CDMS II presents new results on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles that could make up most of the matter of our universe
With the first data from their underground observatory in Northern Minnesota, scientists of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search have peered with greater sensitivity than ever before into the suspected realm of the WIMPS. The sighting of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles could solve the double mystery of dark matter on the cosmic scale and of supersymmetry on the
Rice-Los Alamos team find remarkable similarity between data from sky and computer
In the early years of the Space Age, astronomers made the startling discovery that short, transient flashes of gamma rays occurred randomly in the sky every night. Only within the past decade have scientists uncovered evidence to associate gamma-ray bursts with the death cries of massive stars from the edge of the universe. But they’ve had very few clues about how a “hypernova” or “collapsar” might
In some hours, at midnight between Friday and Saturday, ten more countries will join the European Union. The EC-supported Venus Transit 2004 (VT-2004) programme is active in almost all of these, with VT-2004 National Nodes already established the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia; more are likely to follow soon. The organisers include the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the next VT-2004 meeting will be held near Prague on May 7-
The Bug Nebula, NGC 6302, is one of the brightest and most extreme planetary nebulae known. At its centre lies a superhot dying star smothered in a blanket of ‘hailstones’. A new Hubble image reveals fresh detail in the wings of this ‘cosmic butterfly’.
This image of the Bug Nebula, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST), shows impressive walls of compressed gas. A torus (‘doughnut’) shaped mass of dust surrounds the inner nebula (seen at the upper right).
At the h
Very Large Telescope Witnesses Close Interaction in Galaxy Family
Stars like our Sun are members of galaxies, and most galaxies are themselves members of clusters of galaxies. In these, they move around among each other in a mostly slow and graceful ballet. But every now and then, two or more of the members may get too close for comfort – the movements become hectic, sometimes indeed dramatic, as when galaxies end up colliding.
ESO PR Photo 12/04 shows an example of such a co
University of Chicago astronomer Patrick Palmer last studied a comet in 2000, but he is the member of research teams that will make scientific observations of two comets this spring, and they narrowly missed viewing a third.
Some astronomers are predicting that the two comets, NEAT and LINEAR, will be visible with the naked eye, in the eastern sky shortly before sunrise or in the western sky shortly after sunset, during the next few weeks. But neither comet will be anywhere near as bright
At 9:57:24 am Pacific Daylight Time on Tuesday, April 20, 2004, the Gravity Probe B spacecraft had a picture-perfect launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in South-central California. The Boeing Delta II rocket hit the exact center of the bull’s eye in placing the spacecraft in its target polar orbit, 400 miles above the Earth.
“The Gravity Probe B Mission Operations Team has performed very well during this critical spacecraft activation period,” said Tony Lyons, Gravity Probe B NASA D
The speed of magnetic recording – a crucial factor in a computer’s power and multimedia capabilities – depends on how fast one can switch a magnet’s poles. An experiment at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) found that the ultimate speed of magnetic switching is at least 1,000 times slower than previously expected. The result, which appears in the April 22 issue of the journal Nature, has implications for future hard disk computer drive technologies.
In the push toward eve
These images from ESA’s Mars Express show the western flank of the shield volcano Olympus Mons in the Tharsis region of the western Martian hemisphere.
These images were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) during orbit 143 from an altitude of 266 kilometres. They were taken with a resolution of about 25 metres per pixel and are centred at 222° East and 22° North. North is to the right.
The images show the western flank of Olympus Mons and the escarpment at lower left ris
The Arecibo Observatory telescope, the largest and most sensitive single dish radio telescope in the world, is about to get a good deal more sensitive
Today (Wednesday, April 21) the telescope got a new “eye on the sky” that will turn the huge dish, operated by Cornell University for the National Science Foundation, into the equivalent of a seven-pixel radio camera.
The complex new addition to the Arecibo telescope was hauled 150 meters (492 feet) above the telescope’s
If a University of California, Berkeley, physicist’s vision of Jupiter is correct, the giant planet will be in for a major global temperature shift over the next decade as most of its large vortices disappear.
But fans of the Great Red Spot can rest easy. The most famous of Jupiter’s vortices – which are often compared to Earth’s hurricanes – will stay put, largely because of its location near the planet’s equator, says Philip Marcus, a professor at UC Berkeley’s De
Scientists have found that the way spiders stick to ceilings could be the key to making Post-it® notes that don’t fall off – even when they are wet. A team from Germany and Switzerland have made the first detailed examinations of a jumping spider’s ‘foot’ and have discovered that a molecular force sticks the spider to almost anything. The force is so strong that these spiders could carry over 170 times their own body weight while standing on the ceiling. The research is published today (Monday 19 Apr
Berkeley Lab physicists develop way to digitally restore and preserve
audio recordings
The 1995 discovery of the top quark and singer Marian Anderson’s 1947 rendition of Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen may seem unrelated. But through an interagency agreement with the Library of Congress, the same technology used to study subatomic particles is helping to restore and preserve the sounds of yesteryear.
“We developed a way to image the grooves in a recording that is simil
Distant star reveals planet Like Sherlock Holmes holding a magnifying glass to unveil hidden clues, modern day astronomers used cosmic magnifying effects to reveal a planet orbiting a distant star. This marks the first discovery of a planet around a star beyond Earth’s solar system using gravitational microlensing. A star or planet can act as a cosmic lens to magnify and brighten a more distant star lined up behind it. The gravitational field of the foreground star bends
VLT looks through narrow atmospheric window and produces most detailed images yet New images of unsurpassed clarity have been obtained with the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) of formations on the surface of Titan, the largest moon in the Saturnian system. They were made by an international research team [1] during recent commissioning observations with the “Simultaneous Differential Imager (SDI)”, a novel optical device, just installed at the NACO Adaptive Optics instrument [2].
With the hi
Using technology from Europe’s space programme ski maker Rossignol hopes to beat the world speed skiing record at Les Arcs Pro Mondial in France next week. Using skis stabilised by a mechanism originally developed for ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, the aim is to reach an astonishing 255 km/h down the slopes.
Skis Rossignol teamed up with ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme to identify innovative technologies which could help beat the records. A world championship title in 2003 showed that they w
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