Academy Professor Matti Krusius and Antti Finne, M.Sc. (Eng.), were invited to a recent science breakfast, hosted by the Academy of Finland, to talk about their ongoing work to produce a first-ever laboratory simulation of a black hole. A black hole is created as a result of the most extreme concentration of matter.

Scientists have been arguing about the possible existence of black holes for an entire century. Today the existence of black holes is supported by various astrophysical phenomena

A team of theoretical physicists working at CERN and the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel has developed a theory to account for the mysterious gamma ray bursts that come from the depths of the Universe. According to their ideas, gamma ray bursts are linked to supernovae, the cataclysmic explosions of massive stars at the end of their lives. When a new gamma ray burst (GRB 030329) was seen on March 29 2003, the CERN-Technion team immediately predicted that light from a supernova would first

A new computer software package, currently under development, will give the term “personal digital assistant” (PDA) a new meaning, helping users quickly and easily evaluate if they are operating at their mental best.

“Difficult tasks, such as an astronaut performing a space walk or a surgeon doing a complicated operation, require the utmost attention and vigilance. We’re developing a way for people to test themselves and make sure they are mentally up to the challenge,” said Dr. Stephen Kos

Scientists have uncovered a supermassive black hole at the core of a svelte, spiral galaxy, a finding that questions a recently devised rule of thumb in which only galaxies with bulging cores have such black holes.

Dr. Alex Filippenko, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Luis Ho, an astronomer at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Pasadena, discuss these results in the May 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Flares of distant supernovae may reveal major changes in early evolution of universe

Astronomers´ “yardstick” for measuring vast distances across the cosmos grew longer today as scientists at The Johns Hopkins University announced they had identified and closely analyzed two distant new instances of a kind of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova.

The new supernovae belong to a group of star types known as “standard candles” that astronomers prize for their usefulness i

Graphite had already been extensively studied. German physicist Martin Dienwiebel was therefore extremely surprised when he discovered a completely new effect in this well-known lubricant. During research into the frictional properties of the material, he discovered that the frictional force almost completely disappeared at a certain moment.

Dienwiebel only intended to test the new friction force microscope he had developed. The Tribolever is a raster microscope which can measure frictional

On 30 June 1908, the seemingly endless forests of Siberia received an unwelcome and unexpected visit by an intruder from deep space. As it plunged headlong through the Earth’s atmosphere, the incoming asteroid exploded a few miles above the tree tops, flattening the forest over an area about 50 km (30 miles) in diameter. If the 60 metre (200 ft) wide chunk of rock had arrived a few hours later, it could have destroyed a city the size of London or Paris.

Exactly how many of these threatening

Until the last few years, Mars has been regarded as a cold, arid world that lost most of its water long ago. However, recent observations by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey spacecraft have provided tantalising evidence that huge amounts of water may be hidden just below the surface.

Now, a powerful new instrument is poised to probe the Martian soil, using an advanced radar system to penetrate the rust-red desert. On Friday 11 April, Professor Iwan Williams (Queen Mary) will expl

Material has been discovered moving at nearly 10% the speed of light away from the centre of the nearby quasar PDS456 – the most powerful object in the local universe. Like all quasars, PDS456 is thought to be powered by matter converting into energy when material is swallowed by a supermassive black hole. New observations show that its energy output is so large that it is “choking on its food” and radiation is literally blowing the top off the inner region of the disc of in-falling material that su

Spinning black holes could be responsible for at least some of the immensely powerful gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) astronomers observe coming from distant galaxies. On Tuesday 8 April, Sheila McBreen of University College, Dublin, will tell the UK/Ireland National Astronomy Meeting in Dublin that her analysis of the way gamma-rays were emitted over the course of outbursts from a large sample of GRBs has revealed particular signatures, most likely to be those of a rotating black hole either being “spun up”

An international team of astronomers has discovered that “dark matter”, the mysterious material that seems to make up most of the mass of galaxies, is not as all-pervasive as previously believed. Surprising new results from studies of several elliptical galaxies show they are not surrounded by halos of dark matter as was expected. The findings will be presented at the UK/Ireland National Astronomy Meeting in Dublin on Wednesday April 9th by Dr Aaron Romanowsky of the University of Nottingham.

Spectacular VLT Photos Unveil Mysterious Nebulae

Quite a few of the most beautiful objects in the Universe are still shrouded in mystery. Even though most of the nebulae of gas and dust in our vicinity are now rather well understood, there are some which continue to puzzle astronomers.

This is the case of a small number of unusual nebulae that appear to be the subject of strong heating – in astronomical terminology, they present an amazingly “high degree of excitation”. This

Has an increasing trend in the Sun’s brightness contributed to global warming over the last few decades? One study published recently says it has but Judith Lean of the US Naval Research Laboratory will tell a joint session of the UK/Ireland National Astronomy Meeting and Solar Physics Meeting in Dublin that a different study has come to the opposite conclusion when she tackles the controversial topic of the relationship between our climate and the Sun on Tuesday 8 April.

Earth’s

A team of astronomers based in the UK and the US has for the first time measured the redshifts of a significant sample of puzzling “submillimetre galaxies”, discovered by some members of the team in 1997. Dr Ian Smail of the University of Durham will tell the UK/Ireland National Astronomy Meeting that these are remote galaxies with high redshifts, and are likely to contain huge numbers of young stars heavily enshrouded by dust. Because of the time it takes light to travel, they are seen how they were

When Gerald A. Miller first saw the experimental results from the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, he was pretty sure they couldn’t be right. If they were, it meant that some long-held notions about the proton, a primary building block of atoms, were wrong.

But in time, the findings proved to be right, and led physicists to the conclusion that protons aren’t always spherically shaped, like a basketball.

“Some physicists thought they did the experiment wron

This symmetry violation makes hydrogen possible, a requirement for life

Scientists at the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility in Bloomington have made the first unambiguous detection of a rare process, the fusion of two nuclei of heavy hydrogen to form a nucleus of helium and an uncharged pion. The pion is one of the subatomic particles responsible for the strong force that holds every nucleus together. The achievement will be announced Saturday (April 5) at the meeting of the Amer