Using a technique employed by astronomers to determine stellar surface temperatures, chemists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have measured the temperature inside a single, acoustically driven collapsing bubble. Their results seem out of this world.

“When bubbles in a liquid get compressed, the insides get hot – very hot,” said Ken Suslick, the Marvin T. Schmidt Professor of Chemistry at Illinois and a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science a

Preparations for the arrival of “Jules Verne”, the first European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), and those for ESA astronaut Roberto Vittori’s mission, took a step forward when the unmanned Russian cargo spacecraft Progress M-52 docked yesterday, 2 March at 21.10 Central European Time (CET) with the International Space Station (ISS).

Launched two days earlier, on 28 February at 20.09 CET from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan by a Soyuz rocket as ISS mission 17P, the Progre

A full-scale quantum computer could produce reliable results even if its components performed no better than today’s best first-generation prototypes, according to a paper in the March 3 issue in the journal Nature* by a scientist at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

In theory, such a quantum computer could be used to break commonly used encryption codes, to improve optimization of complex systems such as airline schedules, and to s

Discovery points to new class of astronomical objects

Astronomers at Sweet Briar College and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have detected a powerful new bursting radio source whose unique properties suggest the discovery of a new class of astronomical objects. The researchers have monitored the center of the Milky Way Galaxy for several years and reveal their findings in the March 3, 2005 edition of the journal, “Nature.”

Principal investigator, Dr. Scott Hyman, pr

Scientists have obtained new insight into the unique power source for many of Jupiter’s auroras, the most spectacular and active auroras in the Solar System. Extended monitoring of the giant planet with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory detected the presence of highly charged particles crashing into the atmosphere above its poles.

X-ray spectra measured by Chandra showed that the auroral activity was produced by ions of oxygen and other elements that were stripped of most

It is the hugest superconducting solenoid in the world and it is able to generate a magnetic field 100.000 times stronger than the Earth’s one

The hugest superconducting solenoid ever built in the world is finally completed. It is formed by five huge modules connected each other and will generate a magnetic field of 4 Tesla, equal to 100.000 times the Earth magnetic field. This extraordinary system will be dedicated to Cms (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at Lhc accelerator at

Cornell University-led team operating the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS), the largest of the three main instruments on NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, has discovered a mysterious population of distant and enormously powerful galaxies radiating in the infrared spectrum with many hundreds of times more power than our Milky Way galaxy. Their distance from Earth is about 11 billion light years, or 80 percent of the way back to the Big Bang.

Virtually everything about this new clas

An international team of astronomers using the world’s largest X-ray and optical telescopes have spotted the most distant massive object ever detected, a cluster of galaxies 9 billion light years distant from Earth.

The cluster of galaxies is so far away that the light detected by the team is much older than the Earth itself. The galaxy cluster, if it is even still there, would be at least 11 billion years old now. “By capturing this ancient, 9-billion-year-old light, we

GeoConcept SA of France, a leading specialist in decision-mapping technology, has just launched the first software package to calculate the optimal division of sales areas: GeoConcept Territory Manager. Previously, sales managers had to divide up territory manually, but now GeoConcept Territory Manager can automatically calculate the optimal organisation in just 20 seconds.

The GeoConcept Territory Manager system solves the everyday problems faced by sales managers who wish t

Rosetta’s Earth fly-by on 4 March, ESA’s closest ever at just 1900 kilometres, will provide a fantastic photo opportunity. The ’Rosetta Up Close’ photo contest will recognize and reward the best images and sky watchers everywhere are invited to participate.

If you’ve got a decent amateur telescope and digital imaging equipment, you can probably take some impressive photos of Rosetta—weather permitting—as the craft speeds by Earth.

After sunse

Advance marks progress toward quantum computer made with ’artificial atoms’

Two superconducting devices have been coaxed into a special, interdependent state that mimics the unusual interactions sometimes seen in pairs of atoms, according to a team of physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The experiments, performed at the NIST laboratory in Boulder, Colo., are an important step toward

Data from the Cassini-Huygens satellite showing oxygen ions in the atmosphere around Saturn’s rings suggests once again that molecular oxygen alone isn’t a reliable indicator of whether a planet can support life.

That and other data are outlined in two papers in the Feb. 25 issue of the journal Science co-authored by University of Michigan engineering professors Tamas Gombosi, J. Hunter Waite and Kenneth Hansen; and T.E. Cravens from the University of Kansas. The papers b

The age of the ‘disappearing computer’ is upon us. Slowly but surely, traditional IT systems are moving from visible desktop computers to invisible embedded computers in intelligent devices, thanks in part to cutting-edge Java technology.
This is where the IST project HIDOORS set out to make its mark. HIDOORS blazed a trail in its target market by demonstrating that the programming language Java was sufficiently robust and flexible to deal with the full requirements of embedded, real-

ESA’s comet-chaser Rosetta will make a fly-by of planet Earth on 4 March 2005, and sky watchers should be able to see it with telescopes or binoculars if the sky is clear! Read on for details of ESA’s ’Rosetta Up Close’ photo contest.

Rosetta is approaching Earth from an area in the sky between the constellations Leo and Sextans, and should first become visible to large amateur telescopes around 26 February 2005. The spacecraft will make its closest approach to

A British-led team of astronomers have discovered an object that appears to be an invisible galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter – the first ever detected. A dark galaxy is an area in the universe containing a large amount of mass that rotates like a galaxy, but contains no stars. Without any stars to give light, it could only be found using radio telescopes. It was first seen with the University of Manchester’s Lovell Telescope in Cheshire, and the sighting was confirmed with the Areci

Just a month after a call for a European-wide ban of the swastika, scientists have found that the symbol has new applications in optical communications and could have a role in quantum cryptography.

Dr Darren Bagnall from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton has found that he can arrange tens of thousands of gold swastikas on a square millimetre to form new optical metamaterials that act to artificially change the polarisation of lig