The Soviet Luna program, designed for lunar research and mission planning, ran from 1959 to 1976. On Aug. 9, 1976, Luna 24, the final mission of the program, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in present-day Kazakhstan. The probe landed on the Moon’s surface nine days later, in the Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises), a previouslyContinue reading "Aug. 9, 1976: Luna 24 blasts off"

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Lasers are no longer required to produce quantum entanglement, physicists say, after achieving the state using sunlight. In a laboratory experiment, an international team of researchers demonstrated that natural sunlight can produce quantum-entangled photon pairs.

The researchers recently published their quantum entanglement study in Optica, showing that lasers aren’t the only game in town. The work could herald a new energy-efficient approach to sustainable quantum technologies, both on Earth and in space.

Quantum Entanglement

Quantum technologies such as computing, communications, and sensing rely on the strange principles of quantum mechanics, which often defy explanations rooted in classical physics. Typically, quantum technologies use lasers to convert photons inside a nonlinear crystal into entangled pairs through a process called spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC).

Prior to this work, using sunlight to produce quantum entanglement in photons was largely considered impractical. Researchers had assumed that SPDC depended heavily on phase-stable electromagnetic fields, requiring the high coherence of laser beams. Scientists also believed that the intense power of lasers was crucial to the nonlinear processes that produce entanglement. By contrast, sunlight’s relative weakness and incoherence left it largely overlooked as a viable source for generating entangled photons.

Reconsidering Coherence

Earlier work may have dismissed sunlight too readily because scientists had not fully considered the different dimensions of coherence. Across different parameters, sunlight can exhibit varying degrees of coherence. This means that while a beam of sunlight may be coherent in a particular property, such as polarization, it can still generate quantum entanglement along that parameter.

“As long as the pump beam is perfectly polarized, its spatial or temporal incoherence should not preclude the generation of polarization entanglement,” said lead author Cheng Li in a statement.

“The trick to harnessing sunlight is to keep different degrees of freedom of light from influencing each other during the process,” Li added. “This means that sunlight is perfectly capable of generating entangled photons, as long as one can concentrate enough sunlight into a nonlinear crystal to induce SPDC.”

Directing Sunlight

In a natural environment, sunlight spreads across a broad area rather than remaining tightly focused like a laser beam. Efficiently directing it through a nonlinear optical crystal, only a few millimeters wide, therefore presents a significant challenge.

To overcome this obstacle, the researchers constructed a sunlight concentration system that collects light across a 1.4-square-meter surface and focuses it down to approximately the width of a human hair. The specialized solar concentrator is conical rather than flat and is constructed from glass. As sunlight reflects repeatedly across the interior surface on its way toward the cone’s tip, it becomes progressively concentrated and intensified before traveling through a single optical fiber to drive the SPDC process that generates quantum entanglement.

Quantum Entanglement Results

In laboratory tests, the researchers found that their sunlight-driven SPDC system produced performance comparable to that of a laser, achieving 94% fidelity. The efficiency of the entanglement process was also similar to that achieved with laser-based systems. Together, these findings challenge previous assumptions that SPDC requires highly coherent laser light to operate effectively.

The approach also eliminates the need to first convert electrical energy into optical energy, potentially reducing system complexity, heat generation, and points of failure.

“Sunlight is an abundant and reliable resource in many environments, especially in space. Being able to generate quantum-entangled photons directly from sunlight could enable simpler and more resilient quantum systems for satellites and future deep-space missions,” said Hanieh Fattahi, the study’s co-author, in a statement.

“We believe this work can inspire much new research in nonlinear and quantum optics,” Fattahi said, adding that this research “may in turn make sunlight-driven quantum technology more practical.”

The paper, “Generating Quantum Entanglement from Sunlight,” appeared in Science Advances on August 5, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.

The iPhone X is a testament to device longevity, and durability. I gave mine to a family member when upgrading to an Xs Max in Late 2018, who held onto it all these years through a few different protective cases. Today I got it back where it’ll remain in my collection, after they upgraded to […]

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Amateur and professional astronomers pointed their telescopes at the impact site. Most did not detect anything.

