An ultrafine nanometre ’drill’ could be used to make some of the tiniest lenses imaginable and may also allow scientists to harness light for use in optical computers of the future, thanks to research published today.

Scientists from the UK and Spain describe in this week’s Science Express (8 July) how artificial materials with tiny grooves and holes drilled into their surfaces could channel and focus light beams on a chip.

When light hits the surface of a metal such

Very Large Telescope Unravels New Population of Very Old Massive Galaxies

Current theories of the formation of galaxies are based on the hierarchical merging of smaller entities into larger and larger structures, starting from about the size of a stellar globular cluster and ending with clusters of galaxies. According to this scenario, it is assumed that no massive galaxies existed in the young universe.

However, this view may now have to be revised. Using the multi-mode F

Exploring and using space is the biggest adventure facing mankind. Finding innovative ways for ESA to continue doing this is the role of the Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) at ESA’s European Space Technology Research Centre (ESTEC).

It is their job to look into the future and identify ideas which could enable missions that currently sound like science fiction.

From simple “what if?” ideas, the ACT evaluate what is and is not possible. For example, among many other proposals, they are

Observations challenge standing view of how and when galaxies formed

A rare glimpse back in time into the universe’s early evolution has revealed something startling: mature, fully formed galaxies where scientists expected to discover little more than infants.

“Up until now, we assumed that galaxies were just beginning to form between 8 and 11 billion years ago, but what we found suggests that that is not the case,” said Karl Glazebrook, associate professor of physics and

For many years astronomical images from the world’s telescopes were reserved for an elite of astronomers and technical people. Now anyone with a desktop computer running Adobe® Photoshop® software can try their hand at crafting astronomical images as beautiful as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. A free software plug-in, released today, makes a treasure trove of archival astronomical images and spectra from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Tele

The world’s largest scale model of the Solar System will be created in the UK thanks to an award of £28,000 from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts), the organisation that invests in UK creativity and innovation. The project, run by Spaced Out UK, will be made with 18 UK schools and visitor attractions and bring together artists, scientist and designers in raising the profile of astronomy and creating an exciting new learning resource for the nation.

In all, th

In the future, our computers no longer crash as we try and download pictures that are too heavy in memory, our cars no longer pollute the atmosphere and cancer could be dealt with by a visit to the GP. Some of it, at least, will happen thanks to cutting edge research happening now at the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Here scientists are among a handful across the world helping to turn science fiction into a fact of the future through the science of nanotechnol

Finland has become the eleventh member state of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) [1].

The formal accession procedure was carried through as planned and has now been completed. Following the signing of the corresponding Agreement earlier this year (ESO PR 02/04), acceptance by the Finnish Parliament and ratification by the Finnish President of the Agreement as well as the ESO Convention and the associated protocols in June [2] and the deposit of the instruments of accession tod

The CERN openlab for DataGrid applications, a partnership between CERN , the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and five leading IT companies – Enterasys Networks, HP, IBM, Intel and Oracle – has announced a series of server and storage technical results regarding the first global science Grid – the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid project, LCG. The announcement was made at the recent annual sponsors meeting of the CERN openlab.

The openlab partners have demonstrated that a

Police aim to ‘design out’ crime by equipping valuable items with tracking devices that sound an alert or record their movement. They are being helped by electronic engineers at the University of Leeds who are devising a way of locating objects using widely-available technology.

Using Bluetooth – a short-range communications technology incorporated into many mobile phones and computers – researchers are creating networks which locate devices in relation to each other and track them using mon

The answer is yes, and not only that: they can also evaluate what will be the most successful strategy for conflict resolution, including re-formulating their action, or evading confrontation. Argument is used by computer agents only as the last resort.
The effectiveness of argumentation-based negotiation (ABN) for computer agents operating in multi-agent systems is assessed in a new paper co-authored by Professor Nick Jennings of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University o

University of Idaho’s Richard Wells and his microelectronics research team are helping usher in the age of real electronic brains.

UI researchers envision computers one day built from artificial neurons bundled together into networks that can perform tasks onerous to humans, such as dangerous military tactics, automated traffic and emergency dispatching, smart cars that drive themselves and eventually bio-medical applications and prosthetics.

“Our fundamental research on artifici

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the iridescent tapestry of star birth in a neighbouring galaxy in this panoramic view of glowing gas, dark dust clouds, and young, hot stars. The star-forming region, catalogued as N11B lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), located only 160,000 light-years from Earth. With its high resolution, the Hubble Space Telescope is able to view details of star formation in the LMC as easily as ground-based telescopes are able to observe stellar formation withi

After a seven-year cruise through the Solar System, the joint NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft last night successfully entered orbit around Saturn. The Cassini orbiter is now ready to begin its four-year survey of the planet and its moons, while the Huygens probe will be prepared for the next major mission milestone: its release toward the largest moon, Titan, in December.

“This shows international space co-operation at its best,” said ESA’s Director of Science, Prof. David Southwood

UK scientists involved in the Cassini space mission were ‘over the Moon’ after the spacecraft’s 100,000 km per hour white knuckle ride courtesy of Saturn’s gravity which successfully completed the critical manoeuvre to place Cassini in orbit around the ringed planet. ‘I’ve waited 15 years for this moment,’ said Dr Andrew Coates of the UK’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory and Co-Investigator on the Cassini spacecraft’s Plasma Electron Spectrometer,’ and now our 4-year tour of discovery can really be

Discovery overturns 20 years of previous research

Canada’s first space telescope, celebrates its first birthday today, but its latest surprising results could spoil the party for other astronomers whose earlier results are now being questioned.

The MOST team used their tiny but powerful satellite as a stellar stethoscope to take the pulse of one of the best-known stars in the Galaxy, called Procyon (PRO-see-yon), and were shocked to discover their cosmic patient is a “fl