ESO HARPS Instrument Discovers Smallest Ever Extra-Solar Planet

A European team of astronomers [1] has discovered the lightest known planet orbiting a star other than the sun (an “exoplanet”).

The new exoplanet orbits the bright star mu Arae located in the southern constellation of the Altar. It is the second planet discovered around this star and completes a full revolution in 9.5 days.

With a mass of only 14 times the mass of the Earth, the new planet lies at th

The importance of characterising the atomic structure of the silicon / silicon dioxide interface as an essential component in highly integrated circuits has steadily increased as a result of continuing miniaturisation of silicon chips. The physicists, Dr. Stefan Bergfeld, Bjoern Braunschweig and Prof. Dr. Winfried Daum, Institute of Physics and Physical Technologies at the Technical University of Clausthal, have succeeded in characterising the change in bond structure of interfacial atoms during the

With equipment so sensitive that it can locate clusters of electrons, Cornell University and University of Tokyo physicists have — sort of — explained puzzling behavior in a much-studied high-temperature superconductor, perhaps leading to a better understanding of how such superconductors work.

It turns out that under certain conditions the electrons in the material pretty much ignore the atoms to which they are supposed to be attached, arranging themselves into a neat pattern

Software Defined Radios (SDRs) are mobile devices that can be reconfigured over the air. Users could download new services from network operators, and even have voice and email services provided by different networks. The SCOUT project has studied how SDRs will be regulated and marketed.

“From the high level perspective, mobile terminal evolution will drive network evolution,” says Markus Dillinger of Siemens AG and SCOUT coordinator. “SDR Mobile terminals will evolve more and more

Fifteen years ago, the largest telescopes in the world had yet to locate a planet orbiting another star. Today telescopes no larger than those available in department stores are proving capable of spotting previously unknown worlds. A newfound planet detected by a small, 4-inch-diameter telescope demonstrates that we are at the cusp of a new age of planet discovery. Soon, new worlds may be located at an accelerating pace, bringing the detection of the first Earth-sized world one step closer.

Spam is a massive problem – it currently accounts for between 1/3 and 1/2 of all emails and costs companies billions of dollars as the result of lower productivity, loss of legitimate messages and the need for increased bandwidth and storage. In a bid to try solve the problem, IBM has brought together scientists from different areas of research division to develop an enterprise anti-spam filtering system which combines several different filtering technologies to create the ultimate anti-spam syste

West Virginia’s hot, humid and rainy summer this year couldn’t have made for better conditions for the under-the-radar marijuana growers who give law enforcement fits in the Mountain State.

Authorities last year confiscated 70,000 plants, and the West Virginia State Police are predicting to at least do that in 2004.

In a state topped by hard-to-get-to mountaintops and slashed by rugged ravines and isolated valleys, the challenge isn’t always knowing where the pot is today.

The Department of Homeland Security’s recent selection of Memphis as a “best practices” model for high-tech security measures could speed the implementation of similar technologies in other cities.

As the third of four sites to be named under DHS’ Regional Technology Integration Initiative, Memphis becomes a source of practical security “know-how,” providing technology solutions to security concerns, lessons learned and other data to help local and regional sites improve preparednes

A new class of water-soluble quantum dots made from small numbers of gold atoms could be the basis for a new biological labeling system with narrower excitation spectra, smaller particle size and fluorescence comparable to systems based on semiconductor quantum dots.

Providing the “missing link” between atomic and nanoparticle behavior in noble metals, these multi-electron “artificial atoms” could also serve as light-emitting sources in nanoscale optoelectronics and in energy tr

Using a network of small telescopes and the “transit method” of detection, scientists have made their first direct discovery of a planet orbiting a bright star. A periodic dimming of light from a bright star 500 light-years away revealed the planet’s presence. The star’s intense light will allow scientists to explore the chemical makeup of the planet’s atmosphere in future observations. A paper on the recent discovery will appear on-line today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) announced at a scientific conference in Beijing that the planned International Linear Collider (ILC) is to be realized in superconducting technology. This decision is of great importance for DESY and its international partners, since they developed this technology together and successfully tested it at the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) in Hamburg. The ILC is the next major project of particle physics. No decision has yet been taken on the r

Readings done by a Canadian-Austrian team present a puzzle for astronomers. Expected surface phenomena, which provide information about stellar structures, could not be evidenced from readings obtained by means of a Canadian microsatellite. The precise satellite readings leave no doubt on the data published in NATURE. The project, organised in co-operation with the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Vienna and supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), challenges the existing unders

The first sighting of atoms flying in formation has been reported by physicists at the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) in the Aug. 13 issue of Physical Review Letters*. While the Air Force and geese prefer a classic “V,” the strontium atoms–choreographed in this experiment with precision laser pulses and ultracold temperatures–were recorded flying in the shape of a cube.

This “rea

One of the ingenious instruments on board Rosetta is designed to ’smell’ the comet for different substances, analysing samples that have been ’cooked’ in a set of miniature ovens.

ESA’s Rosetta will be the first space mission ever to land on a comet. After its lander reaches Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the main spacecraft will follow the comet for many months as it heads towards the Sun. Rosetta’s task is to study comets, which are considered the

The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), meeting during an international physics conference here, today (August 20) endorsed the recommendation of a panel of physicists charged to recommend the technology choice for a proposed future international particle accelerator.

The 12-member International Technology Recommendation Panel, chaired by Barry Barish of the California Institute of Technology, recommended that the world particle physics community adopt supercondu

As her PhD defended at the Public University of Navarre, telecommunications engineer Ixone Arroabarren has analysed the vibrato, one of the most important tools of classical singers.

The study applies both to the teaching of singing in music as well as to the medical treatment of voice pathologies. It has put forward a mathematical model for the production of the voice that can be used both in the medical study/detection of pathologies of the vocal chords and speech as well as the