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Physics and Astronomy News From Around
the World
04-19-06 :: Constant of nature not constant?
(From Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) A
team of scientists of the Laser Centre Vrije Universiteit (LCVU),
Amsterdam, and of the European Southern Observatory in Chile
have found indication for a small variation of one of the
constants of nature: the ratio between the mass of the
proton and the mass of the electron. They report this
finding in the April 21 issue of Physical Review Letters.
Read more...
04-12-06 :: Gases in One Dimension -- Not Your Typical Desk
Toy
(From Penn State University)
Physicists at Penn State University have performed the first
laboratory experiment with a system of many colliding
particles whose motion never becomes chaotic.
Read more...
04-11-06 :: Fermilab's CDF scientists present a precision
measurement of a subtle dance between matter and antimatter
(From Fermilab) Scientists of the CDF
collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory announced today (April 11, 2006) the
precision measurement of extremely rapid transitions between
matter and antimatter.
Read more...
04-11-06 :: Europe scores new planetary success: Venus
Express enters orbit around the Hothouse Planet
(From European Space Agency) This
morning, at the end of a 153-day and 400-million km cruise
into the inner Solar System beginning with its launch on 9
November 2005, ESA’s Venus Express space probe fired its
main engine at 09:17 CEST for a 50-minute burn, which
brought it into orbit around Venus.
Read more...
04-06-06 :: Study Finds Two Supermassive Black Holes
Spiraling Toward Collision
(From University of Virginia) A pair of supermassive black
holes in the distant universe are intertwined and spiraling
toward a merger that will create a single super-supermassive
black hole.
Read more...
04-06-06 :: Solitons Seen in a Solid
(From UC Davis) Isolated vibrations
within a three-dimensional solid have been observed for the
first time by researchers in the U.S. and Germany. The work
could help explain how metals such as uranium behave when
bent, compressed or heated.
Read more...
04-03-06 :: University of Arizona Optical Scientists Develop
Switchable Focus Eyeglass Lenses
(From U of Arizona) Optical scientists
at The University of Arizona have developed new switchable,
flat, liquid crystal diffractive lenses that can adaptively
change their focusing power.
Read more...
04-03-06 :: Chaos = Order. Washington University in St.
Louis physicists make baffling discovery
(From WUSTL News) According to a
computational study conducted by a group of physicists at
Washington University in St. Louis, one may create order by
introducing disorder.
Read more...
04-01-06 :: Scientists discover what is thought to be the
strongest magnetic field in the universe
(From Univ. of Exeter) In a paper in the journal Science, Dr
Daniel Price and Professor Stephan Rosswog, from The
University of Exeter and the International University,
Bremen, show that violent collisions between neutron stars
in the outer reaches of space create this field, which is
1000 million million times larger than our earth's own
magnetic field.
Read more...
03-31-06 :: 'March Madness' effects observed in ultracold
gases
(From PHYS.ORG) Physicists at Harvard
University, George Mason University and the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered
new quantum effects in ultracold gases that may lead to
improved understanding of electrical conductivity in metals.
Read more...
03-31-06 :: Scientists demonstrate quantum nature of
entanglement swapping
(From PHYS.ORG) By synchronizing
multiple lasers and then distributing them to different
locations, scientists have found a way to build a quantum
repeater. The method can extend the distance that
information can travel in quantum computers using entangling
swapping, where particles can become entangled without ever
interacting due to a “go-between” particle.
Read more...
03-30-06 :: MINOS
experiment sheds light on mystery of neutrino disappearance
(From Fermilab) An international
collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy's
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today the
first results of a new neutrino experiment confirming the
existence of neutrino oscillations.
Read more...
03-27-06 :: A telescope is born on the floor of the
Mediterranean
(From CNRS, France) The first
detection line of the Antares neutrino telescope, lying
under 2,500 meters of water, was connected by Ifremer's
remotely operated robot Victor 6000 to the onshore station
at La Seyne-sur-Mer (Var) on Thursday 2 March at 12:11.
Several hours later, Antares took its first look at the
heavens and detected its first muons.
Read more...
03-23-06 :: Surface plasmons squeeze light
(From IoP's Physics Web) A new class
of waveguide could overcome one of the biggest obstacles to
photonic circuits.
