Researchers at UCSD have made carbon nanotubes bent in sharp predetermined angles, a technical advance that could lead to use of the long, thin cylinders of carbon as tiny springs, tips for atomic force microscopes, smaller electrical connectors in integrated circuits, and in many other nanotechnology applications. In a paper published in the April 7, 2005, issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Sungho Jin, a professor of materials science at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering, report
They look like an elegant row of columns, tiny enough for atomic-scale hide-and-seek, but these colonnades represent a new way to bring nanotechnology into mass production.
Nanotechnology, the ability to create and work with structures and materials on an atomic scale, holds the promise of extreme miniaturization for electronics, chemical sensors and medical devices. But while researchers have created tiny silicon wires and connected them together one at a time, these methods canno
Scientists discover one of the constants of the universe might not be constant
Physical constants are one of the cornerstones of physics – sacred numbers which we know to be fixed – but what if some of these constants are changing? Speaking at the Institute of Physics conference Physics 2005, Dr Michael Murphy of Cambridge University will discuss the “fine structure constant” – one of the critical numbers in the universe which seems to be precisely tuned for life to exist – and s
The MoonMars Habitat Student Design Workshop is underway at ESA/ESTEC – working in the inspiring setting of the Erasmus User Centre, the 30 participants have until the end of the week to study, discuss and design a Moon, Mars or other planetary habitat.
The 30 students selected come from 13 different countries and a broad range of background, including engineering, space science, architecture, ergonomics, medicine and psychology. They have been working since Sunday in the Erasmus
New Young Sub-stellar Companion Imaged with the VLT
Since the discovery in 1995 of the first planet orbiting a normal star other than the Sun, there are now more than 150 candidates of these so-called exoplanets known. Most of them are detected by indirect methods, based either on variations of the radial velocity or the dimming of the star as the planet passes in front of it (see ESO PR 06/03, ESO PR 11/04 and ESO PR 22/04).
Astronomers would, however, prefer to obtain a
European space scientists have strongly recommended a mission equipped with a rover as the next scientific mission to Mars as part of the European Space Agency’s [ESA] Aurora programme of planetary exploration. The mission would conduct a detailed analysis of the Martian environment and search for traces of past or present life. A launch in June 2011, followed by a two year journey, would arrive on the Red Planet in June 2013. A detailed proposal will be prepared for consideration by ESA member
Distant galaxies undergoing intense bursts of star formation have been shown by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to be fertile growing grounds for the largest black holes in the Universe. Collisions between galaxies in the early Universe may be the ultimate cause for both the accelerated star formation and black hole growth.
By combining the deepest X-ray image ever obtained with submillimeter and optical observations, an international team of scientists has found evidence that
It’s nature’s fastest quick-change artist: In less than the time it takes a beam of light to travel a tenth of a millimeter, vanadium dioxide can switch from a transparent to a reflective, mirror-like state.
How this material (VO2) can turn from a transparent insulator into a reflective metal so rapidly has physicists scratching their heads, but a collaboration among researchers at Vanderbilt, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have clocked the
Ares Research Technology, a new start-up company which will design and assemble scientific equipment that works at ultra-high vacuum, was launched today at CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory. The company will supply advanced instruments for use on X-ray sources in laboratories and at synchrotron light sources around the world.
Company founder Dr Dave Teehan said, “There’s a rapidly expanding global market for vacuum instruments, which already play a key role in research into the developm
For the last five years, a team of astronomers at the University of Cambridge and the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Sydney, Australia, has been building a special instrument to search for the most distant galaxies in the Universe.
Known as DAZLE (Dark Age Redshift Lyman Explorer), the 21st century “time machine” will be able to look back 12,800 million years to the end of the Dark Ages, when the very first stars were appearing from the gloom that dominated the Universe shortly aft
The NASA-led Swift mission has measured the distance to two gamma-ray bursts — back to back, from opposite parts of the sky — and both were from over nine billion light years away, unleashed billions of years before the Sun and Earth formed.
These achievements are the mission’s first direct distance, or redshift, measurements, its latest milestone since the Swift satellite’s launch in November 2004. The distances were attained with Swift’s Ultraviolet/OpticalTelesco
A UK-led team of astronomers has discovered a completely new type of star cluster around a neighbouring galaxy.
The new-found clusters contain hundreds of thousands of stars, a similar number to the so-called “globular” star clusters which have long been familiar to astronomers.
What distinguishes them from the globular clusters is that they are much larger – several hundred light years across – and hundreds of times less dense. The distances between the stars are, there
Achievement could benefit fields of superchemistry, quantum computing
A research team that in 2003 created an exotic new form of matter has now shown for the first time how to arrange that matter into complex molecules.
The experiments–conducted by Cheng Chin, now at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues under the leadership of Rudolf Grimm at Innsbruck University in Austria–may lead to a better scientific understanding of superconductivity and advance a grow
Data from ISO, the infrared observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA), have provided the first direct evidence that shock waves generated by galaxy collisions excite the gas from which new stars will form. The result also provides important clues on how the birth of the first stars was triggered and speeded up in the early Universe.
By observing our galaxy and others, scientists have long concluded that the explosion of massive stars like supernovae generates shock waves and
The last outstanding hardware needed before arrival of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), the European-built ISS supply ship due for launch in 2006, has been installed outside the International Space Station (ISS) during a 4 1/2 hour Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) on Monday 28 March.
The two ISS Expedition 10 crewmembers, Commander NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao and Flight Engineer Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov, who was the operational lead for the EVA, installed the last t
These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show part of the Medusa Fossae formation and adjacent areas at the highland-lowland boundary on Mars.
The HRSC obtained these images during orbit 917 with a resolution of approximately 13 metres per pixel. The scenes show an area located at about 5º South and 213º East.
The Medusa Fossae formation is an extensive unit of enigmatic origin found near the Martian ‘highlan
Feedback
