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An innovative sky survey has begun returning images that will be used to detect unprecedented numbers of powerful cosmic explosions–called supernovae–in distant galaxies, and variable brightness stars in our own Milky Way.

Championing the modern-day use of solar eclipses to solve a set of modern problems is the goal of a review article written by Jay Pasachoff, visiting associate at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College. The review is the cover story of the June 11 issue of Nature, as part of its coverage of the International Year of Astronomy.

Physicists at Caltech have developed a nanoscale device that can be used for force detection, optical communication, and more. The device exploits the mechanical properties of light to create an optomechanical cavity in which interactions between light and motion are greatly strengthened and enhanced. These interactions, notes Oskar Painter, associate professor of applied physics at Caltech, and the principal investigator on the research, are the largest demonstrated to date.  

Scientists at Caltech have developed an efficient method to detect entanglement shared among multiple parts of an optical system. They show how entanglement, in the form of beams of light simultaneously propagating along four distinct paths, can be detected with a surprisingly small number of measurements. Entanglement is an essential resource in quantum information science, which is the study of advanced computation and communication based on the laws of quantum mechanics.

The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) will begin decommissioning the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) in Hawaii. Plans call for the dismantling of the observatory to begin in 2016, with the return of the site to its natural state by 2018.

Sherman Fairchild Foundation's gift will continue advanced space research.

Andrew Lange of Caltech has been awarded the 2009 Dan David Prize along with Paolo De Bernardis of the University La Sapienza in Rome and Paul Richards of the University of California, Berkeley. Lange and De Bernardis have been recognized for leading the BOOMERanG experiment, which provided the first undisputed evidence of the universe's flat geometry. Richards's MAXIMA experiment confirmed the result soon after.

The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists who study the outer reaches of space are about to get some space of their own with the official opening of the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The Big Bang is widely considered to have obliterated any trace of what came before. Now, astrophysicists at the California Institute of Technology think that their new theoretical interpretation of an imprint from the earliest stages of the universe may also shed light on what came before.