Eleven silver balls not far from Afghanistan’s border. They are the key to Russia’s space shield, an optical-electronic unit called “The Window”. Each one is a powerful telescope. They see every object up to 40,000 kilometres from the surface of Earth. “The Window” is run by Russians, but is located much further to the south […]

John Kitching, physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, CO, is developing small, low-power magnetic sensors almost as sensitive as traditional large devices used to detect magnetic fields. About the size of an Advil, the sensors are called atomic magnetometers.

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