They report in Science Express that Type II supernovae – where a massive star comes to the end of its life and releases its cataclysmic energy – are the…
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at the University of Missouri at Rolla have built an ultrasound analogue of the laser.
Called a uaser (pronounced WAY-zer) – for ultrasound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, the instrument produces ultrasonic waves that are coherent and of one frequency, and could be used to study laser dynamics and detect subtle changes, such as phase changes, in modern materials.
“We have demonstrated
A protein called calpain can be the key to either preventing or promoting the cell death, a Queen’s University study has found.
“This work provides proof in principle that pharmacological inhibition of calpain may be used to block cell death in situations where this is not desirable, such as in neuronal cells of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s patients, but to promote cell death in cancer cells where this is clearly a very desirable outcome,” says lead researcher Peter Greer
Washington, D.C. Astronomers detected unusually high quantities of carbon, the basis of all terrestrial life, in an infant solar system around nearby star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away. “For years we’ve looked to this early forming solar system as one that might be going through the same processes our own solar system did when the rocky planets, including Earth, were forming,” commented lead author Aki Roberge,* who began the research while at Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magne
How much carbon dioxide is produced from the energy you use in a week and how does this contribute to the problems of global warming and climate change? How can physics help? How many students can you fit into a tent?
This month at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Camp Energy – Survival of the Physicists will answer these questions. Four physics students have been challenged by the Institute of Physics to camp out at the festival from 7 to 11 June and live as carbon neutrally as
Our Sun has its explosive flares and spots and high speed wind, but it is a placid star compared to some. Stars that are much more massive live fast and die young, with blue-white, intensely hot surfaces that emit energy at a rate millions of times greater than that of the Sun. These stars are so bright that their light alone propels outflowing stellar winds – up to a billion times stronger than the solar wind – at speeds of up to 30,000 km/s, or one per cent of the speed of light.
Using massive clusters of galaxies as “cosmic telescopes,” a research team led by a Johns Hopkins University astronomer has found what may be infant galaxies born in the first billion years after the beginning of the universe.
If these findings are confirmed, the extra magnification provided by these gargantuan natural telescopes will have given astronomers their best-ever view of galaxies as they formed in the early universe, more than 12 billion years ago, said Holland Ford
Two of the five most important papers published in the 43-year history of the journal Applied Physics Letters were written by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Nick Holonyak Jr., a John Bardeen Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Illinois, was an author of both papers, which span the development of the light-emitting diode to the invention of the transistor laser.
As the American Institute of Physics cele
Scientists at the University of Chicago have bolstered the case for a popular scenario of the big bang theory that neatly explains the arrangement of galaxies throughout the universe. Their supercomputer simulation shows how dark matter, an invisible material of unknown composition, herded luminous matter in the universe from its initial smooth state into the cosmic web of galaxies and galaxy clusters that populate the universe.
Previous studies by other researchers had already v
Up to 2 1/2 times greater risk than cars
Every year Utah children are seriously injured and killed when they’re hit by a vehicle backing out of a driveway. But a child is up to 2 ½ times more likely to be backed over by a minivan or truck than by a car, according to a University of Utah study.
In the first report of its kind, University researchers found children are 2.4 times more likely to be struck by a van and 53 percent more likely to be hit by a truck than by a car.
Astronomers have found the largest number of the most distant, youngest galaxy clusters yet, a feat that will help them observe the developing universe when it was less than half its current age and still in its formative stages.
The team of astronomers from the University of Florida, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found nearly 300 new galaxy clusters and groups, including nearly 100 at distances of eight to 10 billion light yea
Scientists have gone a long way to solving a question about the nature of plutonium that has remained a mystery since the Manhattan Project.
Plutonium behaves like no other element in nature. The bonding of its electrons causes its crystal structure to be uneven, similar to a mineral, and the nucleus is unstable, causing the metal to spontaneously decay over time and damage the surrounding metal lattice.
A plutonium-gallium alloy ingot reclaimed from a nuclear weapon.
A new understanding of how glass is formed may assist with our understanding of everything from the design of golf club heads to the structure of the early universe.
Princeton chemists have found that the formation of glass — a familiar substance that nonetheless retains some elusive scientific mysteries — always occurs differently depending on how quickly a liquid substance is cooled into its solid form. Though the findings will likely dash the hopes of condensed matter physi
One of the youngest supernova remnants known, a glowing red ball of dust created by the explosion 1,000 years ago of a supermassive star in a nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, exhibits the same problem as exploding stars in our own galaxy: too little dust.
Recent measurements by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers using infrared cameras aboard NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope show, at most, one-hundredth the amount of dust predicted by current theories
Planetary-Mass Objects Found to be Surrounded by Discs
Two new studies, based on observations made with ESO’s telescopes, show that objects only a few times more massive than Jupiter are born with discs of dust and gas, the raw material for planet making. This suggests that miniature versions of the solar system may circle objects that are some 100 times less massive than our Sun.
These findings are to be presented Monday, 5 June at the American Astronomical Socie
Two new images from the Gemini Observatory released yesterday (Monday June 5th 2006) at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Calgary, Canada, show a pair of beautiful nebulae that were created by two very different types of stars at what may be similar points in their evolutionary timelines.
One is a rare type of very massive spectral-type “O” star surrounded by material it ejected in an explosive event earlier in its life that continues to lose mass in a steady “stell
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