The world’s most accurate “ruler” made with extreme ultraviolet light has been built and demonstrated with ultrafast laser pulses by scientists at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The new device, which consistently generates pulses of light lasting just femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second, or millionths of a billionth of a second) in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnet

A new type of light was detected from a recent gamma-ray burst, as discovered by Los Alamos National Laboratory and NASA scientists using both burst-detection satellites and a Los Alamos-based robotic telescope.

In a paper published in the May 12 issue of Nature, Los Alamos scientists and NASA announced the detection of a form of light generated by the same process that drives the gamma ray burst itself, yielding new insights about these enigmatic cosmic explosions — the most pow

By surrounding fluorescent dyes with a protective silica shell, Cornell University researchers have created fluorescent nanoparticles with possible applications in displays, biological imaging, optical computing, sensors and microarrays such as DNA chips. These are all applications for which quantum dots have been used or are being considered. But the new Cornell nanoparticles offer an appealing alternative because of their greater chemical inertness and reduced cost.

“People hav

Smaller, faster computers, bullet proof t-shirts and itty-bitty robots, such are the promises of nanotechnology and the cylinder-shaped collection of carbon molecules known as nanotubes. But in order for these exciting technologies to hit the marketplace (who wouldn’t want an itty-bitty robot), scientists must understand how these miracle-molecules perform under all sorts of conditions. For, without nanoscience, there would be no nanotechnology.

In a recent study, researchers

Scientists on Huygens’ Descent Imager Spectral Radiometer (DISR) experiment have generated new views of Saturn’s giant moon, Titan.

The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe descended onto Titan on January 14, 2005. The University of Arizona-led DISR team released mosaics made from raw, unprocessed images days after Huygens landed, but they continue processing the data.

The team now has produced the first enhanced mosaic images. They used special image projection tech

A crucial step in a procedure that could enable future quantum computers to break today’s most commonly used encryption codes has been demonstrated by physicists at the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

As reported in the May 13 issue of the journal Science,* the NIST team showed that it is possible to identify repeating patterns in quantum information stored in ions (charged atoms). The NIST work used three ions as quantum bits

Observations of Titan’s atmosphere offer a unique look at how Saturn’s giant moon compares to Earth.

Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. Like Earth, Titan’s atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen, but unlike Earth, one of the most abundant constituents is methane (CH4). The Huygens probe will determine if the abundance of argon exceeds that of methane. Methane, the main component in natural gas, plays a key role in the m

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have successfully levitated diamond and some of the heaviest elements, including lead and platinum.

Using liquid oxygen — the main component in many rocket fuels — to increase the buoyancy created by a specially designed superconducting magnet, they could now, in theory, levitate an object with a density 15 times larger than that of osmium, the heaviest metal known in nature.

The science behind the research could be used to devel

The NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft has confirmed earlier suspicions of an unseen moon hidden in a gap in Saturn’s outer A ring. A new image shows the new moon and the waves it raises in the surrounding ring material.

The moon, provisionally named S/2005 S1, was first seen in a time-lapse sequence of images taken on 1 May 2005, as Cassini began its climb to higher inclinations in orbit around Saturn. A day later, an even closer view was obtained, which allowed the moon&#146

Thanks to a manoeuvre performed on 10 May 2005 at 20:20 CET, ESA flight controllers have successfully completed the deployment of the first boom of the MARSIS radar on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.

After the start of the deployment of the first 20-metre boom on 4 May, analysis by flight controllers at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany, had shown that although 12 out of the 13 boom segments were in place, one of the outermost segments, pos

NASA’s launch of the NOAA-N environmental satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was postponed for 24 hours due to high winds. Launch is scheduled at 6:22 a.m. EDT, Thursday, May 12 pending favorable weather conditions.

Surface wind at the time of the rollback of the gantry surrounding the Boeing Delta II launch vehicle was as high as 36 knots. That was approximately seven knots above the limits at Space Launch Complex 2, Vandenberg Air Forc

Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a UNC start-up company, Xintek, Inc., have invented a new X-ray device based on carbon nanotubes that emits a scanning X-ray beam composed of multiple smaller beams while also remaining stationary.

As a result, the device can create images of objects from numerous angles and without mechanical motion, which is a distinct advantage for any machine since it increases imaging speed, can reduce the size of the devic

Added usability and intelligence has been brought to virtual assistants thanks to technology developed by European researchers, offering online users an entertaining, yet competent professional financial service.

“The interaction of natural language, online translation, 3D-avatar technology and artifical intelligence creates a powerful instrument that will find a wide acceptance among users,” says Ulrich Thiel at Germany’s Fraunhofer Integrated Publication and Information Systems

Public authorities have long needed the equivalent of the enterprise management system – as used by leading companies around the world – but seldom had the resources to afford it. Now a new collaborative-working platform developed under the ICTE-PAN project may hold the solution.

Starting in the mid-1990s, public authorities began making significant investments into IT infrastructures capable of supporting their need to manage large amounts of relatively unstructured data. Howe

Scientists at the University of Nottingham have successfully levitated diamond and some of the heaviest elements, including lead and platinum. Using liquid oxygen to increase the buoyancy created by a specially designed superconducting magnet, they could now levitate a hypothetical object with a density 15 times larger than that of the densest known material, osmium. This research is published today (11th May 2005) in the New Journal of Physics co-owned by the Institute of Physics and Deutsche P

Planetary protection: X-ray super-flares aid formation of ’solar systems’

New results from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory about the Orion Nebula imply super-flares torched our young solar system. Such X-ray flares likely affected the planet-forming disk around the early sun, and may have enhanced the survival chances of Earth.

By focusing on the Orion Nebula almost continuously for 13 days, a team of scientists used Chandra to obtain the deepest X-ray observations eve