Lightsabers and high-tech rifles, along with berry-picking robots, are all part of the week in pictures.
James Martin
James Martin is the Managing Editor of Photography at CNET.
His photos capture technology's impact on society - from the widening wealth gap in San Francisco, to the European refugee crisis and Rwanda's efforts to improve health care.
From the technology pioneers of Google and Facebook, photographing Apple's Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai, to the most groundbreaking launches at Apple and NASA, his is a dream job for any documentary photography and journalist with a love for technology.
Exhibited widely, syndicated and reprinted thousands of times over the years, James follows the people and places behind the technology changing our world, bringing their stories and ideas to life.
Researchers from MIT and Harvard managed to create a new form of matter, teaching us all a lesson about the power of quantum friendship.
"It's not an in-apt analogy to compare this to lightsabers," Harvard physics professor Mikhail Lukin said in a news release. "When these photons interact with each other, they're pushing against and deflect each other. The physics of what's happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies."
2 of 7 August Crocker
High-tech long-range rifles
Tracking Point, a startup based in Austin, Texas, just began selling some of the world's most high-tech long-range shooting rifles available. These guns come wired with a small computer that provides a "guided trigger," tag and lock technology, and a Wi-Fi antenna, which lets users gather ballistics data in real time and live-stream their shots to share on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or e-mail.
The key to Tracking Point's firearms is that anyone -- even someone who's never picked up a rifle -- can hit a target at distances of up to 1,200 yards, or 12 football fields, with near 100 percent accuracy.
Developed in part by automation firm Shibuya Seiki, the bot was shown off in Tokyo this week at the Auto-ID & Communication Expo trade show.
6 of 7 Dirk Mathesius/Long Distance Art
Robot sketches
Artist Alex Kiessling puts himself in three places at once by getting remote robots to mimic his sketching, drawing simultaneous portraits in three cities.
7 of 7 Fredrik Broms
Green energy
For the past four years, Britain's Royal Observatory has held a contest for the best astronomy photographs from around the world. Its picks for 2013, drawn from 1,200 entries, are utterly eye-popping.
"With this image I wanted to show the magic and dramatic feeling of being drawn into the whirlpool of a powerful Northern Lights corona," said Norway's Fredrik Broms, runner-up in the Earth and Space category of the Royal Observatory's annual space photography contest.
