Illinois-Scientists of the DZero collider detector collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have announced that their data on the properties of a subatomic particle, the B_s meson (“B sub s”), suggest that the particle oscillates between matter and antimatter in one of nature’s fastest rapid-fire processes-more than 17 trillion times per second. Their findings may affect the current view of matter-antimatter asymmetry, and might also offer a first glimpse
New data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory may provide clues to how quasars “turn on.” Since the discovery of quasars over 40 years ago, astronomers have been trying to understand the conditions surrounding the birth of these immensely powerful objects.
Hot, X-ray producing regions around two distant quasars observed by Chandra are thought to have formed during their activation. These features are located tens of thousands of light years from the central supermassive b
Boston University scientists produce clearest images of star-forming clouds
A team of astronomers from Boston University’s Institute for Astrophysical Research has produced the clearest map to-date of the giant gas clouds in the Milky Way that serve as the birthplaces of stars. Using a powerful telescope, the astronomers tracked emissions of a rare form of carbon monoxide called 13CO to chart a portion of our home galaxy and its star-forming molecular clouds.
The researc
ESA’s XMM-Newton has seen vast clouds of superheated gas, whirling around miniature stars and escaping from being devoured by the stars’ enormous gravitational fields – giving a new insight into the eating habits of the galaxy’s ‘cannibal’ stars.
The clouds of gas range in size from a few hundred thousand kilometres to a few million kilometres, ten to one hundred times larger than the Earth. They are composed of iron vapour and other chemicals at temperatures of many millions of degrees.
Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.
Just as a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field, so a moving mass generates a gravitomagnetic field. According to Eins
Rocky planets such as Earth and Mars are born when small particles smash together to form larger, planet-sized clusters in a planet-forming disk, but researchers are less sure about how gas-giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn form. Is core accretion–the process that creates their smaller, terrestrial cousins–responsible? Or could an alternate model known as disk instability–in which the planet-forming disk itself actually fragments into a number of planet-sized clumps–be at work? Could bot
Evidence never dies in the popular TV show Cold Case. Nor do some traces of life disappear on Earth, Mars, or elsewhere. An international team of scientists,* including researchers from the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, has developed techniques to detect miniscule amounts of biological remains, dubbed biosignatures, in the frozen Mars-like terrain of Svalbard, a island north of Norway. This technology will be used on future life-search missions to the Red Planet. The work is
Very Cool Brown Dwarf Discovered Around Star in the Solar Neighbourhood
Using Eso’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, an international team of researchers [1] discovered a brown dwarf belonging to the 24th closest stellar system to the Sun. Brown dwarfs are intermediate objects that are neither stars nor planets. This object is the third closest brown dwarf to the Earth yet discovered, and one of the coolest, having a temperature of about 750 degrees Centigrade. It orbits a very sma
The image, taken by the Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft, shows Crater De Gasparis on the Moon.
The AMIE camera obtained this image on 14 January 2006 from a distance of about 1090 kilometres with a ground resolution of approximately 100 metres per pixel.
Crater De Gasparis is located close to the Mare Humorum, at longitude 51.2° West and latitude 26.0° South, on the lower left quarter of the Moon’s Earth-facing side. It has a
The first measuring period for external users at the new X-ray radiation source VUV-FEL at DESY in Hamburg has been successfully concluded. Since its official startup in August 2005, a total of 14 research teams from ten countries have carried out first experiments using the facility’s intense laser beam. “Both the external researchers and the DESY team gained most valuable experience with the new machine,” DESY research director Professor Jochen Schneider comments. “As a worldwide unique pioneer
A team of Williams College faculty and students is preparing to scientifically observe the total eclipse of the Sun that will sweep across the far side of Earth on March 29. Six undergraduates are joining Jay Pasachoff, Bryce Babcock, and Steven Souza of the astronomy and physics departments, who have worked together on a series of expeditions, most recently to study Pluto and its moon Charon.
The expedition is to Kastellorizo, a small island east of Rhodes in the Greek Dodecanes
In an article to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, two British astronomers present new numerical simulations of how planetary systems form. They find that, in the early stages of planetary formation, giant protoplanets migrate inward in lockstep into the central star.
The current picture of how planetary systems form is as follows: i) dust grains coagulate to form planetesimals of up to 1 km in diameter; ii) the runaway growth of planetesimals leads to the formation of
TU Delft Researchers have shed new light on the formation of nanoscale surface features, such as nano ripples. These features are important because they could be useful as templates for growing other nanostructures. The scientific journal Physical Review Letters published an article this week on the research in Delft.
Some remarkable geometrical features may appear for instance on a glass surface when it is bombarded with ions, such as triangular patterns and ripples. Scientists study
Two theoreticians from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Indiana University (IU) have published the most accurate values yet for fundamental atomic properties of a molecule–values calculated from theory alone.
In a recent paper,* James Sims of NIST and Stanley Hagstrom of IU announced a new high-precision calculation of the energy required to pull apart the two atoms in a hydrogen molecule (H2). Accurate to 1 part in 100 billion, these are the most accurate ene
New data on the properties of potential “liquid lenses” compiled by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) could help the semiconductor industry continue to shrink feature sizes on computer chips.
In a paper published in the March 10, 2006 issue of Applied Optics,* NIST researchers present newly measured values for key properties of organic solvents and inorganic solutions that might be useful in immersion lithography. Little more than an idea three years ago,
Scientists peering back to the oldest light in the universe have new evidence for what happened within its first trillionth of a second, when the universe suddenly grew from submicroscopic to astronomical size in far less than a wink of the eye.
Using new data from a NASA satellite, scientists have the best evidence yet to support this scenario, known as “inflation.” The evidence, from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite, was gathered during three years
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