Four Kingston University engineering students are getting a taste of life in space taking part in a European Space Agency (ESA) flight that recreates the weightlessness felt by astronauts once they leave the Earth’s atmosphere. The four have been finding out what it is like to float in zero gravity aboard a special ESA aircraft in Bordeaux, France while carrying out experiments on a lightweight solar kite being developed by Kingston researchers.
The team is one of 30 from across Europe
Computer security will benefit
Computer code-makers may soon get the upper hand on code-breakers thanks to a new quantum cryptography method designed at the University of Toronto. Quantum cryptography uses particles of light to share secret encryption keys relayed through fibre-optic communications.
A paper published in the June 16 issue of the Physical Review Letter demonstrates how senders can vary the intensity of laser light particles (photons) used in fibre-optic co
Researchers from Korea, Italy, France and the ESRF have just observed how a molecule changes structure after being hit with a short flash of laser light. Thanks to very intense pulses of X-rays from the synchrotron and novel data analysis, they were able to confirm a long standing hypothesis regarding the evolution of this molecule. The results are published in the 14 July Science Express, the online counterpart of the journal Science.
The experiment was started by dissolving t
Germany joined the Preparatory Phase of the European Space Exploration Programme Aurora. It thus becomes the twelfth country participating in the programme (*), which allows scientists and industrial companies from Germany to participate in the Aurora Programme.
This decision has been warmly welcomed by ESA and unanimously endorsed by the eleven other Aurora Participating States at the 18th Aurora Board of Participants meeting held in Paris on 12 July 2005.
“After the recen
The four spacecraft of ESA’s Cluster fleet have reached their greatest distance from each other in the course of their mission to study Earth’s magnetosphere in three dimensions.
This operation, marking the fifth anniversary of Cluster in space, transforms Cluster in the first ‘multi-scale’ mission ever. In one of the most complex manoeuvres ever conducted by ESA spacecraft, three of the spacecraft were separated to 10 000 kilometres from each other, with the fourth spacecraft at 1
Astronomers and supporters from eight institutions around the country who are developing the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will gather at The University of Arizona Steward Observatory Mirror Lab on Saturday, July 23, to celebrate the casting of the first of seven 8.4- meter (27-foot) mirrors for the facility.
With this casting, the GMT becomes the first extremely large ground-based telescope to start construction.
The GMT will feature six giant off-axis mirrors around
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed an improved experimental X-ray detector that could pave the way to a new generation of wide-range, high-resolution trace chemical analysis instruments. In a recently published technical paper*, the researchers described how they used improved temperature-sensing and control systems to detect X-rays across a very broad range of energies (6 keV or more), with pinpoint energy resolution (an uncertainty of only
In the last few years, semiconductor circuit features have shrunk to sub-100 nanometer (nm) dimensions, while the size of the thin silicon wafers that these circuits are constructed on has grown from 200 millimeters (mm) to 300 mm (about 12 inches). The payoff is a higher yield of finished devices from fewer wafers.
The tough part, however, is to make wafers substantially larger while simultaneously meeting higher quality control specifications. The optics and materials for “print
Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) may be the next-generation patterning technique used to produce smaller and faster microchips with feature sizes of 32 nanometers and below. However, durable projection optics must be developed before this laboratory technique can become commercially viable. As part of its long-standing effort to develop EUVL metrology and calibration services (summarized in a recent paper*), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is creating a measurement s
For makers of computers, disk drives and other sophisticated technologies, a guiding principle is the smoother the surfaces of chips and other components, the better these devices and the products, themselves, will function.
So, some manufacturers might be surprised to learn that a fast and increasingly popular method for measuring surface texture can yield misleading results. As reported at recent conferences and in an upcoming issue of Applied Optics,* a team of National Instit
An international team of scientists has uncovered a rare type of neutron star so elusive that it took three satellites to identify it.
The findings, made with ESA’s Integral satellite and two NASA satellites, reveals new insights about star birth and death in our Galaxy. We report this discovery, highlighting the complementary nature of European and US spacecraft, on the day in which ESA’s Integral celebrates 1000 days in orbit.
The neutron star, called IGR J16283-48
Researchers at Purdue University have new evidence supporting earlier findings by other scientists who designed an inexpensive “tabletop” device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions.
The technology, in theory, could lead to a new source of clean energy and a host of portable detectors and other applications.
The new findings were detailed in a peer-reviewed paper appearing in the May issue of the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design. The paper
SSETI Express, the first spacecraft to be designed and built by European students, has set off on the first stage of its journey into space. It left ESTEC in the Netherlands yesterday and is now on its way to Plesetsk, the Russian cosmodrome from where it will be launched on 25 August.
Its journey to Russia will take considerably longer than its journey into space. It left ESTEC, ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands, by special truck yester
Free protons from acids associate with 1, 2 or 3 molecules of water and the structures can be identified by unique infrared laser spectrum signatures, according to a report in Science by Yale professor of chemistry Mark A. Johnson and his collaborators at Yale, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Georgia.
Acids yielding free protons are common in biological and chemical systems and the measurement of pH to determine acidity of an aqueous solution is a simple, stand
Astronomers Having Used ESO Telescopes Start Analysing Unique Dataset on the Comet Following the Deep Impact Mission
Ten days after part of the Deep Impact spacecraft plunged onto Comet Tempel 1 with the aim to create a crater and expose pristine material from beneath the surface, astronomers are back in the ESO Offices in Santiago, after more than a week of observing at the ESO La Silla Paranal Observatory. In this unprecedented observing campaign – among the most ambitious ever
A gigantic explosion on a neutron star halfway across the Milky Way galaxy, the largest such explosion ever recorded in the universe, should allow astronomers for the first time to probe the interiors of these mysterious stellar objects.
An international team of astrophysicists, combing through data from a NASA X-ray satellite, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, reports in the July 20th issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters that the explosion produced vibrations within the star,
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