The quest for a single theory that unites all of the universe’s fundamental forces has thus far eluded physicists, but that has not stopped a team of them from clearing the way for nanotechnologists while they look for it.

The group, which includes Purdue University’s Ephraim Fischbach, has recently completed research that improves our understanding of how tiny objects placed very close together can influence each other. Their experiment, which involves the behavior of

This image from SMART-1 was dedicated to the Cassini-Huygens mission team at the occasion of the European Geoscience Union conference in Vienna, April 2005, when new results from both missions were presented.

The crater Cassini on our Moon was named in honour of Jean-Dominique Cassini, one of the most important scientists of the 17th and 18th centuries. The joint NASA/ESA/ASI spacecraft, which is now in orbit around Saturn as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission, bears his name.

In research performed at the Department of Energy’s Jefferson Lab, nuclear physicists have found that strange quarks do contribute to the structure of the proton. This result indicates that, just as previous experiments have hinted, strange quarks in the proton’s quark-gluon sea contribute to a proton’s properties. The result comes from work performed by the G-Zero collaboration, an international group of 108 physicists from 19 institutions and was presented at a Jefferson Lab phy

Drilling holes on other planets and inventing novel textiles to secure large structures in space are just two of the 27 challenges that expert teams have been working on in the first year of ESA’s Innovation Triangle Initiative.

“By combining the creativity of the inventor, the needs of end users and the production experience of industry we have created strong drive and a very successful synergy to identify, demonstrate and verify novel ideas for future space technologies,” says Mar

By using DNA molecules as scaffolds, scientists have created superconducting nanodevices that demonstrate a new type of quantum interference and could be used to measure magnetic fields and map regions of superconductivity.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have fabricated and studied nanostructures consisting of pairs of suspended superconducting wires as tiny as 3 to 4 molecular diameters (typically 5 to 15 nanometers) in width. The team consisted of p

University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a novel method for controlling and measuring electron spins in semiconductor crystals of GaAs (gallium arsenide). The work suggests an alternative–and perhaps even superior–method of spin manipulation for future generations of “semiconductor spintronic” devices.

In research published in today’s issue of the scientific journal Physical Review Letters, Scott Crooker and Darryl Smith

The re-entry module of the Foton-M2 spacecraft, which has been in low-Earth orbit for the last 16 days made a successful landing today in an uninhabited area 140 km south-east of the town of Kostanay in Kazakhstan, close to the Russian border at 09:37 Central European Time, 13:37 local time.

The unmanned Foton-M spacecraft, which was launched on 31 May from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carried a European payload of 385 kg covering 39 experiments in fluid physics, biolo

Straight edges, good. Wavy edges, bad. This simple description holds true whether you are painting the living room or manufacturing nanoscale circuit features.

In a technical paper* published in June, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and SEMATECH describe an improved method for determining nanoscale “linewidth roughness,” an important quality control factor in semiconductor fabrication. Their research shows that current industry measurement

Measurements of the intensity of light at different wavelengths can be made more accurately now, thanks to a new, simple method for correcting common instrument errors. The new method, developed by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will benefit fields such as color measurement, lighting development, remote sensing, biotechnology and astronomy.

The NIST method improves the measurement accuracy of spectrometers, devices that measure optical

The second 20-metre antenna boom of the MARSIS instrument on board Mars Express was successfully – and smoothly – deployed, confirmed today by the ground team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre.

The command to deploy the second MARSIS boom was given to the spacecraft at 13:30 CEST on 14 June 2005. Shortly before the deployment started, Mars Express was set into a slow rotation to last 30 minutes during and after the boom extension. This rotation allowed all the boom’s hing

This release from the University of Oxford has been forwarded for your information by Peter Bond, RAS communications officer. Forwarding does not imply endorsement by the RAS.

University of Oxford Press Release

Astrophysicists from the Universities of Oxford and Rome have for the first time found evidence of ripples in the Universe’s primordial sea of neutrinos, confirming the predictions of both Big Bang theory and the Standard Model of particle physics.

Neutrinos are el

Quantum dots, tiny crystals consisting of a few hundred to a few thousand atoms, sparkle with promise for uses ranging from tagging proteins in living cells to foiling counterfeiters to enabling quantum computers. The optics and electronics of these semiconductor nanocrystals are dramatically different from the same materials in bulk. But it turns out that one of the most important electronic properties of quantum dots has been misunderstood for over a decade.

Theorists

New calculations support an alternative to “superfluidity” of a solid as the explanation for the behavior of an isotope of helium, 4He, at temperatures approaching Absolute Zero, according to a report in Physical Review Letters.

Among the most provocative recent reports in condensed materials science were studies interpreting the behavior of solid 4He in an oscillating chamber as a “supersolid.” In this current paper, John S. Wettlaufer, professor of geophysics andphysics at Y

APL-Built Pluto Mission Spacecraft Shipped to NASA Goddard for Pre-launch Tests

The first spacecraft designed to study Pluto, the solar system’s farthest planet, took the first steps on a long journey today when it was shipped from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. — where it was designed and built — to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., for its next round of pre-launch tests.

Proposed for launch in Januar

By depositing nanoparticles onto a charged surface, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have crafted nanotubes from silicon that are flexible and nearly as soft as rubber.

“Resembling miniature scrolls, the nanotubes could prove useful as catalysts, guided laser cavities and nanorobots,” said Sahraoui Chaieb, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Illinois and a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

An EU project will enable virtual reality to take another step into the real world with a series of innovations that make the technology cheaper, more flexible and more powerful.

“The origins of virtual reality grew out of psychedelic philosophy and they were looking at simulating alternative worlds, not realistic simulations as we have today,” says Marc Cavazza, coordinator of the IST project Alterne and computing scientist at the UK’s University of Teesside. “This concept had bee