IYL 2015 Events #22 | Week 1-7 June

Find below the activities listed on the IYL 2015 Event Programme starting between 1-7 June. Click on the links for more information on the different activities.

• Botswana Light Expo 2015 (Gaborone, Botswana) | 1 June – 18 July
• Ablaze with light (Graz, Austria) | 1 June
• L-RO – BARRE – Mont-Saint-Michel (Mont-Saint-Michel, France) | 1 June -30 September
• International Light Painting Award by JanLeonardo feat. LPWA 2015 (Worldwide) | 1 June – 1 August
• Light: Beyond the Bulb (San Jose, CA, United States) | 1 June – 31 December
• Light: Beyond the Bulb (Flint, MI, United States) | 1 June – 31 August
• Light: Beyond the Bulb (New York City, United States) | 1-30 June
• Light: Beyond the Bulb sponsored by SPIE (Bellingham, WA, United States) | 1-15 June
• Light: Beyond the Bulb (Madrid, Spain) | 1 June – 31 December
• Light: Beyond the Bulb (Cork, Ireland) | 1 June – 1 September
• L-RO – WOH – Waterfall of Headlights (Paris, France) | 1 June
• Northern Optics & Photonics 2015 (NOP2015) (Lappeenranta, Finland) | 2-4 June
• Light: Beyond the Bulb (Toulouse, France) | 2-5 June
• EPHJ-EPMT-SMT 2015 (Geneva, Switzerland) | 2-5 June
• Wonders from light (Valencia, Spain) | 3 June
• Conference on Optoelectronics and Optical Communications (Busan, Republic of Korea) | 3-5 June
• Emerging Materials for Optics (Tokyo, Japan) | 3 June
• Academic Showcase of Biology Integrated at UPE (Recife, Brazil) | 3-5 June
• “Light for Change” ISWI 2015 (Ilmenau, Germany) | 3 June
• Fiat lux (let there be light) (Rome, Italy) | 3-5 June
• Glasgow Science Festival Presents: Festival of Light: Single Pixel Cameras (Glasgow, United Kingdom) | 4-14 June
• We are light! Spring Meeting of the AAVSO (Muncie, IN, United States) | 4-6 June
• Photonics Exhibition: ID#2015: Discover the power of light! (Brussels, Belgium) | 4 June – 18 October
• China Urban Lighting Theme Conference 2015 (Urumqi, China) | 5 June
• Glasgow Science Festival Presents: The Strange Power of Light (Glasgow, United Kingdom) | 5 June
• Light: Beyond the Bulb (Olsztyn, Poland) | 5 June – 31 August
• Light As Energy (Tegucigalpa, Honduras) | 5 June – 18 December
• Astronomy Lecture “Cosmic Light” No. 3: See the universe in Infra-Red & Radiowave (Hiratsuka, Japan) | 6 June
• Glasgow Science Festival Presents: Beyond the Naked Eye (Glasgow, United Kingdom) | 6 June
• CIE GOLD – Global Open Lab Days (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) | 6 June
• river|road (New York, United States) | 6 June
• Light in our life (Srinagar, India) | 7 June

Please note that some last-minute additions to the event programme may not appear here. For an up-to-date overview of IYL 2015 events please visit the IYL 2015 Event Programme.

Six reasons why Photonics and Optics are important for the future!

Computing

Our modern day electronic devices are based on transistors and other semiconductor devices. Moore’s law has proved to be nearly accurate as we develop better and smaller circuits having more number of transistors per square inch. However, there will be a time maybe after two decades (as predicted by Moore himself) where we may not be able to make any further development with the integrated circuit based devices.

The future computing devices, be it quantum computers(1) or for that matter even simple photonic integrated circuits(2), have already given us a new perspective to the power and versatility of computation in the future. With the ever increasing demand for faster and more efficient computing, photonics seems to be a promising candidate. Technology giants such as Intel(3), IBM(4) and Google already have made huge investments in this direction. Wearable technology like the Google Glass(5) and Microsoft’s Hololens(6) have shown how we can use light to connect our digital world to our lives. So all we can expect is a better and a more interactive computing experience in the future.(7)(8)

A multidirectional `perfect paraxial’ cloak using 4 lenses. For a continuous range of viewing angles, the hand remains cloaked, and the grids seen through the device match the background on the wall (about 2 m away), in color, spacing, shifts, and magnification. The edges of the optics can be seen since this is a small-angle (‘paraxial’) cloak, but this can be reduced by using large optics and for distant viewing; also the center of the device must not be blocked. Credit: J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester

Light as a timekeeper: Accuracy of a single-ion clock pushed to new limits

The measurement of time has been essential in the development of science to understand the laws of nature and make sense of the world around us. The more accurate the second can be measured, the more phenomena and subtle effects can be studied and discovered.

Ion trap used in NRC’s atomic optical clock with 17 digits of accuracy. Credit: Frequency and Time group at the National Research Council of Canada

55th anniversary of the laser’s invention

Fifty five years ago the laser, one of the most important and versatile scientific instruments of all time, was invented. It was on 16 May 1960, that the North American physicist and engineer, Theodore Maiman, obtained the first laser emission.

Theodore Maiman (1927-2007), winner of the Wolf Foundation Prize in Physics, 1983 Credit: AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives.

NRC Metrologists Celebrate “Year of Light” and World Metrology Day

The United Nations has proclaimed 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015) to “highlight to the citizens of the world the importance of light and optical technologies in their lives, for their futures, and for the development of society.”

In celebration of IYL 2015, the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) has dedicated the month of May to recognizing the importance of “light for quality standards”. The theme is in line with this year’s focus for World Metrology Day: Measurements and Light.

Dr. Andrew Todd and Don Woods using the NRC high-temperature blackbody as a reference source to calibrate an optical pyrometer for measuring melting temperatures of a series of eutectics being investigated for use as future high-temperature standards. Credit: National Research Council Canada.