Infrared

People with diabetes prick their fingers and test their blood glucose levels several times a day. But now researchers at MIT have developed a less invasive method using infrared light to take glucose readings from fluid just below the skin's surface.

It's definitely annoying when you're trying to swat a mosquito that's flying around a room, but you lose track of where it is. Bzigo is designed to help, as it optically-tracks mozzies and then highlights them with an eye-safe laser.

Although many people routinely pinch their belly in order to see how fat they're getting, that's really only a measure of their subcutaneous "under the skin" fat. The Bello device goes deeper, using light to measure visceral fat.

NASA has released a new panoramic infrared image of the center of the Milky Way. With data gathered by the Boeing 747-based SOFIA observatory, the image reveals new details of certain regions that have been traditionally tricky to capture.

If other star systems are anything like our own, they’ve probably had turbulent histories of exoplanets smashing into each other. And now, astronomers have found evidence of just such a cataclysm happening in the relatively recent past.

Given their name, black holes aren’t the kind of places you’d expect to see much light. But sometimes flashes of light are seen as the black holes snack on gas and dust. Earlier this year though the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy flared up in an unprecedented light show, and astronomers don’t really know why.

One of the weirdest objects in the asteroid belt just got weirder. Astronomers have spotted 6478 Gault changing from red to blue.

A bright explosion in the sky in 2016 has now been identified as a kilonova, where two neutron stars collide and create gold.

Cancer drugs are getting more effective at killing tumors, but there’s one big problem: many work like a shotgun blast and harm healthy cells as well. Researchers from Georgia Tech have now developed a new way to deliver drugs only to where they need to be, using nanoscale “glass” bottles.

A galaxy seems like a hard thing to miss – let alone 39 of them – but that’s exactly what a team of astronomers has just discovered. So where have these countless stars been hiding? About 11.5 billion light-years away, in a part of the light spectrum that’s invisible to many telescopes.

​There are currently fewer than 80 Southern Resident Killer Whales left in North America's Pacific Northwest, and unfortunately boat collisions with them are on the rise. In order to address the problem, scientists are now looking to artificially-intelligent infrared cameras.

Photographer Paolo Pettigiani has been experimenting with capturing the infrared spectrum for several years, notably turning New York’s Central Park into a psychedelic wonderland. His latest work explores two fascinating contrasts: the concrete jungle of Dubai and the tropics of the Maldives.