Swift successfully launched today at 12:16 PM EST! Spacecraft separation occurred at about 80 minutes after launch as expected. Congratulations to the entire Swift team.
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful explosions the Universe has seen since the Big Bang. They occur approximately once per day and are brief, but intense, flashes of gamma radiation. They come from all different directions of the sky and last from a few milliseconds to a few hundred seconds. So far scient
A team at the University of Innsbruck, Austria has been successful in conducting electrons in metals along predetermined channels. This behaviour, observed for the first time in metals, provides important insights into the interactions of electrons – and on how the phenomenon of the current flow without any resistance loss, termed super-conductivity, can occur. Thereby this project aided by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) combines fundamental research, at its best, with potential applications in
The Armagh Observatory’s ‘Human Orrery’ is the first large outdoor exhibit in the world to show accurately the elliptical orbits and changing relative positions of the planets and other solar system bodies with time. It has been constructed with the support of the Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) and is the first major addition to the Observatory Grounds and Astropark for more than a decade. A ceremony to mark its construction will take place at the Observatory
Scientists have discovered that the air in the atmosphere around us is heavier (more dense) than they had previously thought. Knowing this will enable scientists to measure the mass of objects more accurately than ever before.
Writing in the Institute of Physics journal Metrologia, a team from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in France, report a new determination of the content of argon in a
It’s the scientific equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. A team of researchers from JILA, a joint institute of the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder, has developed an efficient, low-cost way to measure the energy levels of atoms in a gas with extremely high accuracy, and simultaneously detect and control transitions between the levels as fast as they occur. The technique is expected to have practical applica
Most solids expand when heated, a familiar phenomenon with many practical implications. Among the rare exceptions to this rule, the compound zirconium tungstate stands out by virtue of the enormous temperature range over which it exhibits so-called “negative thermal expansion,” contracting as it heats up and expanding as it cools, and because it does so uniformly in all directions.
While engineers are already pursuing practical applications in areas ranging from electronics to
The Pleiades are one of the most famous and brightest stellar clusters in our Galaxy. One might imagine that the distance to such an important object would be well-known and no longer poses a problem for astrophysicists. For several years, however, determining the distance to the Pleiades has been a crucial and complicated problem.
For several decades, the distance to the Pleiades was determined by methods relying on our knowledge of stellar physics that was assumed to be rather
Star formation is one of the most basic phenomena in the Universe. Inside stars, primordial material from the Big Bang is processed into heavier elements that we observe today. In the extended atmospheres of certain types of stars, these elements combine into more complex systems like molecules and dust grains, the building blocks for new planets, stars and galaxies and, ultimately, for life. Violent star-forming processes let otherwise dull galaxies shine in the darkness of deep space and make
“Swift,” a new NASA satellite, will head for the heavens Nov. 17, designed to detect gamma-ray bursts and whip around to catch them in the act. And the trigger software that makes the flying observatory smart enough to do this comes from the Space Science team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Gamma-ray bursts, first discovered by Los Alamos in the course of nuclear nonproliferation data analysis, occur randomly throughout the universe. They are the most powerful explos
These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the detailed structure of Coprates Catena, a southern part of the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars.
The images were taken during orbit 438 with a ground resolution of approximately 43 metres per pixel. The displayed region covers an area centred at about latitude 14° South and longitude 301° East.
Coprates Catena is a chain of collapsed structures, which run
ESA’s SMART-1 is successfully making its first orbit of the Moon, a significant milestone for the first of Europe’s Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology (SMART) spacecraft.
A complex package of tests on new technologies was successfully performed during the cruise to the Moon, while the spacecraft was getting ready for the scientific investigations which will come next. These technologies pave the way for future planetary missions. SMART-1 reached its closest
Researchers from the Universities of Southampton and Glasgow have succeeded in tying knots in light beams.
Using a computer-designed hologram, they created threads of darkness embedded in a laser beam. The hologram bends the direction of optical energy flow, so these dark threads form loops. The loops can then be linked together, or tied into knots.
Dr Mark Dennis, a University of Southampton mathematician, worked in collaboration with Professor Miles Padgett, Dr Johannes
The existence of a new electronic state in superconductors, materials that can carry an electric current without resistance, has been confirmed experimentally according to research to be published in the 12 November 2004 issue of the journal Science by a team led by Ying Liu, associate professor of physics at Penn State. “We have established direct evidence for the existence of an odd-parity superconductor, which previously had been theorized but never demonstrated in an unambiguous experiment,
In June, researchers from the University of Rochester announced they had located a potential planet around another star so young that it defied theorists’ explanations. Now a new team of Rochester planet-formation specialists are backing up the original conclusions, saying they’ve confirmed that the hole formed in the star’s dusty disk could very well have been formed by a new planet. The findings have implications for gaining insight into how our own solar system came to be, as well as finding
In a paper published online today in Science, a group of researchers led by David Awschalom, a professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reports the observation of the spin Hall effect. This publication ends a 33-year long effort aimed at this discovery.
The Hall effect, named after American physicist Edwin Hall who discovered it in 1879, occurs when an electric current flows through a conductor in a magnetic field
Pluto’s status as our solar system’s ninth planet may be safe if a recently discovered Kuiper Belt Object is a typical “KBO” and not just an oddball.
Astronomers have new evidence that KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects) are smaller than previously thought.
KBOs – icy cousins to asteroids and the source of some comets – are the leftover building blocks of the outer planets. Astronomers using the world’s most powerful telescopes have discovered about 1,000 of these objects orb
Feedback
