Saturday 31 May 2014

Rare Form of Iron Oxide in Ancient Chinese Pottery Discovered

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New analysis of ancient Jian wares reveals the distinctive pottery contains an unexpected and highly unusual form of iron oxide. This rare compound, called epsilon-phase iron oxide, was only recently discovered and characterized by scientists and so far has been extremely difficult to create with modern techniques. “What is amazing is that the ‘perfect synthesis conditions’ for epsilon-phase iron oxide were encountered 1000 years ago by Chinese potters,” says Catherine Dejoie, scientist at Berkley Lab’s Advanced Light Source and ETH Zurich. The study, published May 13 in Scientific Reports, could lead to an easier, more reliable synthesis of epsilon-phase iron oxide, enabling better, cheaper magnetic materials including those used for data storage. The study was performed by an international team of researchers from China, France, Switzerland, and the United States, using a variety of analysis techniques at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Centre d’Elaboration de Matériaux et d’Etudes Structruales in France. In addition to Dejoie, Berkeley Lab scientists Kai Chen, Martin Kunz, Nobumichi Tamura and Zhi Liu were also authors on the paper. Jian wares, such as tea bowls, are famous for their shiny black glaze and variable brown and

The post Rare Form of Iron Oxide in Ancient Chinese Pottery Discovered has been published on Technology Org.

 
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We can’t run from earthquakes, but can we hide from them?

Science Focus

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Earthquakes: from Fukushima to Haiti, they leave behind nothing but death and devastation. A tool for predicting earthquakes could save lives, but infrastructure would still be at the mercy of plate tectonics. To make us even more helpless, the forces driving tectonic plates are enormous—it seems unlikely that prevention is ever going to be realistic. So we can't predict them, and we can't stop them. But what if we could hide from earthquakes?

On the face of it, the idea sounds ridiculous. The shaking of an earthquake is due to the propagation of pressure waves along the surface of the Earth. Surely, the only way to hide from an earthquake would be to leave the Earth, right? Not exactly. In optics, we know how to hide an object from light. These invisibility cloaks have been demonstrated, and they even sort of work. And a wave is a wave, so maybe, a group of researchers thought, this might be a fruitful approach for engineering.

Going meta

The key here is a concept called a metamaterial. To understand metamaterials, let's jump back into the world of optics. The way that light travels through a material is determined by nature—light may bend, slow down, or speed up as it enters different materials, depending on their properties. Materials do not have infinite variation, so it's not possible to use material properties to get light to flow around an object to make it disappear from view, for instance.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/UVM488DoCes/
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Computer simulation supports a “holographic” theory describing a black hole

Science Focus

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A “holographic” theory, which was conjectured to describe accurately the dynamical phenomena occurring in a black hole, has been tested numerically by a research group composed of four researchers: Masanori Hanada, Ph.D., an associate professor at Kyoto University, Yoshifumi Hyakutake, Ph. D., an associate professor at Ibaraki University, Goro Ishiki, Ph. D., an assistant professor at Kyoto University, and Jun Nishimura, Ph. D., an associate professor at KEK. Black holes are literally “black holes” residing in the cosmic space: once something goes into a black hole, it can never come out even with the speed of light. In 1974 the British physicist, Hawking, showed theoretically that a black hole actually radiates particles and evaporates little by little by considering the microscopic effect near the black hole which causes particles and anti-particles to be created and annihilated in pairs. This led him to conclude that a black hole can be viewed as an object with certain temperature. On the other hand, it has been thought difficult to understand such properties of the black hole accurately from the interior of the black hole. The reason is that as one approaches the center of the black hole, the curvature of the space-time increases, and the description of gravity in terms of

The post Computer simulation supports a “holographic” theory describing a black hole has been published on Technology Org.

 
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VIDEO: The house that is heated by sea water

Science Focus

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The National Trust is unveiling a new project on Thursday to suck heat from the sea to warm one of its historic homes in North Wales. 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27513594#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Monogram Trifid Nebula, Messier 16 Stickers

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic picture from our universe featuring the massive star factory known as the Trifid Nebula.

It was captured in all its glory with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
So named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, the Trifid Nebula is a rare combination of three nebulae types that reveal the fury of freshly formed stars and point to more star birth in the future. The field of view of the image is approximately 13 x 17 arcminutes.
It's an awe-inspiring, breathtaking image that reveals some of the wonder that is our universe.

