Compact jets that shoot matter into space in a continuous stream at near the speed of light have long been assumed to be a unique feature of black holes. But these odd features of the universe may be more common than once thought.
Astrophysicists using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope recently spotted one of these jets around a super-dense dead star, confirming for the first time that neutron stars as well as black holes can produce these fire-hose-like jets of matter. A pap
An ambitious mission by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to make a new, high resolution map of the universe has just successfully returned its first pictures, and UK team members are delighted with the success. The AKARI (formerly ASTRO-F) infrared space telescope is making its All-Sky Survey at infrared wavelengths with sharper images and a much higher sensitivity than the first infrared astronomical sky survey satellite launched in 1983. AKARI will leave a tremendous legacy f
As the World Cup draws closer and football fever starts to take over, physicist Nick Linthorne has found out how players like Gary Neville can achieve the perfect long throw-in, which could be crucial in setting up a goal for the England squad. An article, A new angle on throwing, in the June edition of Physics World, describes how the physics of projectiles can be used to calculate the optimum angle at which a ball needs to be released to achieve the longest possible throw-in. The article desc
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first-ever picture of a distant quasar lensed into five images. In addition the image holds a treasure of lensed galaxies and even a supernova.
The most unique feature in a new image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a group of five quasar images produced by a process called gravitational lensing, in which the gravitational field of a massive object – in this case, a cluster of galaxies – bends and amplifies
People with diabetes, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis are at increased risk of death when they are exposed to particulate air pollution, or soot, for one or more years, according to a study to be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 22nd.
The study looked at hospital discharges for people with these four types of diseases living in 34 cities between 1985 and 1999. The research
AKARI, the new Japanese infrared sky surveyor mission in which ESA is participating, saw ‘first light’ on 13 April 2006 (UT) and delivered its first images of the cosmos. The images were taken towards the end of a successful checkout of the spacecraft in orbit.
The mission, formerly known as ASTRO-F, was launched on 21 February 2006 (UT) from the Uchinoura Space Centre in Japan. Two weeks after launch the satellite reached its final destination in space – a polar orbit around Ear
As scientists and engineers build devices at smaller and smaller scales, grasping the dynamics of how materials behave when they are subjected to electrical signals, sound and other manipulations has proven to be beyond the reach of standard scientific techniques. But now a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has found a way to time such effects at the nanometer scale, in essence clocking the movements of atoms as they are manipulated using electric fields.
The accomplis
In a recent issue of Science Magazine, the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray ImagingCherenkov (MAGIC) Telescope has reported the discovery of variable very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission from a microquasar. Microquasars are binary star systems, composed of a massive ordinary star and a compact object, which can be either a neutron star or a black hole (see Fig. 1). The stars orbit around one another and, when they are close enough, there is a transfer of matter from the massive one toward the comp
The continuing disintegration of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has allowed ESA scientists to see into the interior of the comet. Using a revolutionary camera attached to the ESA Optical Ground Station on Tenerife, they have followed the detailed twists and turns of various comet fragments.
The superconducting camera, SCAM, is an ultra fast photon counting camera, developed by ESA. It is cooled to just 300 thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. This enables its sensitiv
HARPS Instrument Finds Unusual Planetary System
Using the ultra-precise HARPS spectrograph on ESO’s 3.6-m telescope at La Silla (Chile), a team of European astronomers have discovered that a nearby star is host to three Neptune-mass planets. The innermost planet is most probably rocky, while the outermost is the first known Neptune-mass planet to reside in the habitable zone. This unique system is likely further enriched by an asteroid belt.
“For the first time, we have dis
Nanotechnology has been touted as the next technology revolution, transforming everything from communications to medicine, water decontamination to homeland security. But scientific progress has been accompanied by fears over unknown consequences of nanotechnology, with one pressure group even calling for a moratorium on all research until more is known. More specific concerns have been voiced by various parties – including the UK Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering – about exposure t
One of the attractions at the ILA2006 Space Pavilion is the full-scale ExoMars rover mock-up based on an artist’s impression of Europe’s next mission to Mars and the first robotic mission with the European Space Exploration Programme Aurora.
The large rover and its deployment on the surface of Mars are probably the most challenging elements of the ExoMars mission, currently slated for launch in 2011, which will search for traces of life on and underneath the surface of Mars. T
Experimental results could point the way to fabricating room temperature superconductors and solving a major mystery in physics
A French-German team of experimental scientists, led by Philippe Bourges of the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, France, reports that it has verified the central prediction of a theory on high-temperature superconductivity developed by Chandra Varma, distinguished professor of physics at UC Riverside. The verification ultimately could assist in the f
Carbon fullerenes now have metallic cousins, ‘hollow golden cages’
Scientists have uncovered a class of gold atom clusters that are the first known metallic hollow equivalents of the famous hollow carbon fullerenes known as buckyballs.
The evidence for what their discoverers call “hollow golden cages” appeared today in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The fullerene is made up of a sphere of 60 carbon (C) atoms; gol
According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the Big Bang represents The Beginning, the grand event at which not only matter but space-time itself was born. While classical theories offer no clues about existence before that moment, a research team at Penn State has used quantum gravitational calculations to find threads that lead to an earlier time. “General relativity can be used to describe the universe back to a point at which matter becomes so dense that its equations don’t hold u
“Lighthouses in the Sky” Yield Biggest-Ever 3-D Map of the Cosmos
A team of astronomers led by Nikhil Padmanabhan and David Schlegel has published the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever constructed, a wedge-shaped slice of the cosmos that spans a tenth of the northern sky, encompasses 600,000 uniquely luminous red galaxies, and extends 5.6 billion light-years deep into space, equivalent to 40 percent of the way back in time to the Big Bang.
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