Ultracold experiment opens door for basic studies in quantum computing
Physicists at Rice University have completed the first real-time measurement of individual electrons, creating an experimental method that for the first time allows scientists to probe the dynamic interactions between the smallest atomic particles.
The research, which appears in the May 22 issue of the journal Nature, is important for researchers developing quantum computers, a revolutionary type of compu
There are many mysterious objects seen in the night sky which are not really well understood. For example, astronomers are puzzled by the “jets” emerging from planetary nebulae. However, the S-shaped jet from Henize 3-1475 is the most perplexing of all.
“Jets” are long outflows of fast-moving gas found near many objects in the Universe, such as around young stars, or coming from black holes, neutron stars, and planetary nebulae, for example. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged th
Five spacecraft have made a remarkable set of observations, leading to a breakthrough in understanding the origin of a peculiar and puzzling type of aurora. Seen as bright spots in Earth’s atmosphere and called “dayside proton auroral spots,” they are now known to occur when fractures appear in the Earth’s magnetic field, allowing particles emitted from the Sun to pass through and collide with molecules in our atmosphere. On March 18, 2002, a jet of energetic solar protons collided
A progressive increase in the brightness of the planet Neptune suggests that, like Earth, the distant planet has seasons.
Observations of Neptune made during a six-year period with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope by a group of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) show that the planet is exhibiting a significant increase in brightness. The changes, observed mostly in the planet’s southern hemisphere, show a distinc
The ability to understand how small bodies such as moons switch from orbiting the Sun to orbiting a planet has long remained one of the outstanding problems of planetary science. A paper published in Nature on 15 May shows how this problem has been resolved using chaos theory, enabling scientists to predict where astronomers might search for new moons orbiting the giant planets.
In the last couple of years many small moons have been found orbiting the giant planets in our Solar System. For e
Astronomers from Cardiff University are completing the first survey ever for cosmic hydrogen, the primeval gas which emerged from the Big Bang to form all the stars and galaxies we can see today.
Since 1997 the astronomers, with their Australian colleagues, have been using two giant radio telescopes, the 64-metre diameter dish at Parkes in New South Wales, Australia, and the 76-metre dish at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, England to build up an atlas of the heavens as mapped by cosmic hydrogen.
The storage of plutonium has long plagued scientists. “It is a dangerous metal and its long term storage must be done with special care so as not to harm the environment, ”said physicist Serguei Savrasov, Ph.D.
Finding a solution to this problem led Savrasov, an associate professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), and a team of researchers at Rutgers University and Los Alamos National Laboratories, to study how this metal reacts to heat, a natural condition of storage over time
Self-organization is a growing interdisciplinary field of research about a phenomenon that can be observed in the Universe, in nature and in social contexts. Researchers seek explanations by using both experimental, often computer-based approaches and empirical, observational approaches. Mechanisms of self-organization are beginning to be identified and the theoretical foundation is under development. Research on self-organization tries to describe and explain forms, complex patterns and behaviours t
The use of toxic chemicals to sterilise medical instruments may soon be a thing of the past, according to researchers at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and the University of California in San Diego. Their work, released on 30 April 2003 in New Journal of Physics, published jointly by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society, tests a new way of killing bacteria using a plasma at room temperature and pressure, which could have applications in decontamination of biological
Jefferson Lab physicists will soon begin their own version of reuse — not with run-of-the-mill materials, but with radiofrequency energy and the high-energy electrons that they energize.
Newspaper, glass and aluminum recycling has become commonplace for most households and businesses. Jefferson Lab physicists will soon begin their own version of reuse — not with run-of-the-mill materials, but with radiofrequency energy and the high-energy electrons that they energize.
In an
Like the fury of a raging sea, this anniversary image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur gas in the extremely massive and luminous molecular nebula Messier 17.
This Hubble photograph captures a small region within Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation. The release of this image commemorates the thirte
VLT Spectra Indicate Shortest-Known-Period Planet Orbiting OGLE-TR-3
More than 100 exoplanets in orbit around stars other than the Sun have been found so far. But while their orbital periods and distances from their central stars are well known, their true masses cannot be determined with certainty, only lower limits.
This fundamental limitation is inherent in the common observational method to discover exoplanets – the measurements of small and regular changes in the centra
Academy Professor Matti Krusius and Antti Finne, M.Sc. (Eng.), were invited to a recent science breakfast, hosted by the Academy of Finland, to talk about their ongoing work to produce a first-ever laboratory simulation of a black hole. A black hole is created as a result of the most extreme concentration of matter.
Scientists have been arguing about the possible existence of black holes for an entire century. Today the existence of black holes is supported by various astrophysical phenomena
A team of theoretical physicists working at CERN and the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel has developed a theory to account for the mysterious gamma ray bursts that come from the depths of the Universe. According to their ideas, gamma ray bursts are linked to supernovae, the cataclysmic explosions of massive stars at the end of their lives. When a new gamma ray burst (GRB 030329) was seen on March 29 2003, the CERN-Technion team immediately predicted that light from a supernova would first
Scientists have uncovered a supermassive black hole at the core of a svelte, spiral galaxy, a finding that questions a recently devised rule of thumb in which only galaxies with bulging cores have such black holes.
Dr. Alex Filippenko, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Luis Ho, an astronomer at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Pasadena, discuss these results in the May 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Flares of distant supernovae may reveal major changes in early evolution of universe
Astronomers´ “yardstick” for measuring vast distances across the cosmos grew longer today as scientists at The Johns Hopkins University announced they had identified and closely analyzed two distant new instances of a kind of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova.
The new supernovae belong to a group of star types known as “standard candles” that astronomers prize for their usefulness i
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