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Satellite Station and Southern Skies

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This clear night skyscape captures the colorful glow of aurora australis, the southern lights, just outside the port city of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, planet Earth. As if staring into the dreamlike scene, the Tasmanian Earth Resources Satellite Station poses in the center, illuminated by nearby city lights. Used to receive data from spacebased Earth observing instruments, including NASA's MODIS and SeaWiFS, the station was decommissioned in 2011 and dismantled only recently, shortly after the picture was taken on April 30. Still shining in southern skies though, the central bulge of our Milky Way galaxy and two bright satellite galaxies the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds appear in the frame. The Small Magellanic Cloud shines through the fainter red auroral band.

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Lighting the Way to Graphene-based Devices: Light to Dope Graphene Boron Nitride Heterostructures

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Graphene continues to reign as the next potential superstar material for the electronics industry, a slimmer, stronger and  much faster electron conductor than silicon. With no natural energy band-gap, however, graphene’s superfast conductance can’t be switched off, a serious drawback for transistors and other electronic devices. Various techniques have been deployed to overcome this problem with one of the most promising being the integration of ultrathin layers of graphene and boron nitride into two-dimensional heterostructures. As conductors, these bilayered hybrids are almost as fast as pure graphene, plus they are well-suited for making devices. However, tailoring the electronic properties of graphene boron nitride (GBN) heterostructures has been a tricky affair, involving chemical doping or electrostatic-gating – until now. Researchers with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have demonstrated a technique whereby the electronic properties of GBN heterostructures can be modified with visible light. Feng Wang, a condensed matter physicist with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and UC Berkeley’s Physics Department, as well as an investigator for the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at Berkeley, led a study in which photo-induced doping of GBN heterostructures was used to create p–n junctions and other useful doping profiles while preserving the

The post Lighting the Way to Graphene-based Devices: Light to Dope Graphene Boron Nitride Heterostructures has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Precipitation satellite passes check-out, starts mission

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The new Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory satellite is now in the hands of the engineers who will fly the spacecraft and ensure the steady flow of data on rain and snow for the life of the mission. The official handover to the Earth Science Mission Operations team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center marked the end of a successful check-out period.

via Science Daily

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Monogrammed Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Oval Sticker

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tagged with: crnneb, star nurseries, star clusters, galaxies, starfields, awesome astronomy photos, nebulae, carina nebula, eso, european southern observatory, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic astronomy photograph showing a panoramic view of the WR 22 and Eta Carinae regions of the Carina Nebula.

The picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

It's a stunning, mind-blowing, fantastic image that reveals a little of the wonder that is our universe.

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Friday 30 May 2014

Ames Lab creates multifunctional nanoparticles for cheaper, cleaner biofuel

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory has created a faster, cleaner biofuel refining technology that not only combines processes, it uses widely available materials to reduce costs. Ames Laboratory scientists have developed a nanoparticle that is able to perform two processing functions at once for the production of green diesel, an alternative fuel created from the hydrogenation of oils from renewable feedstocks like algae. The method is a departure from the established process of producing biodiesel, which is accomplished by reacting fats and oils with alcohols. “Conventionally, when you are producing biodiesel from a feedstock that is rich in free fatty acids like microalgae oil, you must first separate the fatty acids that can ruin the effectiveness of the catalyst, and then you can perform the catalytic reactions that produce the fuel,” said Ames Lab scientist Igor Slowing. “By designing multifunctional nanoparticles and focusing on green diesel rather than biodiesel, we can combine multiple processes into one that is faster and cleaner.” Contrary to biodiesel, green diesel is produced by hydrogenation of fats and oils, and its chemical composition is very similar to that of petroleum-based diesel. Green diesel has many advantages over biodiesel, like being more stable and

The post Ames Lab creates multifunctional nanoparticles for cheaper, cleaner biofuel has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Two GOES-R instruments complete spacecraft integration

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Two of the six instruments that will fly on NOAA's first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - R satellite have completed integration with the spacecraft. The Solar Ultraviolet Imager and Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors were installed on the sun-pointing platform.

via Science Daily

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Warming effects of black hole 'burps' is the reason

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Warming effects of black hole 'burps' is the reason
..in some cases. Once the black hole has eaten and digested everything within reach, then star formation will begin.
  #outerspace  

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory originally shared:

Elliptical Galaxies: Chandra Helps Explain "Red and Dead Galaxies"

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/coldgas/

This four-panel of images represents a sample of giant elliptical galaxies observed by Chandra and the Hershel Space Observatory in a study to investigate why these objects have such low levels of star formation. In six galaxies, Herschel detected surprisingly large amounts of cold gas – the fuel for star formation. Chandra revealed that the hot gas in the center of these galaxies appears to be much more disturbed than in the cold gas-free systems. This is a sign that material has been ejected from regions close to the central black hole. The energy from these outbursts helps to prevent the cold gas from cooling sufficiently to form stars. In two other galaxies, jets pushing against the hot gas are creating enormous cavities that are observed in the Chandra images. These jets may be heating the hot, X-ray emitting gas, preventing it from cooling and forming cold gas and stars.

(Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ/N.Werner et al; Optical: DSS)

 » see original post https://plus.google.com/116000959328274308893/posts/bSNxxjJ79g4
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First real time movies of the light-to-current conversion in an organic solar cell

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Scientists have reported the first real time movies of the light-to-current conversion process in an organic solar cell. Researchers show that the quantum-mechanical, wavelike nature of electrons and their coupling to the nuclei is of fundamental importance for the charge transfer in an organic photovoltaic device.

via Science Daily

Quantum mechanisms of organic devices for alternative solar panels are revealed

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Silicon panel-based technology requires a very costly, contaminating manufacturing process, while organic photovoltaic devices have been positioned as one of the most attractive alternatives as a source of solar energy. This is the first time the quantum mechanisms that trigger the photovoltaic function of these devices have been deciphered.

via Science Daily

Unlocking the mystery of how your brain keeps time

Science Focus

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In Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife, Henry DeTamble is a man with a rare disorder that causes him to involuntarily travel through time. His wife Clare experiences life linearly, but never knows when or where she will see her husband next. "Each moment that I wait feels like a year," Clare says. "Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting."

You don't need a time-traveling husband to have a warped experience of time like Clare's — think of how long a Monday back at work seems to stretch out, and how quickly the weekend flashes by. Time should march...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/261814/unlocking-the-mystery-of-how-your-brain-keeps-time
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50 years with the Big Bang’s “smoking gun”

Science Focus

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The microwave horn in New Jersey where Wilson and Penzias first detected the hum left over from the birth of the Universe.

Today, Alcatel-Lucent, the corporate entity that inherited Bell Labs, is celebrating one of the lab's most momentous discoveries: the cosmic microwave background, a remnant of the Big Bang. Since its discovery, the study of the cosmic microwave background's details has continued to pay dividends in our understanding of the Universe and its formation, with the latest results being released just this year.

We're a long way from 1964, where pigeon droppings in New Jersey were an experimental complication.

Seeing the background

The story of the cosmic microwave background's discovery is anything but a sudden eureka-like breakthrough, which makes putting an exact date on it a pointless exercise. Back in 1964, Bell Lab's Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson weren't looking to do astronomy; they were trying to do microwave communications, something directly relevant to Bell Lab's parent company. The problem they had was that no matter where they pointed their equipment, there was a steady hum of noise.

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Scientists overcome fundamental atom laser limit to build brightest atom laser to date

Science Focus

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The new atom laser technique can be used to create different types of lasers. These figures show the atom density distributions of (a) a well-collimated atom laser beam, (b) an ultra-high flux atom laser, and (c) an atom beam combining an atom laser and thermal emission. Credit: Bolpasi, et al. ©2014 IOP Publishing In an atom laser, millions of individual atoms propagate through space with minimal spreading, just like photons propagate in a coherent photon laser beam. Although both types of lasers are similar, atom lasers are still in the early stages of research with much work to be done before they can be used for applications, which may include atom lithography, atom interferometry, and magnetometry (measuring magnetic fields). A key factor for both types of lasers is their flux, which is the rate at which the atoms and photons are emitted. In current atom lasers, the flux is fundamentally limited by the same outcoupling process that is used to create the atom laser in the first place. Now in a new study published in the New Journal of Physics, researchers from Greece and Singapore have demonstrated a novel, ultra-bright atom laser that overcomes this fundamental atom laser limit, achieving a

The post Scientists overcome fundamental atom laser limit to build brightest atom laser to date has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Monogram Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Stickers

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tagged with: stlrnrsry, star clusters, galaxies, stars, starfields, awesome astronomy pictures, constellation puppis, the stern, monogram, monograms, star nurseries, nebulae, european southern observatory, eso, vista, initials, initialled, monogrammed

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

A gorgeous set of oval stickers showing the area surrounding the stellar cluster NGC 2467, located in the southern constellation of Puppis ("The Stern"). With an age of a few million years at most, it is a very active stellar nursery, where new stars are born continuously from large clouds of dust and gas.

The image, looking like a colourful cosmic ghost or a gigantic celestial Mandrill, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (centre) and Haffner 19 (middle right: it is located inside the smaller pink region - the lower eye of the Mandrill), as well as vast areas of ionised gas.

