International research team reports on the Earth-like surface of Saturn’s moon Titan
Conditions on Saturn’s moon Titan, with its dense atmosphere, are similar to those on Earth early in our solar system. Pictures and spectral analysis of Titan’s surface, recorded by an international scientific team including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), show a dried-out “river” landscape. Evaluating the data has now shown that methane on
ESO, the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, announced today that it has signed a contract with the consortium led by Alcatel Alenia Space and composed also of European Industrial Engineering (Italy) and MT Aerospace (Germany), to supply 25 antennas for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) project, along with an option for another seven antennas. The contract, worth 147 million euros, covers the design, manufacture, transport and on-site integration of
Create powerful statistical techniques to detect signals
A Case Western Reserve University research team from physics and statistics has recently created innovative statistical techniques that improve the chances of detecting a signal in large data sets. The new techniques can not only search for the “needle in the haystack” in particle physics, but also have applications in discovering a new galaxy, monitoring transactions for fraud and security risk, identifying the carrier
University of Chicago physicists have created a novel state of matter using nothing more than a container of loosely packed sand and a falling marble. They have found that the impacting marble produces a jet of sand grains that briefly behaves like a special type of dense fluid.
“We’re discovering a new type of fluid state that seems to exist in this combination of gas–air in this case–and a dense arrangement of particles,” said Heinrich Jaeger, Professor in Physics and Di
More than half of the largest galaxies in the nearby universe have collided and merged with another galaxy in the past two billion years, according to a Yale astronomer in a study using hundreds of images from two of the deepest sky surveys ever conducted.
The idea of large galaxies being assembled primarily by mergers rather than evolving by themselves in isolation has grown to dominate cosmological thinking. However, a troubling inconsistency within this general theory has
Jets of fine, icy particles streaming from Saturn’s moon Enceladus were captured in recent images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The images provide unambiguous visual evidence the moon is geologically active.
“For planetary explorers like us, there is little that can compare to the sighting of activity on another solar system body,” said Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. “This has been a heart-stopper, and surely one
Quantum memory
A series of publications in the journal Nature highlights the race among competing research groups toward the long-anticipated goal of quantum networking.
In one of three papers published the journal’s December 8 issue, a group of physicists from the Georgia Institute of Technology led by Professors Alex Kuzmich and Brian Kennedy describes the storage and retrieval of single photons transmitted between remote quantum memories composed of rubidium atoms
UK scientists are returning to Mars with the news that the UK is to be a major player in the first phase of the European Space Agency’s robotic space exploration programme – Aurora – which will set the agenda for Europe’s robotic exploration of space for the next 10 years. The announcement was made at the conclusion of ESA’s Ministerial Meeting held in Berlin (5-6 December).
The UK is to invest 108.1 million Euros (approximately £74.4 million) into Aurora, making the UK second la
NASA’s durable twin Mars rovers have successfully explored the surface of the mysterious red planet for a full Martian year (687 Earth days). Opportunity starts its second Martian year Dec. 11; Spirit started its new year three weeks ago. The rovers’ original mission was scheduled for only three months.
“The rovers went through all of the Martian seasons and are back to late summer,” said Dr. John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He is d
Astronomers track massive shockwaves in plasma escaping newborn star
Like traffic on a freeway, plasma spewing from the poles of newborn stars moves in clumps that travel at different speeds. When fast-moving particles run into slower material on these cosmic freeways, the resulting “traffic jams” create massive shock waves that travel trillions of miles.
Thanks to highly resolved images from the Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers have created the first mov
Looking at atmospheric disturbances during space storms
Scientists from NASA and the National Science Foundation discovered a way to combine ground and space observations to create an unprecedented view of upper atmosphere disturbances during space storms.
Large, global-scale disturbances resemble weather cold fronts. They form in the Earth’s electrified upper atmosphere during space storms. The disturbances result from plumes of electrified plasma that form in the i
Physicists at Kiel University discover an unusual state of matter
The existence of an unusual state of matter, a crystal that consists entirely of holes, has been proven at Kiel University. As reported in the latest issue of Physical Review Letters (December 2nd , 2005), an international team led by Professor Michael Bonitz has, for the first time, demonstrated with the help of extensive computer simulations that this exotic phenomenon, the existence of which was hitherto only a
Thanks to one of the most productive spacecraft ever built, scientists are far better acquainted with the star that lights our world and gives us life. Built for ESA by European industry, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) went into space on 2 December 1995.
The tenth anniversary of SOHO’s launch is a time for celebration for the scientists and engineers in Europe and the USA who conceived, created and still operate this unprecedented solar spacecraft – and who have
Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) has been awarded one of the UK’s most prestigious educational awards for its astronomical excellence and public engagement in science.
The biennial Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for Further and Higher Education recognise and reward the outstanding contribution that universities and colleges in the United Kingdom make to the intellectual, economic, cultural and social life of the nation.
LJMU’s winning entry relates to the develo
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have successfully conducted an important round of successful laser experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), validating key computer simulations and theoretical projections relevant to the plasma and X-ray environment necessary to achieve ignition.
NIF, which is more than 80 percent complete, is a 10-story building in which 192 laser beams are focused on a tiny target inside a 30-foot diameter aluminum-lined
The IMPRESS project saw the first launch of an experimental payload, the Electromagnetic Levitator, onboard an ESA/DLR-funded Texus 42 sounding rocket, from the Esrange launch site near Kiruna in northern Sweden, on 1 December at 10:06 hours CET.
This experimental payload, jointly developed by ESA and the DLR, enables accurate measurement of the properties of highly-reactive liquid metal alloys. Such measurements are unattainable on Earth and will greatly benefit the project.
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