Read more...
03-21-06 :: LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave
Observatory) Kicks into High Gear for Gravitational-Wave
Search with 18-Month Observation Run
(From Caltech Media Relations) The
quest to detect and study gravitational waves with the
NSF-funded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory (LIGO) is now in the fourth month of its first
sustained science run since achieving its promised design
sensitivity, project personnel announced at the annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS).
Read more...
03-16-06 :: New WMAP data: Best evidence yet for inflation!
(From NASA's Wilkinson Microwave
Anisotropy Probe) Scientists peering back to the oldest
light in the universe have new evidence for what happened
within its first trillionth of a second, when the universe
suddenly grew from submicroscopic to astronomical size in
far less than a wink of the eye.
Read more...
03-15-06 :: Did "Dark Matter" Create the First Stars?
(From Max Planck Society) Dark matter
could be "sterile" neutrinos, whose decay led to the
formation of stars in the early universe.
Read more...
03-14-06 :: Record-breaking Detector May Aid Nuclear
Inspections
(From NIST) Scientists at the Commerce
Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) have designed and demonstrated the world’s most
accurate gamma ray detector, which is expected to be useful
eventually in verifying inventories of nuclear materials and
detecting radioactive contamination in the environment.
Read more...
03-09-06 :: NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on
Enceladus
(From NASA's Cassini-Huygens Mission)
NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid
water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on
Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water
so near the surface raises many new questions about the
mysterious moon.
Read more...
03-08-06 :: Are tougher electronic components on the way?
(From the Carnegie Institution)
Alexander Goncharov of the Carnegie Institution’s
Geophysical Laboratory and colleagues have used extreme
temperatures and pressures to make two durable compounds
called noble metal nitrides; they are the first to succeed
in making one of them, and the first to accurately determine
the chemical formula of the other.
Read more...
03-08-06 :: Sandia’s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees
Kelvin
(From Sandia National Laboratories)
Sandia’s Z machine has produced plasmas that exceed
temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin — hotter than the
interiors of stars.
Read more...
03-07-06 :: Research reveals hidden magnetism in
superconductivity
(From Los Alamos National Laboratory)
While studying a compound made of the elements cerium-
rhodium-indium, researchers at Los Alamos National
Laboratory and the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign have discovered that a magnetic state can
coexist with superconductivity in a specific temperature and
pressure range.
Read more...
03-07-06 :: Scientists Piece Together the Most Distant Cosmic
Explosion
(From Penn State) It came from the
edge of the visible universe, the most distant explosion
ever detected. In this week's issue of Nature, scientists at
Penn State University and their U.S. and European colleagues
discuss how this explosion, detected on 4 September 2005,
was the result of a massive star collapsing into a black
hole.
Read more...
03-06-06 :: University of South Florida researcher works on
molecular diode
(From University of South Florida)
Researchers from the University of South Florida, the
University of Chicago and the Russian Academy of Sciences
(Moscow) have recently developed the principles of operation
and completed an experimental testing of a single molecule
for use as a diode.
Read more...
03-06-06 :: Scientists Issue Unprecedented Forecast of Next
Sunspot Cycle
(From NSF) The next sunspot cycle will
be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last one, and begin as
much as a year late, according to a breakthrough forecast
using a computer model of solar dynamics developed by
scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
in Boulder, Colo.
Read more...
03-02-06 :: Scientists capture the speediest ever motion in a
molecule
(From Imperial College, London) The
fastest ever observations of protons moving within a
molecule open a new window on fundamental processes in
chemistry and biology, researchers report today in the
journal Science.
Read more...
03-01-06 :: Advance hastens practicality of superconductivity
(From Washington University) Nobody
completely understands superconductors. So fathom how James
S. Schilling, Ph.D., led a team that makes the phenomenon
work better.
Read more...
02-28-06 :: New Twist In Classical Mechanics Finds Way Around
225-year-old Paradox
(From University of Southern
California) In the rarefied sphere of classical mechanics,
more can sometimes be elegantly less.In a paper published
March 1 in the proceedings of the Royal Society, two
engineers at the Viterbi School of Engineering (USC) offer a
new and potentially much more flexible method of
mathematically describing mechanical systems.