The bright star at the centre of the largest pink region on the bottom of the image is HD 64315, a massive young star that is helping shaping the structure of the whole nebular region.

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Space-based experiment could test gravity's effects on quantum entanglement

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(Phys.org) —Physicists are continually looking for ways to unify the theory of relativity, which describes large-scale phenomena, with quantum theory, which describes small-scale phenomena. In a new proposed experiment in this area, two toaster-sized "nanosatellites" carrying entangled condensates orbit around the Earth, until one of them moves to a different orbit with a different gravitational field strength. As a result of the change in gravity, the entanglement between the condensates is predicted to degrade by up to 20%. Experimentally testing the proposal may be possible in the near future.



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A matter of matter: Demonstrating destructive quantum interference using Bose-Einstein condensates

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(Phys.org) —When C. K. Hong, Z. Y. Ou and Leonard Mandel demonstrated destructive quantum interference between pairs of indistinguishable bosons in their 1987 paper1, they did so with massless photons. Their protocol – christened the Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) effect – remained unchanged until recently, when scientists at The University of Queensland, Brisbane proposed an experiment to implement HOM in the matter-wave regime. This massive-particle version of the HOM effect uses pair-correlated atoms produced in a collision of two Bose–Einstein condensates and subjected to two laser-induced so-called Bragg pulses. (A Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC, is a phase of matter in which bosons in a dilute gas enter the same quantum state when cooled to a temperature near absolute zero – that is, 0 K or −273.15 °C – and macroscopic-scale quantum effects appear. Bragg pulses replicate atom optics analogs of the mirror and beam-splitter elements of the photonic HOM interferometer.) By simulating the atom-optics HOM effect using colliding condensates and predicting an interference visibility of about 70%, the researchers say that their matter-wave approach may lead to stronger tests of quantum mechanics, including Bell inequality violations and the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox, the latter now being known as entanglement.



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Planetary Nebula Abell 36

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The gorgeous, gaseous shroud of a dying sunlike star, planetary nebula Abell 36 lies a mere 800 light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. At that distance it spans over 1.5 light-years in this sharp telescopic view. Shrugging off its outer layers, the nebula's central star is contracting and becoming hotter, evolving towards a final white dwarf phase. In fact, in Abell 36, the central star is estimated to have a surface temperature of over 73,000 K, compared to the Sun's present 6,000 K temperature. As a result, the intensely hot star is much brighter in ultraviolet light, compared to its visual appearance here. The invisible ultraviolet light ionizes hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the nebula and ultimately powers the beautiful visible light glow.

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Engineering earth-abundant catalysts that mimic platinum in renewable energy technologies

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When one considers nonrenewable resources, the first to come to mind are fossil fuels: petroleum, coal, and natural gas. The rapid depletion of these unsustainable resources has sparked global research on renewable-energy technologies, such as fuel cells, electrolyzers, and lithium-air batteries. Unfortunately there is a common unsustainable thread that links these burgeoning technologies: a dependence on platinum-group metals (PGMs). These elements — platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, and osmium — are the six least-abundant in the Earth’s lithosphere, yet are the most stable and active catalysts. Even with efficient recycling, numerous studies have indicated that the Earth simply does not contain enough PGMs to support a global renewable-energy economy. Thus, PGMs can be considered unsustainable resources that are currently needed to enable renewable energy technologies. MIT graduate student Sean Hunt, postdoc Tarit Nimmandwudipong, and Yuriy Román, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, have an idea for how to replace PGMs with metals that are more plentiful. In a paper published recently in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the team explained its process of synthesizing these alternative catalysts. “Because the PGMs tend to be the most active and stable catalysts in virtually all relevant thermal and electrocatalytic processes, our research sought to answer an exciting question,”

The post Engineering earth-abundant catalysts that mimic platinum in renewable energy technologies has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Spacecraft to Ferry U.S. Astronauts Is Unveiled

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SpaceX, which has flown cargo capsules to the International Space Station, introduced the Dragon V2, designed to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit.















via New York Times

Monogrammed Helix Nebula, Galaxies and Stars Stickers

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic colour-composite image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293). It was created from images obtained using the Wide Field Imager (WFI), an astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile.

The blue-green glow in the centre of the Helix comes from oxygen atoms shining under effects of the intense ultraviolet radiation of the 120 000 degree Celsius central star and the hot gas.

