Scientists analyzing recent samples of comet dust have discovered minerals that formed near the sun or other stars. That means materials from the innermost part of the solar system could have traveled to the outer reaches, where comets formed.
“The interesting thing is we are finding these high-temperature minerals in materials from the coldest place in the solar system,” said Donald Brownlee, a University of Washington astronomer who is principal investigator, or lead scientist
The hidden face of the sun is fully visible for the first time, thanks to a new technique developed at Stanford University.
Only half of the sun–the near side–is directly observable. The far side always faces away from Earth and is therefore out of view. But the new technology allows anyone with a computer to download images of the entire solar surface–an important advance with practical applications, say researchers, because potentially damaging solar storms that form on the
Scientists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have designed and demonstrated the world’s most accurate gamma ray detector, which is expected to be useful eventually in verifying inventories of nuclear materials and detecting radioactive contamination in the environment.
The tiny prototype detector, described today at the American Physical Society national meeting in Baltimore, can pinpoint gamma ray emissions signatures
Electronics based on carbon
Graphite, the material that gives pencils their marking ability, could be the basis for a new class of nanometer-scale electronic devices that have the attractive properties of carbon nanotubes – but could be produced using established microelectronics manufacturing techniques.
Using thin layers of graphite known as graphene, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, in collaboration with the Centre National de l
In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of change and transition, often portrayed with two faces gazing in opposite directions. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Janus particles are providing insight into the movement of molecules, and serving as the basis for new materials and sensors.
“By modifying the surface of colloidal particles into a Janus chemical compound, we can measure the rotational dynamics of single colloidal particles in suspension as well as at int
Nanoparticle’s shape could improve chemical sensing, biological imaging
Who better to invent “nanorice” than researchers at Rice University? But marketing and whimsy weren’t what motivated the team of engineers, physicists and chemists from Rice’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) to make rice-shaped particles of gold and iron oxide.
“On the nanoscale, the shape of a particle plays a critical role in how it interacts with light,” said LANP Director Naomi H
Relieved UK scientists are celebrating the news that NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) appears to have smoothly entered Mars orbit on Friday night (March 10th). Entering orbit is one of the most critical times for a space mission and Friday night’s manoeuvre managed to boost the tension for all as it took place on the far side of the Red Planet – so no news of the progress could be received on Earth during the critical phase.
UK scientists, from Oxford, Cardiff and Reading Uni
Even when they mutually repel each other, material particles in a solution can still form clusters. Details on the conditions necessary for this seemingly contradictory, phenomenon have now been published, following a project supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. Though they come from the realm of theoretical physics these findings may be very important for understanding of the ordering of polymer-like entities — and increase the standing of the fledgling field of soft matter physics in Au
An international collaboration of astronomers has discovered a “super-Earth” orbiting in the cold outer regions of a distant solar system about 9,000 light-years away. The planet weighs 13 times as much as Earth, and at -330 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s one of the coldest planets ever discovered outside our solar system.
Andrew Gould, leader of the MicroFUN collaboration and professor of astronomy at Ohio State University , pointed to two key implications of the discovery. “Fir
Mind the Nanogaps: Penn Researchers Create the First Reliable Method for Making Gaps for Nanotech AppsMind the Nanogaps: Penn Researchers Create the First Reliable Method for Making Gaps for Nanotech Apps
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have announced that they have bridged a major obstruction in the creation of nanoscale electronics by developing a simple, reliable and observable method of creating tiny, tiny gaps between electrodes.
Such “nanogaps” will
Twenty years ago, in the night between 13 and 14 March 1986, ESA’s Giotto spacecraft encountered Comet Halley. It was ESA’s first deep space mission, and part of an ambitious international effort to solve the riddles surrounding this mysterious object.
The adventure began when Giotto was launched by an Ariane 1 rocket (flight V14) on 2 July 1985. After three revolutions around the Earth, the on-board motor was fired to inject it into an interplanetary orbit.
After a crui
Saturn’s moon Enceladus is the source of Saturn’s E-ring, confirms research published today.
Writing in the journal Science, scientists show how a plume of icy water vapour bursting out of the South Pole of Enceladus replenishes the water particles that make up the E-ring and creates a dynamic water-based atmosphere around the small moon. The E-ring is Saturn’s outermost ring and is composed of microscopic particles. It is very diffuse and stretches between the orbit of two of Sat
If blown up in size, it would not have a chance in the car factory, but the microscopic conveyer belt built by Simon Bending’s team in the Department of Physics at the University of Bath and collaborators in Japan and the USA, could just be the next big thing for improving devices relying on the elusive properties of superconductors (Nature Materials, Advanced Online Publication March 12 2006). It’s not your standard rubber band on cylinders though – it moves in an erratic way, a quick jolt t
Images returned from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have yielded evidence that the geologically young south polar region of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus may possess reservoirs of near-surface liquid water that erupt to form geysers of the kind found in Yellowstone National Park.
This finding and others are being reported today by the Cassini Imaging Science Team in the journal Science.
“We realize that this is a radical conclusion – that we may have evidence for liqu
Finding Supports Theory that Single Collision Created Ninth Planet’s Three Satellites
Using new Hubble Space Telescope observations, a research team led by Dr. Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Dr. Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute has found that Pluto’s three moons are essentially the same color – boosting the theory that the Pluto system formed in a single, giant collision.
Publishing their findings in an Inter
Cassini data obtained during a close flyby of the Saturn moon Enceladus support an observation that large amounts of water are spewing into space from the tiny moon’s surface. This water originates near south polar “hot spots” on the moon, possible locations for the development of primitive life in the solar system.
Announced by the Cassini Imaging Science Team in today’s issue of Science, the theory is bolstered by measurements from the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (C
Feedback