Read more...
02-28-06 :: Hubble's Largest Galaxy Portrait Offers a New
High-Definition View
(From Hubble Space Telescope Newsdesk)
Giant galaxies weren't assembled in a day. Neither was this
Hubble Space Telescope image of the face-on spiral galaxy
Messier 101 (M101). It is the largest and most detailed
photo of a spiral galaxy that has ever been released from
Hubble.
Read more...
02-23-06 :: Pluto's expanding brood
(From Nature) Pluto is no lone ranger
in the farthest expanses of the Solar System — its
travelling companions now number three. And if Pluto can
have so many, why shouldn't other objects in the distant,
icy Kuiper belt?
Read more...
02-16-06 :: New Kind of Star Found
(From Scientific American News) An
international team of astronomers has discovered a new class
of stars--massively compressed old neutron stars that seem
inactive but for intermittent bursts of radio waves.
Read more...
02-16-06 :: Captain Kirk's Clone And The Eavesdropper
(From University of York, UK) Imagine
Captain Kirk being beamed back to the Starship Enterprise
and two versions of the Star Trek hero arriving in the
spacecraft's transporter room. It happened 40 years ago in
an episode of the TV science fiction classic, and now
scientists at the University of York and colleagues in Japan
have managed something strikingly similar in the laboratory
- though no starship commander was involved.
Read more...
02-15-06 :: NASA's Spitzer Finds Violent Galaxies Smothered in
'Crushed Glass'
(From NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory) NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope has observed a rare population of colliding
galaxies whose entangled hearts are wrapped in tiny crystals
resembling crushed glass.
Read more...
02-13-06 :: Integral looks at Earth to seek source of cosmic
radiation
(From the European Space Agency)
Cosmic space is filled with continuous, diffuse high-energy
radiation. To find out how this energy is produced, the
scientists behind ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory have
tried an unusual method: observing Earth from space.
Read more...
02-09-06 :: Rutgers Researchers 'Rewrite The Book' In Quantum
Statistical Physics
(From Rutgers University) An important
part of the decades-old assumption thought to be essential
for quantum statistical physics is being challenged by
researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,
and colleagues in Germany and Italy.
Read more...
02-09-06 :: World's Fastest Image
Processor Aids Search For Elusive Form Of Matter
(From the University of Wisconsin) If
there is a need for speed at the edge of science, that need
is arguably greatest among high-energy physicists.
Read more...
01-31-06 :: New Sonofusion Experiment Produces Results Without
External Neutron Source
(From Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute) A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Purdue University, and the Russian Academy of
Sciences has used sound waves to induce nuclear fusion
without the need for an external neutron source.
Read more...
01-25-06 :: Magnetic Spin Details May Lead To New Devices
(From Argonne National Lab) The
combination of an unusual pool of scientific talent at
Argonne and new nanofabrication and nanocharacterization
instruments is helping to open a new frontier in
electronics, to be made up of very small and very fast
devices.
Read more...
01-12-06 :: Scientists Probe Black Hole’s Inner Sanctum
(From Rochester Institute of
Technology) A new study provides the best glimpse yet at the
death spiral of material as it descends into the core of a
galaxy hosting a large black hole.
Read more...
01-12-06 :: Fossil Galaxy Reveals Clues to Early Universe
(From John Hopkins University) A tiny
galaxy has given astronomers a glimpse of a time when the
first bright objects in the universe formed, ending the dark
ages that followed the birth of the universe.
Read more...
01-09-06 :: Spinning black hole leaves dent in space-time
(From MIT's News Office) MIT
scientists and colleagues have found a black hole that has
chiseled a remarkably stable indentation in the fabric of
space and time.
Read more...
01-19-06 :: Headed for Pluto!
(From NASA) After a succesful launch,
New Horizons is headed for a distant rendezvous with the
mysterious planet Pluto almost a decade from now.
Read more...
10-05-05 :: 35-Year-Old Mystery Solved in a Flash of Light
(From NASA) Scientists have solved a
35-year-old mystery of the origin of powerful, split-second
flashes of light called short gamma-ray bursts. These
flashes, brighter than a billion suns yet lasting only a few
milliseconds, have been simply too fast to catch... until
now.
