VLT Observations of Beryllium in Two Old Stars Clock the Beginnings

Observations by an international team of astronomers with the UVES spectrometer on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory (Chile) have thrown new light on the earliest epoch of the Milky Way galaxy.

The first-ever measurement of the Beryllium content in two stars in a globular cluster (NGC 6397) – pushing current astronomical technology towards the limit – has made it possible to study the ea

Two new moons orbiting between Mimas and Enceladus, discovered by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, may be the smallest bodies so far seen around the ringed planet.

The moons are approximately three kilometres and four kilometres across. Located 194 000 kilometres and 211 000 kilometres from the planet’s centre, the moons are between the orbits of two other Saturnian moons, Mimas and Enceladus. They are provisionally named S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2, bringing the current

A new sensor system being developed at the University of Missouri-Rolla may help get rescue personnel to the scene faster the next time a tornado or terrorist damages a bridge or other structure because of its ability to “memorize” the location of the damage.

Unlike all other infrastructure-embedded sensors, which reset following the disaster, the distributed cable sensors under development at UMR could “memorize” the most severe damage that occurred during a prior catastrophic eve

The first spacecraft intended to orbit Mercury was launched on Aug. 3, 2004, carrying an instrument for mapping the composition of the planet’s crust that was calibrated with a novel procedure at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The procedure, using NIST-produced, high-energy gamma rays, enabled the device to be prepared for the same intense radiation levels typically produced in outer space.

Mercury is a rocky planet like the Earth but smaller, denser and

A NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory image has revealed a complex of several intergalactic hot gas clouds in the process of merging. The superb Chandra spatial resolution made it possible to distinguish individual galaxies from the massive clouds of hot gas. One of the clouds, which envelopes hundreds of galaxies, has an extraordinarily low concentration of iron atoms, indicating that it is in the very early stages of cluster evolution.

“We may be seeing hot intergalactic gas in a

New architectural guidelines to assist programmers develop wireless Internet services for 3G devices such as PDAs, camera-phones, data terminals, etc and overcome difficulties such as reduced screen sizes, varying bandwidth, handling mobility etc. were demonstrated by project WISE.

The main purpose of the architectural guidelines is to provide a unified and organised approach to the description of the software architecture. The architecture is described both from an abstract conce

Network could operate 100 times faster

Canadian researchers have shown that nanotechnology can be used to pave the way to a supercharged Internet based entirely on light. The discovery could lead to a network 100 times faster than today’s.

In a study published today in Nano Letters, Professor Ted Sargent and colleagues advance the use of one laser beam to direct another with unprecedented control, a featured needed inside future fibre-optic networks. “This finding showc

Real geodes are handball-sized, hollow rocks that start out as bubbles in volcanic or sedimentary rock. Only when these inconspicuous round rocks are split in half by a geologist, do we get a chance to appreciate the inside of the rock cavity that is lined with crystals. In the case of Hubble’s 35 light-year diameter ’celestial geode’ the transparency of its bubble-like cavity of interstellar gas and dust reveals the treasures of its interior.

The object, called N44

A bevy of satellites buzzing around in the Earth’s magnetosphere has found at least part of the answer to a long-standing puzzle about the source of the charged particles that feed the aurora.

The charged particles come from explosions on the sun and smash into the Earth’s magnetic field, which repels the bulk of them. But many slip through, often via a physical process called magnetic reconnection, where the magnetic field traveling with the particles breaks and reconnect

Forging wills and bank cheques could now be near impossible thanks to a team of physicists in Rome (Italy). Writing in the latest issue of the Institute of Physics journal, Journal of Optics A, the scientists announce a new technique that can detect forged handwriting better than ever before.

Professor Giuseppe Schirripa Spagnolo, Carla Simonetti and Lorenzo Cozzella from the Università degli Studi “Roma Tre” in Rome, Italy, have devised a forgery detection method that creates a

Fully integrated worldwide wireless communication has come a step closer with the help of a grant of almost €4 million from the Information Society Technology (IST) Programme of the European Union’s Framework Programme.

The OPIUM project carried out trials of 3G services in China, Portugal, Spain, Germany, the UK and Ireland, in support of the accelerated rollout of commercial services. These trials dealt with the protocol and application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow Inte

How can we make full use of the potential offered by the intelligent home? Wouldn’t it be convenient if the fridge could send an SMS message asking you to buy some milk on the way home.

There are many interesting possibilities, but the problem has always been to find a way of configuring devices in an intuitive way. The IST-supported project ACCORD has developed an intuitive interface that would enable families to program their homes.
“We started out with studies of people at

A new method for looking at the composition of comets using ground-based telescopes has been developed by chemists at UC Davis. Remnants from the formation of our solar system, the makeup of comets gives clues about how the Earth and other planets formed.

William Jackson, professor and chair of chemistry at UC Davis; researchers Alexandra Scodinu and Dadong Xu; and Anita Cochran of the University of Texas at Austin have developed methods to use visible and ultraviolet spectroscopy

ESA’s Mars Express has relayed pictures from one of NASA’s Mars rovers for the first time, as part of a set of interplanetary networking demonstrations. The demonstrations pave the way for future Mars missions to draw on joint interplanetary networking capabilities. ESA and NASA planned these demonstrations as part of continuing efforts to cooperate in space exploration.

On 4 August at 14:24 CEST, as Mars Express flew over one of NASA’s Mars exploration rovers, Opportunity, i

The eyes aboard the Mars rover Spirit are delivering ground truth.

After more than six months of examining the photographic and spectral data from the rover, Mars mission scientists confirm that the albedo — which is the percentage of sunlight reflected on the red planet’s dusty surface — indicates important variations in mineral and dust composition.

“Spirit landed in a medium brightness region of Gusev crater, and on this mission has crossed into brighter and dark

Whether viewed dimly through the haze and lights of a city or in all their glory in a pristine wilderness, the stars that surround the Earth are magnificent, and one day Earthlings will travel to some of the new planets that astronomers are locating. However, the stars we see are not necessarily where we think they are, according to an international research team.

“We know that the light from distant stars takes a very long time to reach the Earth,” says Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, distin