Further out from the star and beyond the ring of knots, the red colour from hydrogen and nitrogen is more prominent. A careful look at the central part of this object reveals not only the knots, but also many remote galaxies seen right through the thinly spread glowing gas.
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Thursday 29 May 2014

Novel technique enables air-stable water droplet networks

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A simple new technique to form interlocking beads of water in ambient conditions could prove valuable for applications in biological sensing, membrane research and harvesting water from fog. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a method to create air-stable water droplet networks known as droplet interface bilayers. These interconnected water droplets have many roles in biological research because their interfaces simulate cell membranes. Cumbersome fabrication methods, however, have limited their use. “The way they’ve been made since their inception is that two water droplets are formed in an oil bath then brought together while they’re submerged in oil,” said ORNL’s Pat Collier, who led the team’s studypublished in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Otherwise they would just pop like soap bubbles.” Instead of injecting water droplets into an oil bath, the ORNL research team experimented with placing the droplets on a superhydrophobic surface infused with a coating of oil. The droplets aligned side by side without merging. To the researchers’ surprise, they were also able to form non-coalescing water droplet networks without including lipids in the water solution. Scientists typically incorporate phospholipids into the water mixture, which leads to the formation

The post Novel technique enables air-stable water droplet networks has been published on Technology Org.

 
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NASA missions let scientists see moon's dancing tide from orbit

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Scientists combined observations from two NASA missions to check out the moon's lopsided shape and how it changes under Earth's sway -- a response not seen from orbit before. The lopsided shape of the moon is one result of its gravitational tug-of-war with Earth. The mutual pulling of the two bodies is powerful enough to stretch them both, so they wind up shaped a little like two eggs with their ends pointing toward one another. On Earth, the tension has an especially strong effect on the oceans, because water moves so freely, and is the driving force behind tides.

via Science Daily

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Unexpected water explains surface chemistry of nanocrystals

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Danylo Zherebetskyy and his colleagues at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found unexpected traces of water in semiconducting nanocrystals.



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They splat, stretching and healing defects in the process

Science Focus

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They splat, stretching and healing defects in the process
This looks promising, as do many other techniques. There's an evolutionary battle going on at the moment for the 'fittest' method.

 #science

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VIDEO: Automated braking put to the test

Science Focus

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Insurance companies back plans to implement automated braking which uses new technology to override drivers 
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Nine Scientists Are Awarded Kavli Prizes

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The scientists will split $1 million prizes from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for work in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience.















via New York Times

Initialled Spiral Galaxy - NGC 253 Stickers

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous image that reveals a little of the wonder that is our universe.

Measuring 70 000 light-years across and laying 13 million light-years away, the nearly edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 253 is revealed here in an image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) of the MPG/ESO 2.2 m telescope at the La Silla Observatory.

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Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri

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Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is some 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter, the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. This astronomically sharp color image of the classic globular cluster was recorded in March under Chilean skies from Hacienda Los Andes.

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Harvesting fresh water from fog

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Researchers at MIT’s School of Engineering, working with colleagues at the Pontificial University of Chile in Santiago, are harvesting potable water from the coastal fog that forms on the edge of one of the driest regions on Earth. Using a simple system of suspended mesh structures, placed on hilltops in areas with persistent fog and prevailing westerly winds, local Chilean communities collect fog water for drinking and agricultural use. Fog-collecting technology is still in its infancy. But lab experiments have shown that variations in the mesh spacing, as well as the size and the wettability of the mesh fibers, all affect the volume of water that can be collected each day. Through engineering analysis and optimization of the mesh geometry and its surface chemistry, the team — which includes MIT professor of mechanical engineering Gareth McKinley — has been able to increase the fog-collecting efficiency of existing designs by 500 percent. The technology holds great promise as a locally deployable and scalable alternative to other energy-intensive desalination technologies. Mesh-based fog harvesters are passive, inexpensive to fabricate, with almost no operating costs, and can be deployed in similar environments throughout the world. Source: MIT, story by John Freidah

The post Harvesting fresh water from fog has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Altering the energy landscape: fuel cell catalysts could help integrate new power solutions

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MIT’s doctoral candidate Yan Chen wants to improve the world. She doesn’t say this directly, but her five years of research on catalytic surfaces for use in high-temperature fuel cells say it for her. Her work has the potential to create efficient new energy solutions to help curb the world’s appetite for carbon-based fuels. “My objective is to contribute to building an energy landscape including more renewable and clean resources, which is just what is needed the most in China right now,” says Chen, who decided to study nuclear science and engineering because it offers one solution to her native country’s energy needs: China is ramping up its clean energy industry, and she hopes her research will contribute. Earlier this year, Chen received the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad. In April, she was named a Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future postdoctoral fellow. The fellowship will allow her to continue her research at MIT after her graduation in June. Electrochemical energy conversion and storage systems, such as fuel cells, will play an essential role in integrating new energy sources like nuclear, solar, and wind, Chen says, but their implementation requires new materials to make them cheaper and more

