Scientists using NASA’s Swift satellite have detected a new kind of cosmic explosion. The event appears to be a precursor to a supernova, which is expected to reach peak brightness in about a week’s time. UK astronomers and their colleagues around the world are watching closely as they have never seen an explosion of this kind before.

Satellites and the world’s largest telescopes are now trained on the sight, watching and waiting. The explosion has the trappings of a gamma-ray burst (

Tech-savvy students and grad transferred use of technology to households and workplaces

Universities played a unique role in the diffusion of Internet technology in the mid-1990s, according to a paper published in the March issue of the International Journal of Industrial Organization.

“The Internet, which many people view as the most important technology of the last 15 years, moved from universities to the public in an unusual way,” says Avi Goldfarb, a professor at the

Aircraft technicians these days are as likely to use a laptop as a printed manual and logbook, and to turn to the Internet for the latest job-status reports and technical information.

Engineers from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are assisting them, using current computer and database technology to help military aircraft maintainers get their work done more efficiently. A team from GTRI’s Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL) has been developing and improvi

From cell manipulation to micro assembly, micro robots devised by an international team of researchers offer a glimpse of the future.

The MICRON project team, led by the Institute for Process Control and Robotics (IPR), Karlsruhe, Germany, brought together eight international partners. Funded under the European Commission’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme, MICRON set out to build a total of five to ten micro robots, just cubic centimetres in si

ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter from Germany will soon become the first European to undertake a long-duration mission onboard the International Space Station (ISS) following his dispatch on the next Shuttle mission (STS-121), currently scheduled for May.

That mission, which is due to last six to seven months, will mark many important milestones for European astronauts, European science and European control centres.

Two days after arriving, Reiter will take over as Flight Engineer 2

VLT Image of SN 2006X in Spiral Galaxy Messier 100

Possibly similar to what our own Milky Way looks like, Messier 100 [1] is a grand design spiral galaxy that presents an intricate structure, with a bright core and two prominent arms, showing numerous young and hot massive stars as well as extremely hot knots (HII regions). Two smaller arms are also seen starting from the inner part and reaching towards the larger spiral arms.

The galaxy, located 60 million light-years

New research shows X-ray bursts from the Sun cause dramatic alterations to the planet’s ionosphere

Boston University astronomers announced today the first clear evidence that solar flares change the upper atmosphere of Mars. In an article published in the February 24th issue of the journal Science, the researchers describe how X-ray bursts from the Sun in April 2001 recorded by satellites near Earth reached Mars and caused dramatic enhancements to the planet’s ionosp

New Hubble Images Offer Best View yet of Distant Planet and its Three Satellites

In the Feb. 23 issue of the journal Nature, a team led by Dr. Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., describes its discovery of two new moons around Pluto – a finding that made the ninth planet the first Kuiper Belt object known to have multiple satellites.

In a companion paper, also in the Feb. 23 Nature, discovery team members led by Dr. A

NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer astronomy satellite is back in full operation, its aging onboard software control system rejuvenated and its mission extended by enterprising scientists and engineers after a near-death experience in December 2004.

Observations with the orbiting telescope resumed Nov. 1, 2005, about ten months after the third of four onboard reaction wheels, used to precisely point the spacecraft and hold it steady, stopped spinning. After two months of e

Researchers quantify stratosphere damage with an eye toward ozone hole recovery

A new atmospheric model is able to quantify man-made versus naturally occurring damage to the stratosphere with an eye toward repairing the diminishing ozone layer that is located within the stratosphere. That’s the premise of a paper published in this week’s Science titled, “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling.”

Researchers used a model to

A new horizon for mass fatality radiology

A team led by a University of Leicester forensic pathologist is believed to be the first in the world to use a new radiological approach for mass fatality investigation.
Traditionally 2 types of radiology are used in mass fatality and temporary mortuary investigations -that of fluoroscopy and plain x-ray.

These techniques however are time consuming, yield limited information and are a health and safety hazard to those workin

A high-capability new infrared satellite, ASTRO-F, was successfully launched last night by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). In a collaborative effort involving ESA and scientists across Europe, the spacecraft is now being prepared to start its mapping of the cosmos.

Orbiting the Earth, ASTRO-F (to be renamed Akari (light) now that it is in orbit) will make an unprecedented study of the sky in infrared light, to reveal the distant phenomena hidden from our eyes that tell th

Temex of France, a specialist in the field of high-performance time and frequency components and sub-systems, has launched a small-size Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator (OCXO) in a 25mm x 25mm flat-pack package for space applications. This new low-consumption OCXO is designed specifically for applications such as deep-space up/down link transceivers where a wide operating temperature range and low energy consumption are critical.“

Designed to meet the ESA SCC3501 specification a

Tiny regular bumps on a surface, such as the wing of an airplane, can substantially reduce total air resistance, and thereby the consumption of fuel. Wind tunnel tests at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, show that small cylindrical bumps on a surface delay the transition from laminar flow (well-ordered) to turbulent (chaotic) when air flows over a surface­-a crucial factor in total air resistance.

If this finding, made by an international research team at

By combining quantum computation and quantum interrogation, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found an exotic way of determining an answer to an algorithm – without ever running the algorithm.

Using an optical-based quantum computer, a research team led by physicist Paul Kwiat has presented the first demonstration of “counterfactual computation,” inferring information about an answer, even though the computer did not run. The researchers report their

Quantum cryptography allows transmission of data through fibre optic cable´s

For governments and corporations in the business of transmitting sensitive data such as banking records or personal information over fibre optic cables, a new system demonstrated by University of Toronto researchers offers the protective equivalent of a fire-breathing dragon.

“Quantum cryptography is trying to make all transmissions secure, so this could be very useful for online banking, for