New observations of propeller-shaped disturbances in Saturn’s A ring indicate the presence of four small, embedded moons — and most likely millions more, Cornell University astronomers report.

This is the first evidence of the existence of moonlets bridging the gap in size between the larger ring moons Pan and Daphnis (several miles each in diameter) and the much smaller ice particles that comprise the bulk of the rings. The discovery could lead to a better understan

Emerging mobile services are demanding an ever-increasing amount of bandwidth, but the radio spectrum for third generation (3G) and beyond systems is in short supply. Algorithms developed by European researchers are helping operators better manage their precious bandwidth resources.

The EVEREST project developed and tested advanced algorithms to provide mobile operators with enhanced Radio Resource Management (RRM) techniques aimed at reducing the risk of communications bottlenecks at a t

Scientists from around the world joined this Greek island’s 250 residents and countless visitors Wednesday in cheering the drama of the Moon totally blocking the Sun, revealing the dancing glow of its corona.

“It was even more fabulous than we expected,” said Jay Pasachoff, professor of astronomy at Williams College (in Williamstown, Mass.) who observed his 42nd solar eclipse. “All the technical equipment worked perfectly, the corona shone brightly, and the activity aroun

On Wednesday 29 March 2006, the Moon’s shadow will sweep over the surface of Earth during the fourth total solar eclipse of this century.

The path of the Moon’s ‘umbral’ shadow begins in Brazil at 10:35 CEST and crosses the Atlantic reaching Africa about 11:08 CEST, where it will travel over the northern part of the continent. It next crosses the Mediterranean Sea to Turkey, and then central Asia where it ends at sunset in western Mongolia.

For lucky observe

Wireless sensor networks consisting of multiple objects, each capable of simple sensing, actuation, communication and processing have tremendous potential. To better realise their full capabilities researchers are developing a broad vision of innovative future applications.

Wireless sensor networks are a typical example of a network of ‘cooperating objects’, tiny embedded computers that cooperate together to produce an intended result. Such embedded systems, be they tiny processo

Airport security experts at Manchester Metropolitan University are developing new bag scanning technology that could automatically detect weapons. Dr Peter Twigg, a senior lecturer in the Department of Engineering and Technology, is carrying out tests at Manchester Airport to find out how guns, pistols and hand grenades can be identified using an automated control system. The system aims to pick up weapons by matching their outline against objects in a pre-stored database.

Existin

A team of three scientists and engineers from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK, and the Astronomical Institute of the University of Wroclaw, Poland, are travelling to Libya to observe the total eclipse of the Sun on March 29th 2006. They will be using an instrument designed to understand why the Sun’s outer atmosphere is so hot.

The solar atmosphere or corona, which is normally only visible from the Earth at times of total solar eclipses, has a temperature of 1—2 million degrees

Venus Express mission controllers at ESA’s Space Operations Centre (ESOC) are in intensive preparation for an 11 April arrival at the spacecraft’s namesake destination.

The critical manoeuvre will involve a deft combination of basic physics, expert spacecraft engineering and precise timing.

Next month’s Venus Orbit Insertion (VOI) will mark the arrival of the first ESA mission at Venus, one of the Solar System’s most enigmatic planets.

Orbi

A light-sensitive, self-assembled monolayer that provides unique control over particle interactions has been developed by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Particles coated with the monolayer change their surface charge and chemistry upon exposure to ultraviolet light.

“Tailoring interactions between particles allows us to design colloidal fluids, gels and crystals for use as ceramic, photonic and pharmaceutical materials,” said Jeffrey Moore, a William H. an

VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland, announced a new product development technology for the software industry. By using VTT’s new agile methods, savings of as much as 70 per cent can be gained in the development of new software products. The method developed by VTT is being introduced in several Finnish and European companies.

VTT has developed an agile method called Mobile-D, the results of which have been transferred to industry at a fast pace. In the pilots for the software

Illinois-Scientists of the DZero collider detector collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have announced that their data on the properties of a subatomic particle, the B_s meson (“B sub s”), suggest that the particle oscillates between matter and antimatter in one of nature’s fastest rapid-fire processes-more than 17 trillion times per second. Their findings may affect the current view of matter-antimatter asymmetry, and might also offer a first glimpse

New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory may provide clues to how quasars “turn on.” Since the discovery of quasars over 40 years ago, astronomers have been trying to understand the conditions surrounding the birth of these immensely powerful objects.

Hot, X-ray producing regions around two distant quasars observed by Chandra are thought to have formed during their activation. These features are located tens of thousands of light years from the central supermassive b

Boston University scientists produce clearest images of star-forming clouds

A team of astronomers from Boston University’s Institute for Astrophysical Research has produced the clearest map to-date of the giant gas clouds in the Milky Way that serve as the birthplaces of stars. Using a powerful telescope, the astronomers tracked emissions of a rare form of carbon monoxide called 13CO to chart a portion of our home galaxy and its star-forming molecular clouds.

The researc

ESA’s XMM-Newton has seen vast clouds of superheated gas, whirling around miniature stars and escaping from being devoured by the stars’ enormous gravitational fields – giving a new insight into the eating habits of the galaxy’s ‘cannibal’ stars.

The clouds of gas range in size from a few hundred thousand kilometres to a few million kilometres, ten to one hundred times larger than the Earth. They are composed of iron vapour and other chemicals at temperatures of many millions of degrees.

Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.

Just as a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field, so a moving mass generates a gravitomagnetic field. According to Eins

Rocky planets such as Earth and Mars are born when small particles smash together to form larger, planet-sized clusters in a planet-forming disk, but researchers are less sure about how gas-giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn form. Is core accretion–the process that creates their smaller, terrestrial cousins–responsible? Or could an alternate model known as disk instability–in which the planet-forming disk itself actually fragments into a number of planet-sized clumps–be at work? Could bot