New research may lead to better catalysts for hydrogen fuel cells
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and the New Jersey Institute of Technology have taken steps toward understanding how a titanium compound reacts with a hydrogen-storage material to catalyze the release and re-absorption of hydrogen. Their results, appearing in the July 19, 2004, issue of Applied Physics Letters, may help scientists learn how similar catalysts work, improve
A rare event in the history of space exploration took place yesterday (25 July) when the second European-Chinese Double Star spacecraft lifted off a day early from Taiyuan spaceport, west of Beijing, on a Long March 2C rocket.
The launch of the spacecraft, officially called Tan Ce 2 (Explorer 2), was brought forward one day to avoid bad weather. Lift off occurred at 08:05:18 BST (07:05:18 GMT or 15.05:18 local time).
Preliminary analysis of spacecraft data indicate that th
A new study has caught a newborn star similar to the sun in a fiery outburst. X-ray observations of the flare-up, which are the first of their kind, are providing important new information about the early evolution of the sun and the process of planet formation.
The study, which was conducted by a team of astronomers headed by Joel Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology that included David Weintraub from Vanderbilt, is reported in the July 22 issue of the journal Nature.
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Scientists using measurements from NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite have discovered that Venus and sunspots have something in common: they both block some of the sun’s energy going to Earth.
Using data from NASA’s SORCE satellite, scientists noticed that, when Venus came between the Earth and the sun on June 8, the other planet reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by 0.1 percent. This Venus transit occurs when, from an earthly perspective, Ven
Using ESA’s Integral and XMM-Newton observatories, an international team of astronomers has found more evidence that massive black holes are surrounded by a doughnut-shaped gas cloud, called a torus. Depending on our line of sight, the torus can block the view of the black hole in the centre. The team looked `edge on’ into this doughnut to see features never before revealed in such a clarity.
Black holes are objects so compact and with gravity so strong that not even light can escape from
By depositing thin films of silicon nanoparticles on silicon substrates, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have fabricated a photodetector sensitive to ultraviolet light. Silicon-based ultraviolet sensors could prove very handy in military, security and commercial applications.
“Silicon is the most common semiconductor, but it has not been useful for detecting ultraviolet light until now,” said Munir Nayfeh, a professor of physics at Illinois and a researcher at t
A major breakthrough in pinpointing some of the most primordial and violently star forming galaxies in the Universe has been made by a joint collaboration of UK and US astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope to resolve primordial galaxies initially detected by the James Clerk Maxwell telescope [JCMT]. UK astronomers from the University of Kent, The Royal Observatory Edinburgh and the University of Oxford teamed up with American cosmologists to finally identify these elusive galaxies. The work w
At the last meeting of the Aurora Board of Participants, held at ESA’s Paris headquarters on Thursday 8 July, the participating states approved the Preparatory Phase of the European Space Exploration Programme (ESEP).
Revising the original Declaration, the European countries already participating, plus Canada, unanimously agreed to remodel Aurora into a broader preparatory ESEP. This is with a view to possibly increasing their subscriptions and welcoming further participants, including
Like virtuosos tuning their violins, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have tuned their instruments and harmonized the production of entangled photons, pushing rates to more than 1 million pairs per second.
The brighter and purer entangled states could assist researchers in applications involving quantum information processing – such as quantum computation, teleportation and cryptography – and help scientists better understand the mysterious transition from quan
Tiny pellets of fuel may be safer for hazardous places on earth and burn more efficiently in weightless space and low-gravity environments
Researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering say solid fuel particles may be safer for hazardous environments on earth and burn more efficiently in the microgravity of space than gaseous fuels, which are more combustible and difficult to transport.
In the Spring 2004 issue of NASA Space Research, Fokion Egolfopoulos and Charles
The computing community for many years has longed to be able to to carry out high speed calculations using a genuine Quantum Computer because it would facilitate the practical factorisation of very large numbers and the searching of unordered lists and databases. The rapid breaking of secure codes based on prime numbers would have a lot of practical applications particularly in the banking and military field and would necessitate the development of new cryptographic and security methods to protect va
On 9 July 2004, the Near-Earth Object Mission Advisory Panel recommended that ESA place a high priority on developing a mission to actually move an asteroid. The conclusion was based on the panel’s consideration of six near-Earth object mission studies submitted to the Agency in February 2003.
Of the six studies, three were space-based observatories for detecting NEOs and three were rendezvous missions. All addressed the growing realisation of the threat posed by Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) a
Nearly five billion years ago, the giant gaseous planets Jupiter and Saturn formed, apparently in radically different ways.So says a scientist at the Laboratory who created exhaustive computer models based on experiments in which the element hydrogen was shocked to pressures nearly as great as those found inside the two planets.
Working with a French colleague, Didier Saumon of Material Science (X-7) created models establishing that heavy elements are concentrated in Saturn’s massive c
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and NASA suggest that materials on the nanoscale may sometimes be subject to the same physical rules as their macro-world counterparts. The findings provide an exception to the conventional scientific notion that objects small enough to be measured in nanometers (one-billionth of a meter) behave according to different rules than larger objects.
A team led by Lawrence Bottomley in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Jona
The launch of NASA’s Aura spacecraft atop a Boeing Delta II rocket is rescheduled for Tuesday, July 13. Launch is set for the opening of a three-minute window at 6:01:59 a.m. EDT (3:01:59 a.m. PDT). Yesterday, during routine pre-launch checks, engineers discovered an improper assembly of the fairing ordnance detonator connector within the Delta II booster fairing. This detonator acts to separate the fairing during flight. Mission managers decided an additional 48 hours was need
Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every eighteen months. However current silicon technologies are approaching the limits imposed by quantum mechanics, which will stop Moore’s Law in its tracks within 20 years. New materials and techniques must be found to complement and increase the capabilities of the current silicon technologies to maintain the growth and profitability of the semi-conductor industry.
Semiconducting carbon nanotubes can be doped like sili
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