Dusty disk around Fomalhaut makes ideal laboratory for studying planet formation

Astronomers zooming in on a nearby star with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered unmistakable evidence of a planetary system: a perturbed dusty belt around the star that’s analogous to the vast Kuiper Belt of icy rocks encircling the sun.

While the discovery is expected to send astronomers scurrying to their telescopes to obtain direct images of a planet around the star, called F

Using color-changing plastic cylinders as a stand-in for a mass of granular material, Duke University physicists have created a computer-testable method to predict, particle-by-particle, how pushes, nudges and shoves at the edges transmit across large assemblages.

Masses of unpredictable granular particles — from the ice chunks that make up avalanche-prone snowfields to the coal in gigantic coal bins — can abruptly change behaviors with sometimes catastrophic results. Such sh

MIT scientists have brought a supercool end to a heated race among physicists: They have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity.

Their work, to be reported in the June 23 issue of Nature, is closely related to the superconductivity of electrons in metals. Observations of superfluids may help solve lingering questions about high-temperature superconductivity, which has widespread applications for magnets, sensors a

When comet Tempel 1 collides with a NASA space probe in the early morning hours of July 4, 2005, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect some holiday sizzle – a brilliant flash and a dramatic spray of debris.

This cosmic collision will create a crater exposing Tempel 1’s interior. Like all comets, Tempel 1 consists of the frozen remains of material that formed the solar system. But what, precisely, is this stuff? How is it put together? Peter Schultz, crater expert, wil

Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison once said that the most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
While the verdict is still out on the volume of stupidity, scientists have long known that hydrogen is indeed by far the most abundant element in the universe. When they peer through their telescopes, they see hydrogen in the vast clouds of dust and gas between stars –- especially in the denser regions that are collapsing to form new stars and planets.

Bu

Ohio State University physicists have obtained the first-ever experimental evidence of a particular quantum mechanical effect –- one that was theorized a decade ago.

The effect, called quantum monodromy (Greek for “once around”), relates in part to the behavior of molecules based on their atomic structure and vibrational frequencies. A better understanding of quantum monodromy could have implications in astronomy, atmospheric science, and biology.

The physicists reported t

Unsurpassed exciton distances, lifetimes may lead to new form of optical communication

When light hits a semiconductor material and is absorbed, its photons can become “excitons,” sometimes referred to as “heavy photons” because they carry energy, like photons, but have mass, like electrons. Excitons typically exist for only a short time–trillionths of a second–and travel only a few microns before turning back into photons, which are then emitted from the material.

In

New computer software to teach people with learning disabilities the basic skills needed for everyday activities like shopping and crossing roads has been developed by researchers at The University of Nottingham.

Using a specially adapted joystick and the click of a mouse, people with learning disabilities can put money into a trolley, navigate themselves around a three-dimensional computer-generated supermarket and find items they need on their shopping list.

In another

“Nanomech is a new non-volatile memory technology which is completely different to the existing one,” explains Dr Mike Beunder, CEO of Cavendish Kinetics. “The existing technology involves storing charge whereas ours operates mechanically like a switch.”

Cavendish Kinetics develops nanotechnology-based non-volatile memory. To support this activity, Cavendish Kinetics has developed its own patent-protected range of Nanomech™ embedded non-volatile memory products.

Nanomech™

Researchers at the University of Essex are claiming a world record for the amount of computer data sent over a point-to-point wireless channel.

The results achieved by the team from the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering are the equivalent of more than 162,000 phone calls or over 10,000 broadband internet connections being made simultaneously. Such large capacity could revolutionise wireless internet download times for many households and local businesses, small and larg

A key step for satellite navigation in Europe was achieved on 16 June 2005, with the formal completion of the technical qualification of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and the acceptance of the EGNOS system delivered to ESA.

This formal review, called the Operational Readiness Review (ORR), marked the completion of more than 8 years of intensive work by ESA and European industry. The ORR involved the acceptance of the EGNOS system delivered to E

ESA’s comet chaser Rosetta will take part in the one of world’s largest astronomical observation campaigns – the Deep Impact event – while on its cruise to Comet 69P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Rosetta will be watching from 29 June to 14 July 2005.

Deep Impact is a NASA mission to send a 370 kg copper ‘impactor’ probe to Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 4 July 2005. Tempel 1 is a short-period comet, whose orbit runs between those of Mars and Jupiter. There is scientific interest in comets because th

Engineers have introduced a new magnetic shepherding approach for deftly moving or positioning the kinds of tiny floating objects found within organisms, in order to advance potential applications in fields ranging from medicine to nanotechnology.

The authors of a new research article said their method avoids pitfalls of using tiny light beams, electric currents or even a competing magnetic approach to micromanipulate so-called “colloidal” objects. “Biology is composed prima

Computers just respond to commands, never “thinking” about the consequences. A new software language, however, promises to enable computers to reason much more precisely and thus better reflect subtleties intended by commands of human operators. Developed by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers and colleagues in France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom, the process specification language software, known as ISO 18629, should make computers much more useful in manufa

Scientists have re-created one of nature’s most sensitive sound detectors – the tiny hairs found on body parts of crickets, which allow them to hear predators and make an escape before they get close enough to catch them. Published today (20th June 2005) in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, an Institute of Physics journal, this research will help scientists understand the complex physics that crickets use to perceive their surroundings and could lead to a new generation of

An international team of nuclear physicists has determined that particles called strange quarks do, indeed, contribute to the ordinary properties of the proton.

Quarks are subatomic particles that form the building blocks of atoms. How quarks assemble into protons and neutrons, and what holds them together, is not clearly understood. New experimental results are providing part of the answer.

The experiment, called G-Zero, was performed at Thomas Jefferson National Accelera