Taking advantage of the high sensitivity of ESA’s XMM-Newton and the sharp vision of NASA’s Chandra X-Ray space observatories, astronomers have studied the behaviour of massive fossil galaxy clusters, trying to find out how they find the time to form…

Many galaxies reside in galaxy groups, where they experience close encounters with their neighbours and interact gravitationally with the dark matter – mass which permeates the whole intergalactic space but is not directly

Excessive moisture can typically wreak havoc on electronic devices, but now researchers have demonstrated that a little water can help create ultra-dense storage systems for computers and electronics.

A team of experimentalists and theorists at the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and Harvard University has proposed a new and surprisingly effective means of stabilizing and controlling ferroelectricity in nanostructures: terminating their surfaces with fragments

Supporting learning for blind and visually-impaired children in schools is the goal of a system that offers collaboration, data exploration, communication and creativity based on a common software architecture. Already interfaces and application prototypes are being tested.

Partners in the IST programme-funded MICOLE project, the teams responsible are working in close contact with national and local associations and organisations of visually-disabled persons, as well as schools. The

This sequence of images, taken by the advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft, shows on area on the near side of the Moon, on the edge of the Mare Humorum basin.

AMIE obtained these raw images on 13 January 2006 from a distance ranging between 1031 and 1107 kilometres from the surface, with a ground resolution between 93 and 100 metres per pixel.

The imaged area is located at longitude 45.7º West and latitude between 30.5º and 24.5º South. The

A Russian rocket launched Monday, April 24, is carrying the first of three small, spherical satellites developed at MIT to the International Space Station — a major step toward building space-based robotic telescopes and other systems.

The MIT SPHERES project — the acronym stands for Synchronized Position Hold Engage Re-orient Experimental Satellites — involves satellites about the size of volleyballs that are designed to float weightless in space while maintaining a precise posi

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the Nanedi Valles valley system, a steep-sided feature that may have been formed in part by free-flowing water.

The HRSC obtained these images on 3 October 2004 during orbit 905 at a ground resolution of approximately 18 metres per pixel. The images have been rotated 90 degrees clockwise, so that north is to the right.
They show the region of Nanedi Valles, a roughly 800-k

VLT takes images of disintegrating comet P73/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3

On the night of April 23 to 24, ESO’s Very Large Telescope observed fragment B of the comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 that had split a few days earlier. To their great surprise, the ESO astronomers discovered that the piece just ejected by fragment B was splitting again! Five other mini-comets are also visible on the image. The comet seems thus doomed to disintegrate but the question remains in how much time.

Will scientists ever find the elusive Higgs particle, the last of the fundamental particles predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics and postulated to play a major role in how fundamental particles get their masses? Are there undiscovered particles “beyond” those described by the Standard Model? Experiments expected to begin next year at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a new particle accelerator at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), will take up the search and explore

Black holes are the most fuel efficient engines in the Universe, according to a new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. By making the first direct estimate of how efficient or “green” black holes are, this work gives insight into how black holes generate energy and affect their environment.

The new Chandra finding shows that most of the energy released by matter falling toward a supermassive black hole is in the form of high-energy jets traveling at near the speed of light

The Binary Research Institute (BRI) has found that orbital characteristics of the recently discovered planetoid, “Sedna”, demonstrate the possibility that our sun might be part of a binary star system. A binary star system consists of two stars gravitationally bound orbiting a common center of mass. Once thought to be highly unusual, such systems are now considered to be common in the Milky Way galaxy.

Walter Cruttenden at BRI, Professor Richard Muller at UC Berkeley, Dr. Daniel Whitmire

HEBE is an EU-funded joint research project involving Com&Media Projects and Services S.L., Fatronik, Ingema (the Matía Gerontological Institute) and Icavi – Bikain from within Spain; i know how, Zenon and Net Technologies from Greece; and the French companies, Wany Robotics and Lirmm.

By means of this biannual project a mechanism for the detection of falls and the monitoring of the activity of the elderly has been developed.

According to the statistics, 30% of elderly

Until now, little was known about the physiochemical processes that determine the protective qualities of military uniforms (for example, for protection against poisonous gases). TU Delft researcher Michal Sobera has changed all this however through the use of computer modeling. He believes that within a few years it will be possible to calculate this by means of a realistic model of the human body with protective clothing. On April 25, Sobera will receive his PhD based on this research subject

To celebrate the NASA-ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s 16 years of success, the two space agencies are releasing this mosaic image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). It is the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of M82, a galaxy remarkable for its webs of shredded clouds and flame-like plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out from its central regions.

Throughout the central region of Messier 82, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside in our Mil

A small but surprisingly efficient and multi-purpose thermograph has been developed by Russian scientists. It helps to measure within seconds the temperature of surface in the most detailed way. It also assists in diagnosing – be it a pipeline or a human being. It is able of diagnosing any object if the processes taking place in it somehow affect the temperature of its different parts.

“Naturally, there are a lot of various thermovisors now in general, i.e. the devices which allow to vis

Scientists have created a molecular switch that could play a key role in thousands of nanotech applications. The Mol-Switch project successfully developed a demonstrator to prove the principle, despite deep scepticism from specialist colleagues in biotechnology and biophysics.

“Frankly, some researchers didn’t think what we were attempting was possible,” says Dr Keith Firman, at Portsmouth University and Mol-Switch project coordinator, funded under the European Commission’s Future a

The Columbus laboratory is Europe’s cornerstone contribution to the International Space Station. Final integration has been successfully completed in Bremen. Columbus will be shipped to Cape Canaveral at the end of May, from where it will be flown on a Space Shuttle to the ISS in the second half of 2007.

During its planned 10-year operational lifetime, scientific researchers in Europe, with the help of the astronauts onboard and a Europe-wide support infrastructure on the ground, will