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This image shows the size-dependent extraction of particles. The fluorescent image indicates trapping of larger particles while smaller particles pass through.

The European Commission is launching a public consultation to identify promising and potentially game-changing directions for future technological research.

NASA UAVSAR image of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, collected June 23, 2010. The oil appears much darker than the surrounding seawater in the greyscale image. This is because the oil smoothes the sea surface and reduces its electrical conductivity, causing less radar energy to bounce back to the UAVSAR antenna. Additional processing of the data by the UAVSAR team produced the two inset color images, which reveal the variability of the oil spill's characteristics, from thicker, concentrated emulsions (shown in reds and yellows) to minimal oil contamination (shown in greens and blues). Dark blues correspond to areas of clear seawater bordering the oil slick.

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has captured these first, focused views of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy in high-energy X-ray light.

NRL scientists successfully used graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice (gray), as a tunnel barrier to electrically inject spin polarized electrons from a ferromagnetic NiFe contact (red) into a silicon substrate (purple). The net spin accumulation in the silicon produces a voltage, which can be directly measured. Spin injection, manipulation and detection are the fundamental elements allowing information processing with the electron spin rather than its charge.