described a “ mission formulation review ” this week to examine concepts fo...

Sir Patrick Moore , who introduced generations to the wonders of astronomy through his BBC TV show “The Sky at Night,” died 9 December. According to news reports, Moore was the longest-running host of the same television show ever. “The Sky at Night” began its run in April 1957. Moore appeared on its most recent episode, which aired last week, on 3 December.  Sir Patrick Moore: 1923-2012. (Credit: Paul Grover, by exclusive permission) "He counted himself as a writer and broadcaster first and foremost. But as Britain's most recognisable scientist for more than 50 years, he inspired countless people to take up astronomy as a hobby or astrophysics as a career,” said colleague Chris Lintott in a tribute published on the BBCwebsite . Among those many who Moore inspired is Nobel Laureate John Mather , Senior Project Scientist and chair of the Science Working Group for the James Webb Space Telescope and a Fellow of SPIE. Remembering Moore this week, he spoke of his ...

 Curiosity is spotted on parachute by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on its descent to the surface. Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech It’s hard not to have noticed the glee among those interested in space exploration and in fact science in general this week, following the successful deployment on the ground of the Curiosity rover by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). If you missed it, check out the video and coverage on MSNBC . There are plenty of photonic instruments on the Curiosity , from the fancy cameras that are sending back pictures, to the laser rock-blaster that is making smoke for analysis by the (photonic) spectrometer. Optics and photonics are also making possible incredible front-page images, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, of the lander parachuting to the surface. The team who has worked for nearly nine years to make the landing and now the mission happen include NASA staff as well as contractors. One of the latter, Ken...

There are many good reasons to help the next generation become interested in science. They are the future, after all; the authors and architects of whatever progress and solutions the human race will attain during their time on the planet. To meet that challenge, they will need the best knowledge and tools available. Plus … understanding how the world works is not only useful, but fun. One of the most accessible pathways to an interest in science is astronomy. Speakers at the recent gathering in Amsterdam of the world’s astronomical telescopes and instrumentation community were very persuasive on that point, starting with the very first talk. “The tangible mystery of space” has inspired humankind from our earliest times, noted Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in the event’s opening plenary session. "High-profile astronomy missions inspire kids in elementary school to become the scientists of the future,” she asserted...

This is just the sort of thing Theodore Maiman said he had in mind when was interviewed 50 years ago, after being the first to successfully demonstrate the laser: medical procedures that would change or even save lives in ways as yet unimagined. This time, the laser has been used to perform surgery on an unborn fetus. Surgeons at the University of Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital reported they have performed the first-ever in utero surgery on a fetus . A rare tumor diagnosed about halfway through the pregnancy via ultrasound was removed from the roof of the mouth using laesr technology. A few months later, the baby was born at full-term and healthy. Never mind that one newspaper at the time called Maiman’s pioneering ruby laser “a solution in search of a problem.” Applications have been developed in nearly every facet of life, and the list of medical solutions that lasers provide is impressive. Starting from the beginning, medical applications of lasers were life-enh...

This image of the Small Magellanic Cloud located 163,000 light-years from Earth, was rendered from data acquired by Ryan Hannahoe and processed by Robert Gendler, from equipment at the Fair Dinkum Skies Observatory in Australia -- an example of both the dazzling images we now have from space and the collaboration that characterizes space exploration and astronomy. Through the capabilities of optics and photonics, astronomical telescopes and instrumentation systems have vastly increased humankind’s knowledge about the physical composition and history of the universe -- including our own planet and its natural phenomena. And, again thanks to optics and photonics, these mind-bending data and dazzling images are not the purview of only astronomers and physicists. Images in particular -- arriving at Earth, as Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter observed in a recent talk, on light that left its origin in the cosmos in some cases before our solar system was formed-- are rendered on ...

Those eyes in the sky are seeing plenty. Researchers are finding more and more ways to use that data to solve the world’s great challenges and even save lives. An article in the latest issue of The Scientist detailed several recent projects. Among them: “With funding from NASA, Frank Muller-Karger, director of the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing at the University of South Florida, and his colleagues purchased more than 1,400 Landsat 7 images acquired between 1999 and 2003 in order to outline and classify the world’s shallow-reef ecosystems. Completed in 2007, the Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project produced the first uniform map of all the coral reefs around the world at a 30-meter-pixel resolution. The United Nations’ World Conservation Monitoring Centre is now refining the map in order to use it for global conservation efforts.” The information the team has gathered is also useful for fish and wildlife managers and others with interests in monitoring ocean water quality....

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will go farther into space -- that “final frontier” -- and add to scientific knowledge in ways no previous space telescope has done before. Even before the telescope's completion and launch, the process of developing its sensors and other technology is already having an impact in fields such as laser eye surgery and manufacturing. Check out these new SPIE Newsroom videos to hear first-hand from NASA scientists Joe Howard and Lee Feinberg about JWST and how work on the telescope will, as Feinberg says, continue to “serve humanity for a long time.” First, Joe Howard: " JWST blazes new trails in optical design ." And next, Lee Feinberg: " JWST technologies already bearing fruit ." Read more about the project on the NASA JWST website . How many innovations do you use every day that began as space technologies?

Researchers and engineers in optics and photonics are watching closely, along with scientists from other disciplines, as governments look at serious budget cuts. Everything is on the table, but of major concern is whether science and technology will suffer a disproportionate share of these budget cuts. Ron Driggers “Science and technology make an easy target for government policy makers, since frequently these fields are not seen to have an immediate effect on any individual’s livelihood,” notes Ron Driggers, Editor of Optical Engineering and a superintendent of the optical sciences division of the U.S. Naval Research Lab. However, he stresses, science and technology have a dramatic long-term effect on everyone’s livelihood, driving the economy and changing our lives for the better in many ways. “Science and technology literally create entire industries, and one result is jobs,” he asserts. “The creation and maintenance of the associated jobs more than repays the initial invest...

“Multidisciplinary” is a word heard often in photonics circles. It has become increasingly apt at SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing (DSS), where, in the words of Michael Eismann (Air Force Research Lab), last year’s symposium chair, you’ll see things that you won’t find anywhere else. Just a few examples -- from among 2,400 papers in the program -- illustrate the span across not only several disciplines but varied application areas as well. Cancer and brain trauma From the growing body of presentations at DSS on biomedicine and sensing technologies with health applications is a paper by Krzysztof Ptak (U.S. National Cancer Institute Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives) on nanotechnology as a “new pipeline” for cancer diagnostics, imaging agents, and therapies (8031-63). “The National Cancer Institute has taken the bold and visionary step of recognizing that it takes a multidisciplinary approach allowing for a convergence of molecular biology, oncology, physics, chem...

Conference chairs have offered more suggestions on presentations to hear at SPIE Photonics West next week. The technologies and applications in the latest recommendations differ in many ways, but all share one important commonality: they all demonstrate how versatile and powerful photonics is when it comes to gathering information about matter, in environments as disparate as inside the human body and in space. Scientists and engineers from top space organizations in Europe, Canada, and the United States will share the stage in a Tuesday evening panel discussion on MEMS for space applications . They’ll explore the advantages, challenges, and possibilities -- with reference no doubt to a joint session earlier in the day among three MOEMS-MEMS conferences with papers on possible space applications in telescopes, gyros, spectrometers, and other devices. Among papers on research in spectroscopy are a presentation in the conference on Optical Biopsy exploring Stokes shift spectroscopy ...