Physics and Astronomy

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.

Lighting up paper

Researchers have developed a sophisticated way of measuring the print quality of paper. The work, published today in the Institute of Physics journal, Measurement Science and Technology, describes how Jari Palviainen and colleagues at the Universities of Joensuu and Oulu in Finland, use what is known as a diffractive optical element-based sensor to investigate how laser-light interacts with paper before and after laser printing with colour ink.

The physical properties of paper such as colou

Spacecraft rendezvous at Jupiter

Two space probes lift the lid on Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
Even Stanley Kubrick couldn’t have directed it better. In the first days of 2001, two spacecraft, Cassini and Galileo, met at Jupiter 400 million kilometres from Earth, to study the mysterious forces emanating from the giant planet.

The first analysis of the data they sent back has now been unveiled 1-7 . It paints a dramatic picture of the planet’s invisible magnetosphere – looping magnetic fields, crackling radi

COLD safer than HOT

New theory shows that high performance needn’t mean high risk.

For man-made systems such as machines and markets, catastrophe lurks somewhere between high risk and high performance. US physicists may have found a way to strike the optimal balance 1 .

This trade-off is familiar to the financial world. Brokers develop investment portfolios to provide the best returns within a specified level of risk. Mark Newman and co-workers at the Santa Fe Institute in New M

Top class images help ESA’s Rosetta prepare to ride on a cosmic bullet

Chase a fast-moving comet, land on it and ’ride’ it while it speeds up towards the Sun: not the script of a science-fiction movie, but the very real task of ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft.

New observations with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) provide vital information about Comet Wirtanen – Rosetta’s target – to help ESA reduce uncertainties in the mission, one of the most difficult ever to be performed.

Every 5.5 years Comet Wirtanen completes an o

Is the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy a debris of the Large Magellanic Cloud?

The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy is our nearest neighbor. Yet it has been discovered only recently, in 1994, being hidden by the stars and dust in our own Galaxy, the Milky Way. It is however possible today to better know this companion galaxy, thanks to variable stars, the RR Lyrae, in which Sgr-dw is particularly rich. In a recent paper, Patrick Cseresnjes, from Paris Observatory, shows for the first time that Sgr-dw is not typical of other satellites of the Milky Way, but reveals instead striking simi

ESA’s Envisat satellite ready for lift-off

During the night of 28 February/1 March, Envisat, ESA’s most powerful and sophisticated Earth observation satellite, will be launched by an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou at 22:07 hrs Kourou time (02:07 hrs CET).

Built by a consortium of 50 companies led by Astrium, Envisat is the successor to ESA’s ERS satellites. With an array of ten instruments to monitor land, oceans, atmosphere and ice caps, it will provide the most complete set of observations ever achieved, to hel

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