Carbon nanotubes have enticed researchers since their discovery in 1991, offering an impressive combination of high strength and low weight. Now a new study suggests that they also act like super-compressible springs, opening the door to foam-like materials for just about any application where strength and flexibility are needed, from disposable coffee cups to the exterior of the space shuttle.

The research, which is reported in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal Science, shows that films

The first results obtained from the SNLS (Supernova Legacy Survey) international collaboration – in which CEA-Dapnia and CNRS (IN2P3 and INSU) are participants – are showing that the mysterious “dark energy” assumed to be responsible for the acceleration in the Universe’s expansion could be Einstein’s cosmological constant. The results were published on Monday 21 November in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A few years ago, astrophysicists thought that the Universe’s expansion, discov

The genius of Albert Einstein, who added a “cosmological constant” to his equation for the expansion of the universe but later retracted it, may be vindicated by new research published today in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The enigmatic “dark energy” that drives the acceleration of the Universe behaves just like Einstein’s famed cosmological constant, according to the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS), an international team of researchers in France and Toronto

The Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden) partakes in one of the world’s largest projects on the development of innovative organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Scientists at the Institute of Applied Photophysics have been developing highly efficient white organic light-emitting diodes which could perhaps serve as the light sources of the future.

More than 20 of Europe’s leading companies and research institutes have joined together in a research project entitled OLLA in order to a

Researchers at the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) have developed a new machine that can reveal how electrons behave inside a single nano-object. The results from initial tests on pyramidal gallium-arsenide quantum dots are presented in an article in the November 24 issue of Nature.

Hiding in the lab behind a dramatic black curtain, the hardware setup is not particularly imposing. It doesn’t look expensive. Nonetheless, this machine in EPFL’s Laboratory of quantu

New supernovae study offers tantalyzing clues about dark energy

The genius of Albert Einstein, who added a “cosmological constant” to his equation for the expansion of the universe but later retracted it, may be vindicated by new research.

The enigmatic dark energy that drives the accelerating expansion of the universe behaves just like Einstein’s famed cosmological constant, according to the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS), an international team of researchers in France

The SuperNova Legacy Survey collaboration started the largest survey yet launched to measure the distance to far supernovae. Distant supernovae are powerful tools to measure cosmological distances. The first results of the survey, to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, place strong constraints on cosmological models. In the near future, this new Legacy Survey will possibly help us understand the nature of dark energy.

The SuperNova Legacy Survey is an international collabor

Since the creation of the first working laser – a ruby model made in 1960 – scientists have fashioned these light sources from substances ranging from neon to sapphire. Silicon, however, was not considered a candidate. Its structure would not allow for the proper line-up of electrons needed to get this semiconductor to emit light.

Now a trio of Brown University researchers, led by engineering and physics professor Jimmy Xu, has made the impossible possible. The team has created the firs

The University of Arizona Steward Observatory has been given an advanced infrared telescope that is unique because it will be used primarily by students and amateurs enrolled in UA Astronomy Camps. The internationally acclaimed UA Astronomy Camps are popular with youngsters and adults who include Girl Scout leaders from around the nation. They will study the universe using a truly professional ’research class’ infrared telescope available to them for the first time on Moun

Through a series of theoretical calculations and supercomputer simulations, astrophysicists have determined that new stars form by gravitational collapse rather than the widely held belief that they come from the buildup of unbound gas.

In astronomy, there are two dominant models as to how stars form. In both scenarios, a star initially forms when a gravitationally bound gas core collapses. But what ensues after that is the crucial distinction between the two theories.

I

Permanent magnets are important in a broad variety of commercial technologies, from car starters to alternators for wind power generation to computer hard drives. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have found new clues into ways to make those magnets longer-lasting and more powerful.

Using the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful X-rays at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, the researchers were able to see new details of r

The Mars Express radar, MARSIS, has now been deployed for more than four months. Here we report on the activities so far.

For the operational period up to now, Mars Express has been making its closest approaches to Mars predominantly in the daytime portion of its orbit. The MARSIS radar’s scientists are mainly collecting data about the upper layers of the Martian atmosphere, or ‘ionosphere’, which is the highly electrically conducting layer that is maintained by sunlight.

Astrophysicists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have exploded one of two competing theories about how stars form inside immense clouds of interstellar gas.

Using supercomputer simulations that take into account the turbulence within a cloud collapsing to form a star, the researchers conclude that the “competitive accretion” model cannot explain what astronomers observe of star-forming regions studied to date.

A series of copper ridges nearly doubles the resolution of experimental X-ray sensors, enabling more precise identification of the X-ray “fingerprints” of different atoms, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report. The sensors are expected to be powerful tools for astronomy, such as in determining the temperature and motion of matter in space, and for semiconductor materials analysis, helping to differentiate between nanoscale contaminant particles on sil

ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has discovered a new, highly populated class of X-ray fast ‘transient’ binary stars, undetected in previous observations.

With this discovery, Integral confirms how much it is contributing to revealing a whole hidden Universe.

The new class of double star systems is characterised by a very compact object that produces highly energetic, recurrent and fast-growing X-ray outbursts, and a very luminous ‘supergiant’ companion.

CERN has received the High Performance Computing (HPC) Public Awareness Award at a ceremony at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle this week. Supercomputing 2005 is the foremost international conference for HPC. The award was presented by HPCwire, the leading HPC publication, as one of their 2005 Editors’ Choice Awards, a category where the winner is determined by a panel of recognized HPC luminaries and contributing editors from industry. The award citation is for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Creating Pub