Apple is aiming to announce a mixed-reality headset at an in-person event sometime in the “next several months,” according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. From a report: In a newsletter outlining the possible future of the company’s WWDC conference taking place in an in-person format, Gurman says that Apple aims to release a mixed-reality headset, the first major new device since 2015, at an in-person sometime in the “next several months.” Apple last held an in-person event in September of 2019. All events since have been held digitally due to the global health crisis. “Sometime in the next several months, the company is poised to announce a mixed reality headset, its first major new device since 2015. If possible, Apple won’t want to make such a critical announcement at an online event. It wants employees, the media, its partners and developers in the room,” the report said.

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Source: Slashdot – Apple Aiming To Announce Mixed-Reality Headset in ‘Next Several Months’

One of our most precise mechanisms for controlling matter has now been applied to antimatter atoms for the first time. From a report: Laser cooling, which slows the motion of particles so they can be measured more precisely, can make antihydrogen atoms slow down by an order of magnitude. Antimatter particles have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter, but the opposite charge. An antihydrogen atom is made out of an antiproton and a positron, the antimatter equivalent of an electron. Makoto Fujiwara at TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator centre, and his colleagues used an antihydrogen trapping experiment called ALPHA-2 at the CERN particle physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, to create clouds of about 1000 antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap. The team developed a laser that shoots particles of light called photons at the right wavelength to slow down any anti-atoms that happen to be moving directly towards the laser, slowing them down bit by bit. “It’s kind of like we’re shooting a tiny ball at the atom, and the ball is very small, so the slowing down in this collision is very small, but we do it many times and then eventually the big atom will be slowed down,” says Fujiwara. The group managed to slow the anti-atoms down by more than a factor of 10.

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Source: Slashdot – Antimatter Atoms Can Be Precisely Manipulated and Cooled With Lasers