High precision single-particle measurements validate a corrected form of the equation describing Brownian motion

An international group of researchers from the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), the University of Texas at Austin and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany have demonstrated that Brownian motion of a single particle behaves differently than Einstein postulated one century ago.

Their results, to be published online Oct

The average user may not notice, but the Global Positioning System (GPS) is more reliable today than it was several years ago.

Widely used by the military, first responders, surveyors and even consumers, GPS is a navigation and positioning system consisting of ground-based monitors and a constellation of satellites that rely on atomic clocks. A statistical method, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and tested and implemented with the help of

Just how much data can we cram onto a hard disk? In a paper appearing online today in Physical Review Letters, EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) Professor Harald Brune and his colleagues report what they believe to be the ultimate density limit of magnetic recording.

His group created a self-assembled lattice of non-interacting two-atoms-high islands of cobalt on a single-crystal gold substrate. The islands’ density — 26 trillion islands per square inch — is

ESA PR 44-2005. Today at 21.00 CEST Mr Yuri Bakhvalov, First Deputy Director General of the Khrunichev Space Centre on behalf of the Russian State Commission officially confirmed that the launch of CryoSat ended in a failure due to an anomaly in the launch sequence and expressed his regret to ESA and all partners involved.

Preliminary analysis of the telemetry data indicates that the first stage performed nominally. The second stage performed nominally until main engine cut-off was

Increasing the spread of broadband connectivity throughout Europe is central to the growth of the knowledge economy. Yet broadband technology is hardly new. So what is holding back wider implementation and investment? This is the issue at the core of the IST project NOBEL.

At the core of the Internet is a large network of optical fibres. The challenge for NOBEL is to make that network work much more efficiently, in connecting together all the growing millions of broadband use

One in five Europeans today enjoy broadband Internet access via competing technologies. Low-cost and fast data access over electricity network power lines is one such technology that is being extensively tested in four European nations.

“Electric utility companies have long used the electric network for communication purposes,” says Luis Legorburu, OPERA project coordinator. “But offering broadband Internet over power lines was only recently made possible by a number of key paten

Danish astrophysicists have for the first time observed the visible light from a so-called short gamma-ray burst. Observations show that these short, intense bursts of gamma-ray emission most likely originate from the violent collision of two merging neutron stars. The results are being published in Nature on October 6th.

Stars do not always meet gently. Two neutron stars rarely meet, but when they do, they smash into each other and the expected result is a short, gigantic explosion.

Erik T.J. Nibbering of the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) and colleagues report for the first time experimental evidence of the motions of hydrogen ions (protons, H+) from acids via water to bases. Until now this has only been estimated as a possible reaction mechanism with theoretical calculations. With this study, the international research team provides insight into fundamental processes in nature (acid-base neutralization, proton transmission thro

Colliding compact stars likely cause of short but powerful gamma-ray bursts

An international team of scientists using three NASA satellites and a host of ground-based telescopes believes it has solved the greatest remaining mystery of the mysterious gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the universe. The shorter of two versions of these bursts appear to be caused by the collision of closely orbiting neutron stars or one of those compact stars and a black hole,

ESO’s telescopes see afterglows of elusive short bursts

An international team of astronomers led by Danish astronomer Jens Hjorth [1] has for the first time observed the visible light from a short gamma-ray burst (GRB). Using the 1.5m Danish telescope at La Silla (Chile), they showed that these short, intense bursts of gamma-ray emission most likely originate from the violent collision of two merging neutron stars. The same team has also used ESO’s Very Large Telescope t

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania may not have turned lead into gold as alchemists once sought to do, but they did turn lead and selenium nanocrystals into solids with remarkable physical properties. In the October 5 edition of Physical Review Letters, online now, physicists Hugo E. Romero and Marija Drndic describe how they developed am artificial solid that can be transformed from an insulator to a semiconductor.

The Penn physicists are among many modern researchers

For almost a decade, scientists thought they understood the surface structure of cubic gallium nitride, a promising new crystalline semiconductor. Research by an interdisciplinary team of nanoscientists from Ohio University and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, however, turns that idea on its head.

Their study published in the Sept. 30 online issue of the journal Physical Review Letters provides a fresh – and they argue, more accurate – look at the surface structure of the cr

The October issue of the Royal Astronomical Society’s journal, “Astronomy and Geophysics”, contains the following feature articles.

Ptolemy, Babylon and the Rotation of the Earth

Many authors have questioned Ptolemy’s account of a lunar eclipse that was supposedly observed by the Babylonians. John Steele finds that Ptolemy was right to believe that Babylonian observers saw the eclipse of 23 December 383 BC – which poses a problem that can be solved by invoking a large c

Do giant flashes of lightning striking upwards from thunder clouds merely pose an extraordinarily spectacular view? Or do they actually alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere, playing a role in ozone depletion and the climate on Earth? This is the key question that may be answered by specially designed cameras, which ESA proposes to place on board the International Space Station.

The International Space Station (ISS) is the ideal setting for studies of spectacular na

Cassini performed back-to-back flybys of Saturn moons Tethys and Hyperion last weekend, coming closer than ever before to each of them. Tethys has a scarred, ancient surface, while Hyperion is a strange, spongy-looking body with dark-floored craters that speckle its surface. New images, mosaics and a movie of these bodies are available at http://ciclops.org, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.

Images of Tethys taken during Cassini’s close approach to

As preparations for the launch of CryoSat on 8 October continue on schedule, the satellite has now been sealed beyond physical control from the outside world.

On 26 September, the two half-shells of the payload fairing were fastened, encapsulating CryoSat. They will not be opened again until the spacecraft has left the atmosphere on its way to final orbit deployment 717 kilometers about the Earth.

The delicate operation of joining CryoSat to the Breeze upper stage took pla