Particles of light called photons can be trapped inside mirrors to form a gas with unusual properties, New Scientist reports. From the report: A gas made of particles of light, or photons, becomes easier to compress the more you squash it. This strange property could prove useful in making highly sensitive sensors. While gases are normally made from atoms or molecules, it is possible to create a gas of photons by trapping them with lasers. But a gas made this way doesn’t have a uniform density — researchers say it isn’t homogeneous, or pure — making it difficult to study properly. Now Julian Schmitt at the University of Bonn, Germany, and his colleagues have made a homogeneous photon gas for the first time by trapping photons between two nanoscale mirrors. They then moved one of the mirrors to measure the compressibility of the photon gas and derive basic properties about it. “We can consider the system to be like an air pump, but it’s not filled with air, it’s filled with light,” says Schmitt. “We compress it and look at how it responds. In this way, we can learn about very fundamental properties.” Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.abm2543.

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Source: Slashdot – A Gas Made From Light Becomes Easier To Compress as You Squash It

Insecure radioactive materials are the latest worry as Russia continues occupation of infamous nuclear reservation. schwit1 shares a report: When the lights went out at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 9 March, the Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian workers at gunpoint became the least of Anatolii Nosovskyi’s worries. More urgent was the possibility of a radiation accident at the decommissioned plant. If the plant’s emergency generators ran out of fuel, the ventilators that keep explosive hydrogen gas from building up inside a spent nuclear fuel repository would quit working, says Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv. So would sensors and automated systems to suppress radioactive dust inside a concrete “sarcophagus” that holds the unsettled remains of Chornobyl’s Unit Four reactor, which melted down in the infamous 1986 accident.

Although power was restored to Chornobyl on 14 March, Nosovskyi’s worries have multiplied. In the chaos of the Russian advance, he told Science, looters raided a radiation monitoring lab in Chornobyl village — apparently making off with radioactive isotopes used to calibrate instruments and pieces of radioactive waste that could be mixed with conventional explosives to form a âoedirty bombâ that would spread contamination over a wide area. ISPNPP has a separate lab in Chornobyl with even more dangerous materials: “powerful sources of gamma and neutron radiation” used to test devices, Nosovskyi says, as well as intensely radioactive samples of material leftover from the Unit Four meltdown. Nosovskyi has lost contact with the lab, he says, so “the fate of these sources is unknown to us.”

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Source: Slashdot – Dirty Bomb Ingredients Go Missing From Chornobyl Monitoring Lab

A “powerful” cyberattack has hit Ukraine’s biggest fixed line telecommunications company, Ukrtelecom. Described as the most severe cyberattack since the start of the Russian invasion in February, it has sent the company’s services across the country down. From a report: Victor Zhora, deputy head of the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection, confirmed to Forbes that the government was investigating the attack. He said it’s not yet known whether Ukrtelecom — a telephone, internet and mobile provider — has been hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack or a deeper, more sophisticated intrusion. The attack has only been acknowledged by Ukrtelecom in responses to customer comments on Facebook. In one, it responded by saying that services were down as a result of a “powerful cyber attack of the enemy.” When Forbes messaged Ukrtelecom over Facebook, an automated response was provided, reading, “Currently, there are difficulties in using the internet service from Ukrtelecom. Our specialists are doing everything possible to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Due to the abnormal load and problems with internal systems, the operators of the contact center and Facebook can not process customer requests.” NetBlocks, which tracks internet downtimes across the world, found Ukrtelecom had been dealing with a disrupted service since this morning, “collapsing to 13% of pre-war levels.”

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Source: Slashdot – ‘Most Severe’ Cyberattack Since Russian Invasion Crashes Ukraine Internet Provider