Scientists from the Beijing Institute of Technology have revealed a colloidal quantum dot (CQD)-based infrared-to-visible upconverter that transforms the infrared spectrum into full color, allowing people to ‘see’ the infrared in the visible light spectrum.

The research team behind the novel invention said their upconverter can be used in eyeglasses to improve human vision and for augmented reality (AR) applications. They also reported a successful implantation of an upconverter in mice, opening the possibility of an implantable photoreceptor to repair or improve vision in human eyes.

Attempts to Convert Infrared to Full Color Face Limitations

In a published study detailing the novel, full-color IR glasses, the human eye is “inherently blind” to infrared radiation. Although IR radiation interacts with the retina, infrared wavelengths lack the energy to trigger the photoisomerization of the retinal chromophore that lets people distinguish colors. As a result, humans don’t have visual access to over half of the solar spectrum.

Still, the researchers write, “harnessing this imperceptible radiation is critical, as infrared perception unlocks a vast reservoir of inaccessible information.” For example, this added visual information enables critical functions in other animals, such as navigation in darkness or detecting predators and prey from their heat. Still, they observe that our natural visual-light spectrum vision is “utterly inadequate” to access this information that so many animals rely upon.

In their study, the researchers highlight recent advances in accessing the IR spectrum, including “ocular injectable photoreceptor-binding upconversion nanoparticles” that convert infrared light into visible emissions. Other studies have also evaluated wearable lenses with nonlinear upconversion projecting infrared-transformed visible light onto the cornea and photovoltaic nanowire networks.

Although these approaches achieved some IR sensitivity, the study authors said they remain “fundamentally constrained” to narrow near-infrared (NIR) spectral response. These prior efforts also relied on high-intensity laser excitation that the team notes is “incompatible with natural infrared radiation.” The result is a “mostly monochromatic output” lacking infrared spectral discrimination in full color.

Subtle IR Wavelength Variations Facilitate Upconversion

For their new approach, the research team investigated a mercury telluride (HgTe) CQD-based infrared-to-visible upconverter. They note that this material combination leverages the material’s “quantized energy level states” in synergy with a separate, dual-emissive-layer organic light-emitting diode (OLED).

Specifically, the engineered layers captured IR photons in strategically engineered hole-trapping barriers. The team explains that this “allows for subtle differentiation of infrared input by tuning the emitted visible color and luminance” based on infrared wavelength and intensity.

“This upconversion yields a discrimination sensitivity to subtle infrared variations exceeding two orders of magnitude higher than conventional single-color modes, capitalizing on the human eye’s intrinsic superiority in chromatic differentiation over simple luminance contrast,” they explain.

To test their material’s IR upconversion ability, the researchers designed a pair of lightweight (23 grams) semi-transparent wearable eyeglasses. The team said these tests were a success, achieving “high-resolution infrared imaging” derived from the infrared spectral information. However, instead of monochrome, the research team said that data is displayed as full-color visible patterns directly onto the retina, “enabling intuitive infrared vision without obstructing natural sight.”

Surpassing the Evolutionary Boundaries of Biological Photoreception

Although the current version of the full-color, infrared-capable glasses is still in the development stages, the team said the technology could lead to advancements in visual prosthetics, augmented reality (AR), and “navigation under environmental conditions where normal sight is degraded.”

Following the successful validation in mice, the team said their technology could also serve as the technological basis for an implantable new-generation retinal photoreceptor. In that design, the team said an implanted device could transform infrared light into visible light emissions “that stimulate light-sensitive proteins on retinal neurons to bypass damaged photoreceptor cells and potentially restore visual function across both the visible and infrared spectra.”

“By surpassing the evolutionary boundaries of biological photoreception, this technology paves the way for next-generation visual prosthetics, high-fidelity augmented reality, molecularly sensitive substance identification, and robust navigation in degraded visual environments,” they conclude.

The study “Multispectral infrared-to-full-color upconversion expanding human vision” was published in Science Advances.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org

NASA launched its Mars rover Curiosity inside the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) on Nov. 26, 2011. Complete with 10 science instruments and 17 cameras, the robot can analyze mineral types, search for signs of microbial life, and take color panoramas of the Red Planet’s surface. Curiosity’s landing on Mars was a new process, nicknamed theContinue reading "Aug. 6, 2012: Curiosity lands on Mars"

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The second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, which sent two private landers to the moon last year, will collide with the moon early Wednesday morning.

