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Light pulses a million times shorter than previously possible: Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology are proposing a new measuring method, using equipment which will soon be available at CERN. Heavy ion collisions at CERN should be able to produce the shortest light pulses ever created. This was demonstrated by computer simulations at the Vienna University of Technology.

Vortex beams, rotating like a tornado, offer completely new possibilities for electron microscopy. A method of producing extremely intense vortex beams has been discovered at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna). Nowadays, electron microscopes are an essential tool, especially in the field of materials science.

Vienna University of Technology has successfully clarified what it is the required operating temperatures of catalytic converters in cars depend on. Catalytic converters work poorly if they have not yet warmed up. Tiny metal particles in a catalytic converter require a minimum temperature to function efficiently.

Where does it rain on a hot day's afternoon? New satellite data show that soil moisture plays an important role. It influences precipitation in a way which is quite different from what models have predicted so far. Summer rain is more likely over drier soil - this is the conclusion scientists have drawn from a detailed analysis of satellite data.

At the Vienna University of Technology, the transition of quantum systems towards thermal equilibrium has been investigated. Scientists have detected an astonishingly stable intermediate state between order and disorder. The results have now been published in the journal "Science". Every day we observe systems thermalizing: Ice cubes in a pot of hot water will melt and will never remain stable.

[ Florian Aigner, Wolfgang Wagner Soil moisture influences our climate. For the first time, long-term data for the whole world is now presented by ESA, the Vienna University of Technology and the Free University of Amsterdam. The future of the world's climate is determined by various parameters, such as the density of clouds or the mass of the Antarctic ice sheet.

[ Florian Aigner Previously undiscovered particles could be detected as they accumulate around black holes say Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology. Finding new particles usually requires high energies ' that is why huge accelerators have been built, which can accelerate particles to almost the speed of light.

A breakthrough in laser science was achieved in Vienna: In the labs of the Photonics Institute at the Vienna University of Technology, a new method of producing bright laser pulses at x-ray energies was developed. The radiation covers a broad energy spectrum and can therefore be used for a wide range of applications, from materials science to medicine.

Most people value large chunks of gold - but scientists at the Vienna University of Technology are interested in gold at the smallest possible scale, because single gold atoms are potentially the most reactive catalysts for chemical reactions. However, when gold atoms are placed on a surface they tend to ball up into tiny nuggets consisting of several atoms.

A strong laser beam can remove an electron from an atom - a process which takes place almost instantly. At the Vienna University of Technology, this phenomenon could now be studied with a time resolution of less than ten attoseconds (ten billionths of a billionth of a second). Scientists succeeded in watching an atom being ionized and a free electron being "born".

Two lamps are brighter than one. This simple truism does not necessarily apply to lasers, as a team of scientists, led by the Vienna University of Technology found out. When one laser is shining and next to it another laser is turned on gradually, complex interactions between the two lasers can lead to a total shutdown and no light is emitted anymore.

Printing three dimensional objects with incredibly fine details is now possible using "two-photon lithography". With this technology, tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be fabricated. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have now made a major breakthrough in speeding up this printing technique: The high-precision-3D-printer at TU Vienna is orders of magnitude faster than similar devices (see video).

Scientists at Vienna University of Technology have found a way to detect chemicals over long distances, even if they are enclosed in containers. People like to keep a safe distance from explosive substances, but in order to analyze them, close contact is usually inevitable. At the Vienna University of Technology, a new method has now been developed to detect chemicals inside a container over a distance of more than a hundred meters.

The planet Jupiter keeps asteroids on stable orbits - and in a similar way, electrons can be stabilized in their orbit around the atomic nucleus. Calculations carried out at the Vienna University of Technology have now been verified in an experiment. Planets can orbit a star for billions of years. Electrons circling the atomic nucleus are often visualized as tiny planets.

Previous theories imposed a limit on how "liquid" fluids can be. Recent results at the Vienna University of Technology suggest that this limit can be broken by a quark-gluon plasma, generated by heavy-ion collisions in particle accelerators. How liquid can a fluid be? This is a question particle physicists at the Vienna University of Technology have been working on.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle is arguably one of the most famous foundations of quantum physics. It says that not all properties of a quantum particle can be measured with unlimited accuracy. Until now, this has often been justified by the notion that every measurement necessarily has to disturb the quantum particle, which distorts the results of any further measurements.

Glass fiber cables are indispensable for the internet - now they can also be used as a quantum physics lab. The Vienna University of Technology is the only research facility in the world, where single atoms can be controllably coupled to the light in ultra-thin fiber glass. Specially prepared light waves interact with very small numbers of atoms, which makes it possible to build detectors that are extremely sensitive to tiny trace amounts of a substance.

Genetic research at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) yields remarkable insights on mould fungi. This opens the door to the specialized use of fungi in agriculture. We know them from our garden, from damp cellars or from the fridge - mould fungi can be found almost everywhere. Their success is due to their remarkable versatility: depending on external conditions, they can choose quite different lifestyles.

The effect can be seen just by poking a stick into the water; at the water surface, the light changes its direction, the stick appears to be bent. This tilt is described by the refractive index. For years, scientists have been trying to create special materials with a negative refractive index - their optical properties are quite different from those of normal materials.

Two completely different quantum systems were successfully joined at Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna). This should pave the way to feasible quantum-computer microchips. For years, quantum computers have been the holy grail of quantum technology. When a normal computer has to solve a number of problems, it can only execute them one after the other.