The post Altering the energy landscape: fuel cell catalysts could help integrate new power solutions has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Supersonic spray delivers high-quality graphene layer

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A simple, inexpensive spray method that deposits a graphene film can heal manufacturing defects and produce a high-quality graphene layer on a range of substrates.

via Science Daily

Monogram Fires of the Flame Nebula - in Orion Oval Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, hfflmnb, star forming, orion constellation, young stars clusters, orion the hunter, flame nebula, awesome space picture, monogram, initialled, heavens, orions belt, european southern observatory, eso, vista, initials, monogrammed, monograms

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous outer space picture featuring the spectacular star-forming region known as the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings.

In views of this evocative object in visible light the core of the nebula is completely hidden behind obscuring dust, but in this VISTA view, taken in infrared light, the cluster of very young stars at the object’s heart is revealed. The wide-field VISTA view also includes the glow of the reflection nebula NGC 2023, just below centre, and the ghostly outline of the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) towards the lower right.

The bright bluish star towards the right is one of the three bright stars forming the Belt of Orion. The image was created from VISTA images taken through J, H and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum.

The image shows about half the area of the full VISTA field and is about 40 x 50 arcminutes in extent. The total exposure time was 14 minutes and was the first to be released publicly from VISTA, the world’s largest survey telescope.

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ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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Wednesday 28 May 2014

Building with blocks: Architect Anton Garcia-Abril brings his experimental, industrial style to MIT

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In a parking lot next to a nondescript building on the northern edge of MIT’s campus, dozens of enormous foam blocks sit in piles. These are not discarded pieces of packaging from some industrial construction, however. They are models of buildings, and the parking lot is the workshop of Anton Garcia-Abril, a professor of architecture at MIT. Along with his partner, Debora Mesa, Garcia-Abril leads a team that often rearranges the blocks into new shapes. Just beyond the fence, traffic roars by on a busy street, trains sometimes roll through on the nearby railroad tracks, and new commercial buildings are being raised a block or two away. Their own building is a former lab for electricity research. It is exactly the kind of setting Garcia-Abril hoped for when he joined MIT’s Department of Architecture last summer. “When we came here and were invited to participate in the research program, we said, ‘We want a yard,’” Garcia-Abril explains. “We want to build, to test, to feel how spaces comfort you, shelter you, and inspire you.” What Garcia-Abril, Mesa, and their team want to test, most of all, are new forms for urban structures, potentially made out of prestressed concrete, that can

The post Building with blocks: Architect Anton Garcia-Abril brings his experimental, industrial style to MIT has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Out There: Andromeda and the Milky Way: A Merger of Galactic Proportions

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News of two stars in the Andromeda galaxy colliding turned out to be a false alarm, but we’re going to have an encounter ourselves with Andromeda one day.















via New York Times

Water in moon rocks provides clues and questions about lunar history

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A recent review of hundreds of chemical analyses of Moon rocks indicates that the amount of water in the Moon's interior varies regionally -- revealing clues about how water originated and was redistributed in the Moon. These discoveries provide a new tool to unravel the processes involved in the formation of the Moon, how the lunar crust cooled, and its impact history.

via Science Daily

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The clumping behavior of galaxies

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Active, supermassive black holes at the hearts of galaxies tend to fall into two categories: those that are hidden by dust, and those that are exposed. Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, have shown that galaxies with hidden supermassive black holes tend to clump together in space more than the galaxies with exposed, or unobscured, black holes.

via Science Daily

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SpaceX-3 science payloads return to Kennedy

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A trio of science payloads have completed their missions on the International Space Station and returned to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where they'll be turned over to the scientists who designed them.

via Science Daily

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NASA, Khan Academy collaborate to bring STEM opportunities to online learners

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NASA and Khan Academy, a non-profit educational website, has debuted a series of online tutorials designed to increase student interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM. The announcement of the new collaborative effort was made today at the 6th annual White House Science Fair.

via Science Daily

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How did flightless birds travel around the world?

Science Focus

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Despite being flightless, the ostriches of Africa have distant relations in Australia, New Zealand, and South America. All part of a group called the ratites, these birds share some common interests, like laying eggs, running fast, and not flying. But a logical question has bedeviled ornithologists for years: If these birds can't fly, how did they spread across the globe?

