What kind of mysteries and scientific intrigue await the European Space Agency’s Venus Express once it has left Earth for its nearest planetary neighbour in 2005? A closer inspection promises to reveal a planet that is hugely different from our own despite a few similarities.
Astronomers often call Venus the Earth’s twin because both are about the same size and have the same mass. In other ways, however, Venus seems to be an altogether different class of planet. Scientists are keen
VLT Images Intergalactic Shock The Universe is a violent place – as astronomers use increasingly sensitive means and methods to study the diverse processes out there, they become aware of the extraordinary forces acting in the space that surrounds us. With larger telescopes and ever-more sophisticated instruments, new information is gained about remote celestial objects and their behaviour. Among the most intriguing ones are the radio galaxies which emit prodiguous amounts of
Record-high magnetic fields in the lab, almost a Gigagauss in magnitude, have been achieved by aiming intense laser light at a dense plasma, expanding the possibilities for laboratory re-creations of astrophysical events.
At last week’s APS Division of Plasma Physics Meeting in Orlando, researchers from Imperial College, London, and the Rutherford Appleton Lab in the UK announced evidence of super-strong magnetic fields that are hundreds of times more intense than any previous magnetic
The measured abundance of helium in the universe (about 25% of all normal matter) suggests that there is about one proton for every 1010 photons. This in turn suggests that at some earlier phase of the universe an almost equal number of protons and anti-protons existed and gradually annihilated, but that because of some fundamental asymmetry (at the level of one part per ten billion) in the way that the weak nuclear force treats matter and antimatter, protons but not anti-protons survived to the pre
The first pictures from the new Swedish solar telescope on La Palma, Canary Islands, are presented in an article in the prestigious science journal Nature from November 14. The images of the sun are the most detailed ever seen. One of the most sensational discoveries is a previously unknown detailed sunspot structure.
The impact of this discovery is now capturing the attention of solar researchers, and it won`t be long before new and revised theories are formulated.
The solar tele
Scientists have recreated a temperature not seen since the first microsecond of the birth of the universe and found that the event did not unfold quite the way they expected, according to a recent paper in Physical Review Letters. The interaction of energy, matter, and the strong nuclear force in the ultra-hot experiments conducted at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was thought to be well understood, but a lengthy investigation has revealed that physicists are missing something in their mo
An international team of astronomers, led by scientists at the University of Manchester have produced new evidence that most of the energy in the Universe is in the form of the mysterious “Dark Energy”. The new evidence comes from a 10-year census of the sky for examples of gravitational lenses, which are seen when a galaxy bends the light from a distant quasar to form several images of the same quasar. Linking the number of lenses they found with the latest information on the numbers of galaxies, th
When it comes to sleuthing in science, few are better than the intrepid investigators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). For example, take the “Case of the Stray Electrons.”
NIST researchers have created nanoscale devices that manipulate electrons in order to count them one at a time. Such counting is critical to the development of new fundamental electrical standards. When two electrons are bound in pairs (called Cooper pairs) in a superconductor, they can be man
Like rapidly flowing gases and liquids, magnetically confined plasmas in tokamaks and related fusion devices exhibit a high degree of turbulence, which can generally destroy the optimal conditions for producing fusion energy. In a deeply encouraging new result, scientists have experimentally confirmed that turbulence can actually limit its own ability to wreak havoc.
Researchers at the DIII-D tokamak at General Atomics have discovered that turbulence generates its own flows that act as a sel
Doughnuts of plasma can be coaxed into configurations with hollow current rings, providing practical advantages over conventional “filled doughnut” shapes. Simulations suggest they will allow faster turn-on and greater efficiency of future nuclear fusion power plants.
Toroidal tokamaks, doughnut-shaped experimental fusion reactors, use a complex system of magnetic fields to hold a plasma together. Electrical currents flowing in the plasma itself are essential for making the internal magneti
In work that promises new insights into the cosmos and fusion-energy production alike, physicists have reported they have made the first three-dimensional laboratory measurements of magnetic reconnection, the main process by which magnetic fields release energy in the universe.
Magnetic reconnection is the phenomenon in which magnetic energy in a plasma is rapidly converted to heat and jets of energetic particles. This process is thought to heat the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the
Working toward the vision of generating clean energy from nuclear fusion, researchers have successfully imploded fuel capsules by bombarding them with intense x-rays. The results show that the process generates significant fusion and that the implosion method looks capable of generating large-scale energy production.
The process works by bombarding two millimeter (about 1/16th inch) fuel capsules with intense x-rays from Sandia National Laboratories Z-pinch machine. The x-rays, impacting fro
Duke University researchers have created an ultracold gas that has the startling property of bursting outward in a preferred direction when released. According to the researchers, studying the properties of the “lopsided” gas will yield fundamental insights into how matter holds itself together at the subatomic level.
Also, the research team leader said their data suggests the possibility that the gas is exhibiting a never-before-seen kind of superfluidity – a property in which matter at ex
A fraction of a second after the Big Bang, all the primordial soup of matter in the Universe was `broken` into its most fundamental constituents. It was thought to have disappeared forever. However scientists strongly suspect that the exotic soup of dissolved matter can still be found in today`s Universe, in the core of certain very dense objects called neutron stars.
With ESA`s space telescope XMM-Newton, they are now closer to testing this idea. For the first time, XMM-Newton has been able
Scientists and engineers build the transistors that run televisions, radios and similar electronic devices based on the moving electric charges of electrons. But the electron also has another key property: a magnetic “spin” that scientists believe could be exploited to develop faster, smaller and more efficient devices.
The first step is to determine the magnetic properties of materials that could be used to create futuristic nanoscale devices, a task that has escaped scientists until now.
Researchers from the University of Michigan and RIKEN, a research institute in Japan, say the biological motors that nature uses for intracellular transport and other biological functions inspired them to create a whole new class of micro-devices for controlling magnetic flux quanta in superconductors that could lead to the development of a new generation of medical diagnostic tools.
As integrated circuits become smaller and smaller, it becomes increasingly difficult to create the many “gu
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