In colonial times, lamp makers relied on whale oil-based candles as a standard measure of light. The new electronic eye is twice as accurate as the previous lighting standard that it replaces, explains NIST physicist Chris Cromer. Scientists now are using the electronic eye to maintain the candela, the international base unit for measuring light. The electronic eye will help ensure that lighting in cockpits and dashboards meets proper safety specifications.
Proper lighting is also important for accurate color perception.
Even federal grain inspection programs carry specific lighting requirements. This new candela standard will help the lighting industry meet new labeling requirements on brightness, energy efficiency and color rendering of lightbulbs. Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Harvard University have demonstrated for the first time that a cloud of atoms cooled to nearly absolute zero can be held with microwaves. This experiment, reported recently in Physical Review Letters, brings scientists one step closer to observing a strange phenomenon, related to superconductivity, known as Bose-Einstein condensation. In the experiments at NIST, scientists first used intersecting laser beams to slow and cool the cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber.