Using the superior sensitivity of ESA’s X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, a team of European astronomers has made the first direct measurement of a neutron star’s magnetic field.

The results provide deep insights into the extreme physics of neutron stars and reveal a new mystery yet to be solved about the end of this star’s life.

A neutron star is very dense celestial object that usually has something like the mass of our Sun packed into a tiny sphere only 20–30 km across. It is the p

Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX) and Clariant Corporation’s AZ Electronic Materials business (Somerville, N.J., USA) have signed an agreement to jointly develop photoresists for 157 nm exposure technology. The goal is to accelerate qualification of this technology for volume production.

The photoresist materials to be developed in this project will specifically enable Infineon to qualify the 157 nm technology for producing 55 nm structures in DRAM (dynamic random access memory)

Physicists at Ohio State University may have explained some strange behavior of the ultra-cold material known as Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).

The new analysis shows that scientists are closer than ever to harnessing BEC to perform useful functions such as quantum computing, said Tin-Lun Ho, professor of physics at Ohio State and the project’s principal investigator.

Ho has pioneered theoretical studies of BEC, an entirely new form of matter that defies description as

VLT Interferometer Measurements of Achernar Challenge Stellar Theory

To a first approximation, planets and stars are round. Think of the Earth we live on. Think of the Sun, the nearest star, and how it looks in the sky.

But if you think more about it, you realize that this is not completely true. Due to its daily rotation, the solid Earth is slightly flattened (“oblate”) – its equatorial radius is some 21 km (0.3%) larger than the polar one. Stars are enormous gaseous spheres

Joint news release of Infineon Technologies and IBM

IBM and Infineon Technologies AG (FSE/NYSE: IFX) today announced they have developed the most advanced Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM) technology to date by integrating magnetic memory components into a high-performance logic base.

Today’s announcement could accelerate the commercialization of MRAM, a breakthrough memory technology with the potential to begin replacing some of today’s memory technologies as early as

As any viewer of Crimewatch will know, E-fit pictures don’t always give a true likeness of a human face. However, all this is set to change thanks to researchers at the University of Kent who are working with their counterparts at the Open University to create a software system that will generate far more life-like, and therefore far more easily identifiable, faces.

Using a combination of computer science and forensic psychology, the team are developing a revolutionary system that will enabl

A team of astrophysicists at the University of the Basque Country has detected, for the first time ever, changes in Saturn’s winds. The research has merited front page coverage in the scientific magazine, Nature.

The winds blowing around Saturn and Jupiter are special. Unlike those of the rest of the planets, these move in an eastwards direction and are ten times stronger than the earth’s winds. On our planet it is solar radiation which governs the winds, but on the distant planets it is bel

First-Ever Census of Variable Mira-Type Stars in Galaxy Outside the Local Group
An international team led by ESO astronomer Marina Rejkuba has discovered more than 1000 luminous red variable stars in the nearby elliptical galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128).

Brightness changes and periods of these stars were measured accurately and reveal that they are mostly cool long-period variable stars of the so-called ‘Mira-type’. The observed variability is caused by stellar pulsation.

This is

A NASA robotic geologist named Spirit began its seven-month journey to Mars at 1:58:47 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (10:58:47 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time) today when its Delta II launch vehicle thundered aloft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The spacecraft, first of a twin pair in NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover project, separated successfully from the Delta’s third stage about 36 minutes after launch, while over the Indian Ocean. Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propul

Expanding their successful business relation Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (FSE, NYSE: SIE), a leading provider of mobile phones, and Infineon Technologies (FSE, NYSE: IFX), a leading semiconductor supplier for secure mobile solutions, today announced that Siemens has chosen Infineon’s S-GOLD Family for their next generation of multimedia oriented GPRS and EDGE handsets.

Infineon’s chipset platforms for GPRS and EDGE handsets are based on S-GOLDlite and S-GOLD. Both platforms

A small, bizarre cluster of a million young stars, enshrouded in thick gas and dust in a nearby dwarf galaxy, has been confirmed by Jean Turner, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, and her colleagues, in the June 5 issue of the journal Nature.

Turner and her colleagues estimate that the stars are still in the process of forming, and are less than a million years old — extremely young by astronomical standards.

The cluster contains more than 4,000 massive “O” stars, each a milli

The first overview analysis of a year’s worth of high-resolution infrared data gathered by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft is opening Mars to a new kind of detailed geological analysis and revealing a dynamic planet that has experienced dramatic environmental change.

The report by THEMIS’s science team will appear in an upcoming issue of Science and will be released on June 5 in the magazine’s online preview, Science Express.

“THEMIS

Europe’s first mission to the Red Planet, continues its successful mission with another successful ’’high-risk’’ post-launch milestone. Mars Express engineers breathed a sigh of relief this morning at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Germany.

If a particularly delicate operation had not proceeded as planned, it would have been impossible to deploy the Mars Express lander, Beagle 2, on arrival at Mars.
This crucial operation consisted of releasing

Penn State researchers have developed new software that can help decision-making teams in combat situations or homeland security handle information overload by inferring teams’ information needs and delivering relevant data from computer-generated reports.
The agent software called CAST (Collaborative Agents for Simulating Teamwork) highlights relevant data. This helps improve a team’s decision-making process as well as enhances members’ collaboration.

“This version of C

Laptop computers can generate enough heat that, in rare cases, they actually catch fire. While engineers have a great grasp of how to control electrical charge in circuits, they have a hard time getting rid of the heat created by flowing electrons. What’s missing is a fundamental understanding of how individual electrons generate heat.

A new device developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Robert Blick promises to change that.

NASA-funded project to search for underground water on Mars

University of Iowa professor and space physicist Don Gurnett is hoping to receive an uplifting word from western Asia on Monday.

That’s because Gurnett heads a $7 million, NASA-funded project to search for underground water on Mars, a project whose radar instrument is aboard the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft using a Soyuz rocket and scheduled for launch at 12:45 p.m. CDT Monday, June