NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is “seeing double.” Peering back 10 billion years into the universe’s past, Hubble astronomers found a pair of quasars that are so close to each other they look like a single object in ground-based telescopic photos, but not in Hubble’s crisp view. The researchers believe the quasars are very close to each other because they reside in the cores of two merging galaxies. The team went on to win the “daily double” by finding yet another…
Exploring comet thermal history… The world’s first ground-based observations of the bare nucleus of a comet nearing the end of its active life revealed that the nucleus has a diameter of 800 meters and is covered with large grains of phyllosilicate; on Earth large grains of phyllosilicate are commonly available as talcum powder. This discovery provides clues to piece together the history of how this comet evolved into its current burnt-out state. Comet nuclei are difficult to observe because when…
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is on the brink of discovering the extent of the mess it made on asteroid Bennu’s surface during last fall’s sample collection event. On Apr. 7, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will get one last close encounter with Bennu as it performs a final flyover to capture images of the asteroid’s surface. While performing the flyover, the spacecraft will observe Bennu from a distance of about 2.3 miles (3.7 km) – the closest it’s been since the Touch-and-Go Sample…
Polyurethanes, a type of plastic, are nearly everywhere — in shoes, clothes, refrigerators and construction materials. But these highly versatile materials can have a major downside. Derived from crude oil, toxic to synthesize, and slow to break down, conventional polyurethanes are not environmentally friendly. Today, researchers discuss devising what they say should be a safer, biodegradable alternative derived from fish waste — heads, bones, skin and guts — that would otherwise likely be discarded. The researchers will present their results…
A user should feel realistic haptic feedback on a touchscreen embedded with electrovibration technology. Unfortunately, not even the most advanced touchscreen devices provide a realistic user experience – all images feel like glass. In the near future, a completely rethought design of the electrical signals causing the haptic sensation could close the gap between reality and fiction. In an experiment, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Delft University of Technology laid the foundation for rethinking the…
An international research team has made progress towards improved materials for quantum sensor technology. Medicine, navigation and IT could benefit from this in the future. Boron nitride is a technologically interesting material because it is very compatible with other two-dimensional crystalline structures. It therefore opens up pathways to artificial heterostructures or electronic devices built on them with fundamentally new properties. About a year ago, a team from the Institute of Physics at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, succeeded in…
In today’s world, more and more devices are being wirelessly connected to one another with the aid of intelligent sensors. As this Internet of Things keeps growing, however, it is consuming more and more power. To address this issue, Fraunhofer’s ZEPOWEL lighthouse project has prompted the development of hardware that not only makes the sensors energy-efficient, but even enables them to save energy. As a starting point, the project is focusing on two sensor nodes – one to control machines…
Prof. Dominik Stöckinger from the Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics at TU Dresden is involved in the large-scale muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab in the USA. Now the collaboration is on the verge of a sensational moment that could rewrite the history of particle physics and perhaps even provide clues to yet unknown particles in the universe. For many years, he and his wife Dr. Hyejung Stöckinger-Kim, also a scientist at the Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics, have…
Extending the Abbe theory into a nonlinear regime, researchers demonstrate a far-field, label-free, and scan-free super-resolution imaging technique based on nonlinear four-wave mixing. The diffraction limit, also known as Abbe diffraction limit in optics, poses a great challenge in many systems that involve wave dynamics, such as imaging, astronomy, and photolithography. For example, the best optical microscope only possesses resolution around 200 nm, but the physical size of the photolithography process with an excimer laser is around tens of nanometers….
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators have demonstrated an atom-based sensor that can determine the direction of an incoming radio signal, another key part for a potential atomic communications system that could be smaller and work better in noisy environments than conventional technology. NIST researchers previously demonstrated that the same atom-based sensors can receive commonly used communications signals. The capability to measure a signal’s “angle of arrival” helps ensure the accuracy of radar and…
An extracellular matrix obtained by controlled decellularization is used to reconstruct the liver with human-like characteristics. Researchers at the Human Genome and Stem Cell Research Center (HUG-CELL), hosted by the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Biosciences (IB-USP) in Brazil, have developed a technique to reconstruct and produce livers in the laboratory. The proof-of-concept study was conducted with rat livers. In the next stage of their research, the scientists will adapt the technique for the production of human livers in…
Scientists create stable nanosheets containing boron and hydrogen atoms with potential applications in nanoelectronics and quantum information technology. What’s thinner than thin? One answer is two-dimensional materials — exotic materials of science with length and width but only one or two atoms in thickness. They offer the possibility of unprecedented boosts in device performance for electronic devices, solar cells, batteries and medical equipment. In collaboration with Northwestern University and the University of Florida, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s…
Empa researcher Cristina Dominguez is developing a computer model, which can be used to plan electricity grids in developing countries. To collect data, she travelled to Kenya to get an idea of how people live without electricity and what developments access to the power grid can trigger. The fact that electricity not only provides the luminous displays of our numerous gadgets, but also enables healthy, clean living spaces or even access to education in large parts of the world is…
Astronomers have detected X-rays from Uranus for the first time, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This result may help scientists learn more about this enigmatic ice giant planet in our solar system. Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and has two sets of rings around its equator. The planet, which has four times the diameter of Earth, rotates on its side, making it different from all other planets in the solar system. Since Voyager 2 was the…
Scientists from the Skoltech Center for Energy Science and Technology (CEST) have developed a method for modeling the behavior of 2D materials under pressure. The research will help create pressure sensors based on silicene or other 2D materials. The paper was published in the ACS Nano journal. Silicene, which is regarded as the silicon analog of graphene, is a two-dimensional allotrope of silicon. In its normal state, bulk silicon is a semiconductor with a diamond crystal type structure. As it…
Pufferfish-inspired device relies on sunlight to produce clean drinking water. A new invention that uses sunlight to drive water purification could help solve the problem of providing clean water off the grid. The device resembles a large sponge that soaks up water but leaves contaminants – like lead, oil and pathogens – behind. To collect the purified water from the sponge, one simply places it in sunlight. The researchers described the device in a paper published this week in the…
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