You heard that right, an entire GPU crammed into a compact PCMCIA card. What looks like an unassuming adapter for PowerBooks and PCs to hook up an external monitor, turns out to have an entire Trident Cyberblade XP2 chip crammed in there.     Featuring many supported resolutions including up to 2048 x 1280 @60Hz […]

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Elon Musk’s rocket company said its capital expenditures jumped nearly seven times from a year ago. Revenue also rose.

The speed of laser light is due for a major upgrade after an international collaboration of scientists has developed a breakthrough nanomaterial. The new metasurface can steer and shape light beams at unprecedented speeds of just 74 quadrillionths of a second.

Scientists at UC Berkeley and Tel Aviv University revealed their new optical surface, developed in a Caltech lab, in a recent paper published in Nature Nanotechnology.

According to the team behind the breakthrough, their work will have ramifications for communications, sensing, imaging, and even quantum technologies, providing a new benchmark for “high-speed” light manipulation.

Light Control

Since the fiber-optic advancements of the 1980s, lasers and light pulses have underpinned some of our most crucial cutting-edge technologies. Advanced computers, communications systems, sensors, and even the elusive quantum systems all rely on controlling light.

While the speed of light is so incredibly fast that physicists consider it a constraint on the maximum speed that matter can travel through the vacuum of space, the speed at which our technology reacts to it is far slower.

The scientists’ breakthrough metasurface contains silicon structures even smaller than the wavelength of light, resulting in an ultra-thin surface. Silicon’s optical properties change upon bombardment with laser pulses, a property that the team strongly enhanced with their nanostructure design. In their design, the properties of the material are modified via light pulses, which alter how the material influences a second beam of light impacting its surface. Notably, their metasurface allows for control of a beam of light without any moving parts, such as mirrors or lenses.

Real World Results

The team conducted laboratory tests in which they manipulated light beams by up to 13 degrees and reshaped them into different patterns.

“The key idea was to create a metasurface whose optical response is not fixed once it is fabricated,” said lead author Dr. Claudio Hail. “By changing the illumination pattern, we can reconfigure how the device steers and shapes light, and do so on an ultrafast timescale.”

“For me, the most exciting aspect is seeing an idea that had been with us for years become an experimental reality,” said co-author Dr. Lior Michaeli. “The ultrafast effect we wanted to use is naturally very weak. We had to design the metasurface so that it would amplify the effect enough not only to measure it, but to use it to steer and shape light.”

While the metasurface produced record-breaking speeds under laboratory observations, exactly how fast it can operate remains uncertain. The researchers note that the switching time and the duration of the laser pulse were extremely close, which indicates that quicker pulses could push the optical surface’s speed even higher.

The Future of Light Technologies

One of the major potential advances that could come from this new metasurface includes systems that carry information primarily with light, end-to-end. Current communications systems use light to transmit messages, but those messages are converted into electrical signals for processing. By increasing the speed at which light can be manipulated, this would reduce the necessity to convert light signals into electrical ones, removing unnecessary actions in computing.

“This work points to a broader opportunity: using engineered structures to strengthen interactions between light and matter and turn them into tools for control, sensing, and information processing,” Dr. Michaeli said. “This is closely connected to research directions we are now pursuing at Tel Aviv University.”

Despite its promise, the work is still in the fundamental phase. Although not yet ready for practical use, the metasurface offers promise in future ultra-fast computing applications, where it may soon help to cut out the middleman of electronic conversion.

The paper, “Ultrafast, Reconfigurable All-Optical Beam Steering and Spatial Light Modulation,” appeared in Nature Nanotechnology on June 22, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.

Earlier this year Low End Mac covered a brand-new browser for PowerPC Macs called PowerFox, testing it out on a few machines as well as a VM. On July 14th 2026 Jazzzny released a new update for PowerFox, which feels noticeably improved from the last time this browser was covered.     PowerFox also gains […]

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