Read more...
10-04-05 :: 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Glauber,
Hal, and Hänsch
(From Nobelprize.org) The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2005 to Roy J.
Glauber (Harvard University) "for his contribution to the
quantum theory of optical coherence", and to John L. Hall (JILA,
University of Colorado and National Institute of Standards
and Technology) and Theodor W. Hänsch (Max-Planck-Institut
für Quantenoptik, Garching and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität,
Munich, Germany) "for their contributions to the development
of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical
frequency comb technique".
Read more...
07-29-05 :: Tenth Planet Discovered
(From NASA) NASA announced today the
discovery of a tenth planet orbiting our sun. The planet is
somewhat larger than Pluto and is in the outlaying regions
of the solar system.
Read more...
06-15-05 :: Primordial Anisotropies in the Cosmic Neutrino
Background Discovered
(From Oxford University News Releases)
Astrophysicists from the Universities of Oxford and Rome
have for the first time found evidence of ripples in the
Universe’s primordial sea of neutrinos, confirming the
predictions of both Big Bang theory and the Standard Model
of particle physics.
Read more...
06-01-05 :: Juno mission is approved by NASA!
(From JPL News Releases) The Juno
mission to Jupiter, the second in NASA's New Frontiers
Program, and to be lead by Southwest Research Institute in
San Antonio, has been approved to move into the preliminary
design phase.
Read more...(from NASA)
Read more...(from MySA.com)
04-28-05 :: Desktop nuclear fusion achieved
(From NewScientist.com) An
astonishingly simple demonstration of nuclear fusion in a
tabletop device has been performed, involving heating an
ordinary crystal soaked in deuterium gas.
Read more...
04-18-05 :: Quark-Gluon Liquid Created at RHIC
(From BNL News) Groups at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion
Collider (RHIC) report the creation of a new state of hot,
dense matter out of the quarks and gluons that are the basic
particles of atomic nuclei.
Read more...
03-25-05 :: The Smallest Electric Motor
(From nanotechweb.org) Physicists have
built the first nanoelectromechanical device that exploits
the effects of surface tension.
Read more...
03-22-05 :: Extra-Solar Planets Directly Observed for
the First Time
(Spitzer Space Telescope
Newsroom) NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has for the first
time captured the light from two known planets orbiting
stars other than our Sun.
Read more...
03-07-05 :: Hans Bethe, a Titan of Physics and Conscience of
Science, Dies at Age 98
(From Cornell University News Service)
Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, the last of the giants of the
golden age of 20th-century physics and the birth of modern
atomic theory, and one of science's most universally admired
figures, died quietly yesterday evening at his home in
Ithaca, N.Y. He was 98.
Read more...
03-03-05 :: First Evidence For Entanglement of Three
Macroscopic Objects
(From AIP's Physics News Update) First
evidence for quantum entanglement of three macroscopic
objects has been seen in a superconducting circuit built at
the University of Maryland.
Read more...
03-02-05 :: Plasma State Seen in Sonoluminescence Experiment
(From PhysicsWeb) Physicists have seen
a region of plasma in a single-bubble sonoluminescence
experiment for the first time. They have also found that the
temperature inside the bubble can reach up to 20,000 K.
Read more...
02-18-05 :: Very Large Array Probes Secrets of Mysterious
Magnetar
(From NSF News) A giant flash of
energy from a supermagnetic neutron star thousands of
light-years from Earth may shed a whole new light on
scientists' understanding of such mysterious "magnetars" and
of gamma-ray bursts.
Read more...
01-14-05 :: Huygens Lands on Titan!
(from Cassini-Huygens ESA web site) After its seven-year journey through
the Solar System on board the Cassini spacecraft, the
Huygens probe has successfully landed on Titan.
Read more...
[for the latest images taken by Huygens, go directly to the
European Space Agency (ESA) web site]
01-11-05 :: Uncovering New Secrets in a DNA Helper
(From AIP's Physics News Update) Two
independent papers shed light on how the bacterial protein
RecA helps identify and replace damaged DNA while making few
mistakes.
Read more...
