Network could operate 100 times faster
Canadian researchers have shown that nanotechnology can be used to pave the way to a supercharged Internet based entirely on light. The discovery could lead to a network 100 times faster than today’s.
In a study published today in Nano Letters, Professor Ted Sargent and colleagues advance the use of one laser beam to direct another with unprecedented control, a featured needed inside future fibre-optic networks. “This finding showc
Real geodes are handball-sized, hollow rocks that start out as bubbles in volcanic or sedimentary rock. Only when these inconspicuous round rocks are split in half by a geologist, do we get a chance to appreciate the inside of the rock cavity that is lined with crystals. In the case of Hubble’s 35 light-year diameter ’celestial geode’ the transparency of its bubble-like cavity of interstellar gas and dust reveals the treasures of its interior.
The object, called N44
A bevy of satellites buzzing around in the Earth’s magnetosphere has found at least part of the answer to a long-standing puzzle about the source of the charged particles that feed the aurora.
The charged particles come from explosions on the sun and smash into the Earth’s magnetic field, which repels the bulk of them. But many slip through, often via a physical process called magnetic reconnection, where the magnetic field traveling with the particles breaks and reconnect
A new method for looking at the composition of comets using ground-based telescopes has been developed by chemists at UC Davis. Remnants from the formation of our solar system, the makeup of comets gives clues about how the Earth and other planets formed.
William Jackson, professor and chair of chemistry at UC Davis; researchers Alexandra Scodinu and Dadong Xu; and Anita Cochran of the University of Texas at Austin have developed methods to use visible and ultraviolet spectroscopy
ESA’s Mars Express has relayed pictures from one of NASA’s Mars rovers for the first time, as part of a set of interplanetary networking demonstrations. The demonstrations pave the way for future Mars missions to draw on joint interplanetary networking capabilities. ESA and NASA planned these demonstrations as part of continuing efforts to cooperate in space exploration.
On 4 August at 14:24 CEST, as Mars Express flew over one of NASA’s Mars exploration rovers, Opportunity, i
The eyes aboard the Mars rover Spirit are delivering ground truth.
After more than six months of examining the photographic and spectral data from the rover, Mars mission scientists confirm that the albedo — which is the percentage of sunlight reflected on the red planet’s dusty surface — indicates important variations in mineral and dust composition.
“Spirit landed in a medium brightness region of Gusev crater, and on this mission has crossed into brighter and dark
Whether viewed dimly through the haze and lights of a city or in all their glory in a pristine wilderness, the stars that surround the Earth are magnificent, and one day Earthlings will travel to some of the new planets that astronomers are locating. However, the stars we see are not necessarily where we think they are, according to an international research team.
“We know that the light from distant stars takes a very long time to reach the Earth,” says Dr. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, distin
MIT research on the most exciting questions in astrophysics and space science has been recognized by a $7.5 million gift from the Kavli Foundation that will jumpstart new studies of the cosmos.
“The Kavli gift allows us to invest in new scientific areas and new technologies at the forefront of these fields,” said Professor of Physics Jacqueline N. Hewitt. “We can bring new tools to bear on some of the most interesting questions before us: What is the dark energy that appears to
Yesterday, August 2nd 2004, particle physicists from the UK and around the world working on the BABAR experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the USA, announced exciting new results demonstrating a dramatic difference in the behaviour of matter and antimatter. Their discovery may help to explain why the Universe we live in is dominated by matter, rather than containing equal parts matter and anti-matter.
SLAC’s PEP-II accelerator collides electrons and their ant
On the evidence to date, our solar system could be fundamentally different from the majority of planetary systems around stars because it formed in a different way. If that is the case, Earth-like planets will be very rare. After examining the properties of the 100 or so known extrasolar planetary systems and assessing two ways in which planets could form, Dr Martin Beer and Professor Andrew King of the University of Leicester, Dr Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Dr Jim Prin
The weird behavior of electrons tunneling across an atomically flat interface within a cuprate superconductor has defied explanation by theories of high-temperature superconductivity.
As will be reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, a team of scientists led by physics professor James Eckstein at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has found a large particle-hole asymmetry in the density of states of excitations in high-temperature superconducting tunnel junctio
ESO’s Very Large Telescope Obtains Unique Spectrum of a Meteor
While observing a supernova in a distant galaxy with the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory (Chile), astronomers were incredibly lucky to obtain serendipitously a high quality spectrum of a very large meteor in the terrestrial atmosphere.
The VLT spectrograph provided a well calibrated spectrum, making it a reference in this field of research. From this spectrum, the temperatu
A prototype microscope that uses neutrons instead of light to “see” magnified images has been demonstrated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Neutron microscopes might eventually offer certain advantages over optical, X-ray and electron imaging techniques such as better contrast for biological samples.
Described in the July 19 issue of Applied Physics Letters, the imaging process involves hitting a sample with an intense neutron beam. The neutrons tha
The NASA Swift satellite, which will pinpoint the location of distant yet fleeting explosions that appear to signal the births of black holes, is due to arrive at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida today in preparation for an October launch. UK scientists, from the University of Leicester and University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, have provided key technology for two of the instruments on Swift.
Professor Alan Wells from the University of Leicester, UK Lead Investi
Scientists at the University of Sheffield and Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab have solved a 127-year-old problem about the origin of supersonic plasma jets (spicules) which continuously shoot up from the Sun. Their findings are published in today’s edition of Nature.
Spicules, are jets of gas or plasma that are propelled upwards from the surface of the Sun at speeds of about 90,000 kilometres per hour. They are fairly short lived, with each jet lasting only about 5 minutes, but r
Two of the biggest physics breakthroughs during the last decade are the discovery that wispy subatomic particles called neutrinos actually have a small amount of mass and the detection that the expansion of the universe is actually picking up speed.
Now three University of Washington physicists are suggesting the two discoveries are integrally linked through one of the strangest features of the universe, dark energy, a linkage they say could be caused by a previously unrecognized subatomic
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