The standard explanation is that their common ancestor, also flightless, once roamed all over a southern supercontinent called Gondwana. As the continent split up millions and millions of years ago, populations of this bird were...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/261957/how-did-flightless-birds-travel-around-the-world
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“Hurricane Daenerys” to ravage NASA in disaster prep exercise next week

Science Focus

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If you’ve worked in IT, you’re almost certainly familiar with your company’s "disaster preparedness plan"—every organization of appreciable size has some kind of formalized set of documents detailing what to do in the event of an emergency. Organizations on the Gulf Coast typically include hurricane scenarios in their disaster preparedness plans, and in this respect, NASA is no different from any other large company. Next week, NASA’s Houston-based Johnson Space Center (JSC) will kick off its annual Hurricane Exercise and run through its site’s disaster plan, but the mock storm the staff will be battling won’t be called "Jerry" or "Bob" or something pedestrian—no, JSC will find itself directly in the path of a far more awesomely named tropical cyclone.

"This year's storm is named 'Hurricane Daenerys,'" said JSC Center Operations Directorate Manager Joel Walker in an e-mail to JSC managers announcing the exercise. "Our exercise will feature a new interactive model which will require quick thinking, priority setting, and mitigation strategies from Senior Staff."

For the three or four Ars readers who aren't Game of Thrones fans, "Daenerys" is the name of one of the saga's primary characters—the last surviving child of a murdered king, who plans to return to the land her family once ruled and seize the throne by any means necessary. Also, she has a giant army and three enormous fire-breathing dragons. Due to the circumstances of her birth, she is frequently referred to as "Daenerys Stormborn," and she is not, as they say, a person with whom anyone should mess.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/lJVT-pCC5Cs/
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Diamond makes laser beams more brilliant

Science Focus

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For the first time, researchers have shown that diamond can radically improve the quality of high power laser beams, according to new photonics research published overnight in Laser & Photonics Reviews. A team from the Macquarie Photonics Research Centre have demonstrated this improvement by exploiting optical interactions inside a diamond crystal of length several millimetres long. “Lasers come in all sorts of colours and with beam powers that range from the milliwatt level we are familiar with in laser pointers and in DVD players, up to many thousands of watts, enough to burn through steel in a fraction of second,” says lead researcher Dr Aaron McKay. The device used by McKay and colleagues was so highly efficient that the brightness of the output beam was 50% higher than the input beam. However, there is one fundamental property of a laser beam that is critical to applications – its quality, or, in the terminology of physicists, its coherence. High quality lasers are needed to meet growing technological demands in applications as diverse as in materials processing, environmental and remote sensing, and in defence. Beam quality and brightness are fundamental attributes that inherently make lasers so valuable. “Standard methods used to increase

The post Diamond makes laser beams more brilliant has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/gUUlAK85oqg/
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Monogram Crab Nebula in Taurus Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: crbneb, astronomy, messier 1, neutron stars, star ejecta, pulsars, supernovae explosions, galaxies, outer space pictures, monogram initials, heavens, european southern observatory, eso, vista, monograms, initialled, monogrammed

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A great outer space picture featuring a three colour composite of the well-known Crab Nebula (also known as Messier 1), as observed with the FORS2 instrument in imaging mode in the morning of November 10, 1999.

It's the remnant of a supernova explosion at a distance of about 6,000 light-years, observed almost 1,000 years ago, in the year 1054. It contains a neutron star near its center that spins 30 times per second around its axis (see below).

In this picture, the green light is predominantly produced by hydrogen emission from material ejected by the star that exploded. The blue light is predominantly emitted by very high-energy ("relativistic") electrons that spiral in a large-scale magnetic field (so-called synchrotron emission). It's believed that these electrons are continuously accelerated and ejected by the rapidly spinning neutron star at the centre of the nebula and which is the remnant core of the exploded star.

This pulsar has been identified with the lower/right of the two close stars near the geometric center of the nebula, immediately left of the small arc-like feature, best seen in ESO Press Photo eso9948.

Technical information: ESO Press Photo eso9948 is based on a composite of three images taken through three different optical filters: B (429 nm; FWHM 88 nm; 5 min; here rendered as blue), R (657 nm; FWHM 150 nm; 1 min; green) and S II (673 nm; FWHM 6 nm; 5 min; red) during periods of 0.65 arcsec (R, S II) and 0.80 (B) seeing, respectively. The field shown measures 6.8 x 6.8 arcminutes and the images were recorded in frames of 2048 x 2048 pixels, each measuring 0.2 arcseconds. North is up; East is left.

