Data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission are providing convincing evidence that Saturn’s moon Phoebe was formed elsewhere in the Solar System, and was only later caught by the planet’s gravitational pull.
One way to unlock Phoebe’s secrets is using Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), developed by a team of US (JPL), French and Italian (ASI) scientists and engineers. The science team is made by a large international group of US, Italian, French an
Researchers from the United Kingdom, France and the DUBBLE beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) have made a step forward in research on glass. They have monitored the change in the structure of zeolites, crystalline solids, into an almost perfect glass when heated. They have done this by recording vibrations involving groups of atoms in zeolites that subsequently characterise the glass. Their results are published in the last issue of Science. Zeolites are porous cr
What if the speed of light is a constant only most of the time? What if gravity sometimes pushed instead of pulled? Scientists are increasingly asking what would seem like far-out questions regarding the laws and rules of physics after discovering conditions and materials where the rules don’t quite apply. Take the Doppler effect.
The Doppler effect is in use everywhere, everyday. Police use it to catch speeders. Satellites use it to track space debris and air-traffic control
In 2006, with the launch of Jules Verne, the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) will become the new European powerful automatic re-supply spaceship able to bring an indispensable payload to the International Space Station and its permanent crew. This first ATV will carry a mix of supplies depending on the Station’s needs and its own payload capacity.
ESA, NASA and Russian counterparts are already defining the priorities to accommodate the most appropriate combination of different sup
The world’s most accurate “ruler” made with extreme ultraviolet light has been built and demonstrated with ultrafast laser pulses by scientists at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The new device, which consistently generates pulses of light lasting just femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second, or millionths of a billionth of a second) in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnet
A new type of light was detected from a recent gamma-ray burst, as discovered by Los Alamos National Laboratory and NASA scientists using both burst-detection satellites and a Los Alamos-based robotic telescope.
In a paper published in the May 12 issue of Nature, Los Alamos scientists and NASA announced the detection of a form of light generated by the same process that drives the gamma ray burst itself, yielding new insights about these enigmatic cosmic explosions — the most pow
By surrounding fluorescent dyes with a protective silica shell, Cornell University researchers have created fluorescent nanoparticles with possible applications in displays, biological imaging, optical computing, sensors and microarrays such as DNA chips. These are all applications for which quantum dots have been used or are being considered. But the new Cornell nanoparticles offer an appealing alternative because of their greater chemical inertness and reduced cost.
“People hav
Smaller, faster computers, bullet proof t-shirts and itty-bitty robots, such are the promises of nanotechnology and the cylinder-shaped collection of carbon molecules known as nanotubes. But in order for these exciting technologies to hit the marketplace (who wouldn’t want an itty-bitty robot), scientists must understand how these miracle-molecules perform under all sorts of conditions. For, without nanoscience, there would be no nanotechnology.
In a recent study, researchers
Scientists on Huygens’ Descent Imager Spectral Radiometer (DISR) experiment have generated new views of Saturn’s giant moon, Titan.
The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe descended onto Titan on January 14, 2005. The University of Arizona-led DISR team released mosaics made from raw, unprocessed images days after Huygens landed, but they continue processing the data.
The team now has produced the first enhanced mosaic images. They used special image projection tech
A crucial step in a procedure that could enable future quantum computers to break today’s most commonly used encryption codes has been demonstrated by physicists at the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
As reported in the May 13 issue of the journal Science,* the NIST team showed that it is possible to identify repeating patterns in quantum information stored in ions (charged atoms). The NIST work used three ions as quantum bits
Observations of Titan’s atmosphere offer a unique look at how Saturn’s giant moon compares to Earth.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. Like Earth, Titan’s atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen, but unlike Earth, one of the most abundant constituents is methane (CH4). The Huygens probe will determine if the abundance of argon exceeds that of methane. Methane, the main component in natural gas, plays a key role in the m
Scientists at The University of Nottingham have successfully levitated diamond and some of the heaviest elements, including lead and platinum.
Using liquid oxygen — the main component in many rocket fuels — to increase the buoyancy created by a specially designed superconducting magnet, they could now, in theory, levitate an object with a density 15 times larger than that of osmium, the heaviest metal known in nature.
The science behind the research could be used to devel
The NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft has confirmed earlier suspicions of an unseen moon hidden in a gap in Saturn’s outer A ring. A new image shows the new moon and the waves it raises in the surrounding ring material.
The moon, provisionally named S/2005 S1, was first seen in a time-lapse sequence of images taken on 1 May 2005, as Cassini began its climb to higher inclinations in orbit around Saturn. A day later, an even closer view was obtained, which allowed the moon’
Thanks to a manoeuvre performed on 10 May 2005 at 20:20 CET, ESA flight controllers have successfully completed the deployment of the first boom of the MARSIS radar on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.
After the start of the deployment of the first 20-metre boom on 4 May, analysis by flight controllers at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany, had shown that although 12 out of the 13 boom segments were in place, one of the outermost segments, pos
NASA’s launch of the NOAA-N environmental satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was postponed for 24 hours due to high winds. Launch is scheduled at 6:22 a.m. EDT, Thursday, May 12 pending favorable weather conditions.
Surface wind at the time of the rollback of the gantry surrounding the Boeing Delta II launch vehicle was as high as 36 knots. That was approximately seven knots above the limits at Space Launch Complex 2, Vandenberg Air Forc
Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a UNC start-up company, Xintek, Inc., have invented a new X-ray device based on carbon nanotubes that emits a scanning X-ray beam composed of multiple smaller beams while also remaining stationary.
As a result, the device can create images of objects from numerous angles and without mechanical motion, which is a distinct advantage for any machine since it increases imaging speed, can reduce the size of the devic
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