Noise is often undesirable—for example, in a recorded conversation in a noisy room, in astronomical observations with large background signals, or in image processing. A research team from China, Spain and Germany has demonstrated that noise can induce spatial and temporal order in nonlinear systems. This effect may be used in the future to identify…

JOKARUS experiment on sounding rocket successfully completed. Corner stone for laser ranging measurements with the highest precision and precursor for optical satellite navigation systems. For the first time a frequency reference based on molecular iodine was successfully demonstrated in space! What sounds a bit like science fiction is an important step towards laser interferometric distance measurements between…