A team of astronomers has found faint visible “echoes” of three ancient supernovae by detecting centuries-old light reflected by interstellar gas clouds hundreds of light-years removed from the original explosions.

Located in a nearby galaxy in the southern skies, the three exploding stars flashed into short-lived brilliance at least two centuries ago, and probably longer. The oldest is likely to have occurred more than 600 years ago.

Just as a sound echo can occur when soun

Unbalanced superfluid could be akin to exotic matter found in quark star

In the bizarre and rule-bound world of quantum physics, every tiny spec of matter has something called “spin” – an intrinsic trait like eye color – that cannot be changed and which dictates, very specifically, what other bits of matter the spec can share quantum space with. When fermions, the most antisocial type of quantum particle, do get together, they pair up in a wondrous dance that enables such things as

The second member of Europe’s new generation of weather satellites has successfully been lifted onto orbit, continuing an uninterrupted series of launch successes since 1977.

This ninth Meteosat satellite, developed on behalf of EUMETSAT under the aegis of the European Space Agency, will reinforce EUMETSAT’s capacity to monitor the Earth atmosphere above Europe, Africa, the Middle-East and the Atlantic Ocean.

MSG-2 (2nd flight model of Meteosat Second Generation) was o

Computational Fluid Dynamics, a technique that can be used to measure the flow of water around a ship’s hull or the exhaust flow of a car engine, requires complex, processing-intensive software. It is therefore a key candidate to benefit from Grid computing, as the FlowGrid project proved.

By developing the architecture to run Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) applications on the Grid, the IST programme-funded initiative has provided industrial and academic users with the abili

A novel astronaut training system, innovative planetary landing technology and hydrogen gas storage in 0.1-mm micro-spheres are just some of the innovative ideas presented during the first Innovation Triangle Initiative (ITI) Final Presentation Day (FPD) at ESTEC.

Stephane Lascar, Head of ESA’s Technology Harmonisation and Strategy Division, opened the ITI FPD event: “We received more than 200 proposals of which 37 were selected and kicked-off. After 18 months of work 16 have

Preparations for the launch of GIOVE-A, the first Galileo satellite, are continuing at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The spacecraft has been mated with the Fregat upper stage of the launch vehicle and a revised launch date of 28 December has been agreed.

After its transfer to the Upper Composite Integration Facility (UCIF), GIOVE-A was removed from its transport container and mated with the Launch Vehicle Adapter (LVA) which connects it to the Soyuz/Fregat launcher. The clamp band that secur

Entrepreneurial British satellite manufacturer to launch GIOVE-A micro-satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan

It will be business as usual for the dedicated engineering team at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford, UK over the Christmas break as they celebrate the launch of their 26th satellite on 28th December.

GIOVE-A is the first satellite of the Galileo project, a £ multi-billion satellite navigation system initiative co-ordinated by

VLT Helps Measuring Tortoise-like Motion

Astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Anglo-Australian Telescope in eastern Australia as a ‘stellar stethoscope’ to listen to the internal rumblings of a nearby star. The data collected with the VLT have a precision better than 1.5 cm/s, or less than 0.06 km per hour!

By observing the star with two telescopes at the same time, the astronomers have made the most precise and detailed measurements to date of

Flames, smoke and a deafening noise accompanied the first firing test of Vega’s Zefiro 9 third-stage solid rocket motor. A first examination of the data indicates that everything went well at the test carried out yesterday at Salto de Quirra in southeast Sardinia.

The Zefiro 9 motor, with an overall height of 3.17 meters and a diameter of 1.92 metres, contains a propellant mass of 10 tonnes and provides a maximum thrust of 305 kN (in vacuum). For yesterday’s test the nozzle was

The news that Beagle 2 may have been spotted on the surface of Mars in the immediate vicinity of where it was expected to land was welcomed by the European Space Agency.

ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft had delivered the Beagle 2 lander to Mars on 25 December 2003.

ESA’s Director of Science David Southwood said, “If this turns out to be a definitive sighting then we can feel very pleased not only for the Beagle 2 team but also for everyone else involved in getting the pro

Ohio State University scientists have thought of a new way to solve an astronomical mystery, and their plan relies on a well-connected network of amateur stargazers and one very elusive subatomic particle.

To understand what happens inside exploding stars, or supernovae, scientists need to study particles called neutrinos, explained John Beacom, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio State. Neutrinos are formed in the nuclear reactions that make stars like our sun s

IU mathematician helps solve old problem that may have new applications

A twisted soap bubble with a handle?

If you find that hard to visualize, it’s understandable. Experts had thought for more than 200 years that such a structure was not even mathematically possible. But no longer.

In a paper published in the Nov. 15 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mathematicians Matthias Weber of Indiana University, David Hoffman of Stanford Universi

NASA ’s Space Technology 5 (ST5) micro-satellites have arrived at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., launch site and are in the beginning stages of final launch preparation. ST5 is scheduled to launch in February 2006.

“The team is very excited and we are still working hard as we approach our launch date,” said Art Azarbarzin, ST5 Project Manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

ST-5 will pave the way for future science missions by de

A powerful new tool for probing molecular structure on surfaces has been developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Single molecule absorption spectroscopy can enhance molecular analysis, surface manipulation and studies of molecular energy and reactivity at the atomic level.

“This new measurement method combines the chemical selectivity of optical absorption spectroscopy with the atomic-scale resolution of scanning tunneling microscopy,” said Martin

A demonstration of the use of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) for advanced railway traffic management and control recently took place near Johannesburg, South Africa.

The demonstration made use of EGNOS test signals currently available over Africa and was carried out as part of the Programme for the Development and Demonstration of Applications for Galileo and EGNOS (ProDDAGE), a contract with the Galileo Joint Undertaking. The realisation of the demon

A team of researchers has just discovered a new macroscopic physical phenomenon governed by a quantum law: quantum magnetic deflagration. The discovery, published in November in the American journal Physical Review Letters, was made by a team led by Javier Tejada, Professor of Fundamental Physics at the UB, and Paul Santos, a researcher at the Paul Drude Institute in Berlin.

Javier Tejada says that “to understand the idea a parallel could be drawn between chemical combustion a