Some slow, cold visitors stopped by Los Alamos National Laboratory last week, and their arrival could prove a godsend to physicists seeking a better theory of everything.
Researchers working at the University of California’s Los Alamos Neutron Science Center and eight other member institutions of an international collaboration took a giant step toward their goal of constructing the most intense source of ultra-cold neutrons in the world, measuring ultra-cold neutron production in
A Purdue University mathematician claims to have proven the Riemann hypothesis, often dubbed the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics.
Louis De Branges de Bourcia, or de Branges (de BRONZH) as he prefers to be called, has posted a 23-page paper detailing his attempt at a proof on his university Web page. While mathematicians ordinarily announce their work at formal conferences or in scientific journals, the spirited competition to prove the hypothesis – which carries a $1 million
Astrophysicists led by the University of Chicago’s Andrey Kravtsov have resolved an embarrassing contradiction between a favored theory of how galaxies form and what astronomers see in their telescopes.
Astrophysicists base their understanding of how galaxies form on an extension of the big bang theory called the cold dark matter theory. In this latter theory, small galaxies collide and merge, inducing bursts of star formation that create the different types of massive and bright galax
Folgende Wissenschaftlerin und Wissenschaftler stehen der Presse honorarfrei für Interviews zur Verfügung.
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Neukum
Institut für Geologische Wissenschaften, Fachrichtung Geoinformatik/Planetologie
Malteserstr. 74-100, 12249 Berlin
Telefon: 030/838-70570, -70575, Sekretariat
Schwerpunkte:
– Planetologie: Fernerkundung der Erde und der Planeten
– Astronomie
– Mars-Kamera
Tilmann Denk
Institut für Geologische Wissenschaften, Fachrichtung
Zum letzten Mal fand dieses Naturschauspiel 1882 statt und erst im Jahr 2247 wird es wieder von Deutschland aus in voller Länge zu beobachten sein: der Venustransit. Am 8. Juni 2004 besteht nun die einmalige Chance von Jena aus zu betrachten, wie der innere Nachbarplanet der Erde vor der Sonnenscheibe herzieht. Dieses Spektakel ist so ungewöhnlich, weil die Himmelskörper selten in der dafür notwendigen Achse stehen. Der kommende Transit dauert von 7.20 bis 13.23 Uhr mitteleuropäischer Sommerzeit.
Location: Solar System
On June 8 Venus – the Earth’s sister planet – will pass in front of the Sun. This event, a ’transit’, is extremely rare – the last one occurred in 1882, 122 years ago. Easily observable in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, it is likely to attract the attention of millions of people on these continents and, indeed, all over the world.
On this important occasion, the European Southern Observatory (ESO)has joined forces with the European
After a 7-year, 2.2-billion-mile looping voyage across the solar system, the international Cassini mission reaches Saturn on June 30 Cassini promises to run rings around earlier spacecraft-Saturn encounters. One of the biggest planetary spacecraft ever built, Cassini won’t just fly by Saturn. It will be the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, sending data from 12 orbiter experiments back for at least the next four years. In December, Cassini will launch a European-built probe calle
By exploiting the weird quantum behavior of atoms, physicists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a new technique that someday could be used to save weeks of measurements needed to operate ultraprecise atomic clocks. The technique also could be used to improve the precision of other measurement processes such as spectroscopy.
The technique, described in today’s issue of Science, effectively turns atoms into better frequency s
When ESA’s Huygens spaceprobe, travelling on board NASA’s Cassini spacecraft en route to Saturn, lands on the planet’s largest moon Titan in January 2005, not only will it carry a variety of scientific instruments, but also music ‘made in Europe’.
Four musical themes composed by French musicians Julien Civange and Louis Haéri were placed on board ESA’s Huygens probe in October 1997. After a seven-year and 4000 million kilometre journey, the music will reach Titan on 14 January 200
Tomorrow, on June 8, beginning shortly after 5 hrs UT, a large part of the world will be sharing a unique sight never seen by any person now living. During a little more than six hours, planet Venus will cross the face of the Sun, offering a wonderful show for everybody to admire. Nobody should miss the opportunity to witness this great event! And – good luck! – it appears that the observing condition prospects are rather favourable in large areas of the world.
Nevertheless, should you be as
The implementation of European Space Policy is moving forward this week as experts from Member States and international organisations meet to flesh out the main lines of a European Space Programme. Experts are meeting today to assess the EU’s space and security capabilities and future needs. Discussions on the security dimension of Space Policy address satellite border control, conflict prevention, humanitarian missions, and fighting organised crime and terrorism. On 4 June, Member State experts g
On June 8 Earth-based solar telescopes will follow a tiny black orb as it appears to travel effortlessly across a wrinkled, brilliant sea. Timothy Brown, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), will not sit idly by as Venus traverses the Sun for the first time in 122 years at an angle visible from Earth. Peering through a specialized solar telescope in the Canary Islands, Brown will study the chemical composition and winds of Venus’s upper atmosphere, a region poorly ob
Satellite pins down distance to important exploded star
The Veil Nebula, a delicate network of glowing gaseous filaments in the northern constellation of Cygnus the Swan, has long been a favorite of both amateur and professional astronomers. Part of a much larger nebula known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil is comprised of the leftovers of a star that exploded between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago.
For at least half a century, scientists have probed the Cygnus Loop with various tec
Combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared observations with the Palomar 200-inch telescope have uncovered evidence that a gamma-ray burst, one of nature’s most catastrophic explosions, occurred in our Galaxy a few thousand years ago. The supernova remnant, W49B, may also be the first remnant of a gamma-ray burst discovered in the Milky Way.
W49B is a barrel-shaped nebula located about 35,000 light years from Earth. The new data reveal bright infrared rings,
Twenty years ago, astronomers discovered a number of enigmatic radio-emitting filaments concentrated near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. These features initially defied explanation, but a new study of radio images of the Galactic center may point to their possible source.
By combining data from the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (VLA) and Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), astronomer Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University has found evidence that at least
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have solved a major galactic mystery that may help astronomers in their quest to develop a detailed picture of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way galaxy.
Speaking at the 204th meeting of the American Astronomical Society held May 30 – June 3 in Denver, the researchers reported that the abundance of deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen, in the Milky Way galaxy today shows a consistent pattern that can be simply explained, lifting a vei
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