01-11-05 :: Ripples Detected in the Galaxy Distribution Made
by Sound Waves Generated Soon After the Big Bang
(From SDSS web site) In the largest
galaxy survey ever, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
confirmed the role of gravity in growing structures in the
universe, using the result to precisely measure the geometry
of the universe.
Read more...
01-05-05 :: Most Powerful Eruption in the Universe Discovered
(From Chandra Press Room) Astronomers
have found the most powerful eruption seen in the Universe
using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. A supermassive black
hole generated this eruption by growing at a remarkable
rate.
Read more...
12-21-04 :: Massive Young Galaxies Found In Nearby Universe
(From NASA's JPL) Scientists have spotted what appear to
be massive baby galaxies in our corner of the universe with
the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Previously, astronomers
thought that the universe's "birth-rate" had declined
dramatically, and that only small galaxies were forming.
Read more...
11-22-04 :: NASA Successfully Launches Swift Satellite
(From NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA's Swift satellite was
successfully launched Saturday from the Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station, Fla. The satellite will pinpoint the location
of distant yet fleeting explosions that appear to signal the
births of black holes.
Read more...
10-05-04 :: 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Gross,
Politzer, and Wilczek
(From Nobelprize.org) The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2004 "for
the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the
strong interaction" jointly to David J. Gross (Kavli Institute
for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa
Barbara, USA), H. David Politzer (Caltech, Pasadena, USA), and
Frank Wilczek (MIT, Cambridge, USA).
Read more...
09/08/04 :: Scientists Gain Glimpse of Bizarre Matter in a
Neutron Star
(From NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
Scientists have obtained their best measurement yet of the
size and contents of a neutron star.
Read more...
09/02/04 :: NIST Unveils Chip-Scale Atomic Clock
(From NIST News Release) The heart of a
minuscule atomic clock—believed to be 100 times smaller than
any other atomic clock—has been demonstrated by scientists at
the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST), opening the door to atomically precise
timekeeping in portable, battery-powered devices for secure
wireless communications, more precise navigation and other
applications.
Read more...
08/30/04 :: Scaled-Up Darkness
(From Scientific American.com) Some
physicists are proposing that the universe's mysterious dark
matter consists of great big particles, light-years or more
across. Amid the jostling of these titanic particles, ordinary
matter ekes out its existence like shrews scurrying about the
feet of the dinosaurs.
Read more...
08/27/2004 :: Looking Inside a Laser Pulse
(From PhysicsWeb.org) The oscillation of
the electric field in a laser pulse has been measured for the
first time by physicists in Austria and Germany. The technique
could be used to study ultrafast dynamics in atoms and
molecules.
Read more... 08/21/2004 :: Unique Moon May
Partner Sedna
(From NewScientist.com) The mystery
surrounding Sedna - the most distant object ever seen in the
Solar System - deepened as astronomers calculated that the
planetoid's "missing" moon must belong to an entirely new
class of celestial object, and is possibly the darkest body in
the Solar System.
Read more... 08/20/2004 :: German Lab Wins Linear
Collider Contest
(From PhysicsWeb.org) Particle
physicists have chosen to base the proposed International
Linear Collider on superconducting technology developed by an
international collaboration centered on the DESY lab in
Germany.
Read more... 08/19/2004 :: Quantum Teleportation
Across the Danube Demonstrated
(From Scientific American.com) The
Danube River is known for its beauty and has been immortalized
in song. Now researchers have employed the water body as a
testing ground for quantum teleportation.
Read more... 08/17/2004 :: Nanotubes May Have no
'Temperature'
(From news@Nature.com) Could quantum effects plague miniature
devices? Physicists have made a bizarre discovery: the concept
of temperature is meaningless in some tiny objects.
Read more... 08/13/2004 ::
The Cosmic Revolution: Task Force Outlines Role of Particle
Physics in a New Universe
(From Stanford News Service) A string of recent discoveries in
astronomy has left scientists with an unsettling realization:
The stuff we know and understand makes up less than 5 percent
of the universe. The rest has to be yet-unknown forms of "dark
matter" and "dark energy." At a time of momentous changes in
our basic understanding of the universe, a new document
outlines the essential role of particle physics in deciphering
the laws of nature that govern dark matter, dark energy and
more.
Read more...
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