This area deals with the fundamental laws and building blocks of nature and how they interact, the properties and the behavior of matter, and research into space and time and their structures.
innovations-report provides in-depth reports and articles on subjects such as astrophysics, laser technologies, nuclear, quantum, particle and solid-state physics, nanotechnologies, planetary research and findings (Mars, Venus) and developments related to the Hubble Telescope.
Mars Express, ESA’s first mission to Mars, will reach its final orbit on 28 January. It has already been producing stunning results since its first instrument was switched on, on 5 January. The significance of the first data was emphasised by the scientists at a European press conference today at ESA’s Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany.
“I did not expect to be able to gather together – just one month after the Mars Orbit Insertion of 25 December – so many happy scientists eager to
A huge solenoid, which will hold the world record of stored energy
The first module of the five constituting the CMS superconducting magnet is sailing on January 21st of from Genova port to Cern. CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) is one of the experiments that will take place at the accelerator Lhc (Large Hadron Collider), under construction at Cern in Geneva. The device will arrive after a 10-days travel. One of the most ambitious goals of CMS is to provide information about the elusive H
Scientists at the University of Sussex have produced synthetic ‘cosmic dust’ to help space researchers understand information gathered by a mission to Saturn.
CASSINI, an unmanned probe launched by NASA in October 1997, is due to go into orbit around Saturn this summer. One of the aims of the CASSINI mission is to study the planet’s famous rings. It is already recognised Saturn’s rings are made of cosmic dust, but very little is known about the composition of the dust.
Cosmic dust
This time next year, ESA’s Huygens spaceprobe will be descending through the atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, becoming the first spacecraft to land on a body in the outer Solar System.
Earlier this month, the giant ringed planet Saturn was closer to Earth than it will be for the next thirty years. All the planets orbit the Sun as if on a giant racetrack, travelling in the same direction but in different lanes.
Those in the outer lanes have further to travel than those on the in
A tiny, novel device for generating tunable microwave signals has been developed by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Described in the Jan. 16 issue of Physical Review Letters, the device measures just a few micro-meters square and is hundreds of times smaller than typical microwave signal generators in use today in cell phones, wireless Internet devices, radar systems and other applications.
The device works by exploiting the fact that individual elec
ESAs Mars Express, successfully inserted into orbit around Mars on 25 December 2003, is about to reach its final operating orbit above the poles of the Red Planet. The scientific investigation has just started and the first results already look very promising.
Although the seven scientific instruments on board Mars Express are still undergoing a thorough calibration phase, they have already started collecting amazing results. The first high-resolution images and spectra of Mars have al