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Lunar prospecting: Scanning the skies for moons in other solar systems

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The first exoplanet was discovered in 1994. Twenty years later, NASA's exoplanet catalog lists more than 1700 planets confirmed around other stars. Most of these extra-solar-systems have been measured by changes in light spectra, in stellar motion or dust disks around stars. Some exoplanets-more than 40 as of today-have even been directly photographed. One way or the other, we know that exoplanets are out there in abundance, in places we thought they would be and in places we didn't dream a planet could possibly exist. So what comes next?



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The Cone Nebula from Hubble

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Heads or tails: Experimental quantum coin flipping cryptography performs better than classical protocols

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(Phys.org) —Cryptography – the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties, referred to as adversaries – has a long and varied history. In ancient Greece, for example, the Spartan military may have used the so-called scytale transposition cipher to encrypt and decrypt messages. Steganography (hiding the existence of a message) was also first developed at that time as, according to Herodotus, a message tattooed on a slave's shaved head and then hidden under regrown hair – and is still in use in the form of invisible ink, microdots, and digital watermarks. That said, applying complexity cryptography to quantum communication is and will continue to be essential – and while quantum cryptographic primitives are in principle more secure than classical protocols, demonstrating this in a practical system has proven difficult.



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Student research leads to method for developing clean hydrogen fuel

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Recycling waste materials into new products is a common method for sustaining a green environment, but it isn’t only limited to reusing old cans, plastics, and paper.  In chemistry, scientists use discarded materials to create renewable sources of energy. Sean Taylor is one of two Rutgers-Camden students to find a new family of functional materials for the production of clean hydrogen fuel through photocatalysis.   A pair of Rutgers University–Camden students has found a new family of functional materials for the production of clean hydrogen fuel through photocatalysis, a process that uses sunlight or ultraviolet light to drive chemical reactions. “We’re taking something that is discarded as waste and turning it into something useful,” says Sean Taylor, a senior chemistry major at Rutgers–Camden and Sterling High School graduate from Stratford. For this research project, Taylor and fellow senior chemistry major Mihir Mehta reuse glycerol, a sustainable compound discarded as waste when vegetable oils are used to create biofuel.  The two students mix the glycerol with water and a specially prepared titanium dioxide photocatalyst.  The hydrogen resulting from the mixture is an ideal fuel to meet the need for sustainable and renewable sources of energy. “It becomes an alternative energy source,”

The post Student research leads to method for developing clean hydrogen fuel has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Sunsets on Titan reveal the complexity of hazy exoplanets

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Scientists working with data from NASA's Cassini mission have developed a new way to understand the atmospheres of exoplanets by using Saturn's smog-enshrouded moon Titan as a stand-in. The new technique shows the dramatic influence that hazy skies could have on our ability to learn about these alien worlds orbiting distant stars.

via Science Daily

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A habitable environment on Martian volcano?

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The Martian volcano Arsia Mons may have been home to one of the most recent habitable environments yet found on the Red Planet, geologists say. The research shows that volcanic eruptions beneath a glacial ice sheet would have created substantial amounts of liquid water on Mars's surface around 210 million years ago. Where there was water, there is the possibility of past life.

via Science Daily

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NASA-funded rocket to study birthplace of stars

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In deep space, floating between the stars, lies an abundance of atoms -- carbon, oxygen, hydrogen -- that over millions of years will grow into new stars and new planets. NASA successfully launched the Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph, or CHESS, payload aboard a Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket on May 24, 2014, for a 15-minute flight to observe this star nursery more comprehensively and in better detail than has been done by a single instrument ever before.

via Science Daily

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Initialled Dumbbell Nebula Constellation Vulpecula Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: awesome astronomy images, inspirational, dmbblneb, vulpecula constellation, intense ultraviolet radiation, european southern observatory, messier 27 ngc 6853, heavens, monograms, initialled, eso, vista, initials, monogrammed, monogram

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A great photo from deep space featuring the Dumbbell Nebula - also known as Messier 27 or NGC 6853. It's a typical planetary nebula and is located in the constellation Vulpecula (The Fox).

The distance is rather uncertain, but is believed to be around 1,200 light-years. It was first described by the French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier who found it in 1764 and included it as no. 27 in his famous list of extended sky objects.

Despite its class, the Dumbbell Nebula has nothing to do with planets. It consists of very rarefied gas that has been ejected from the hot central star (well visible on this photo), now in one of the last evolutionary stages. The gas atoms in the nebula are excited (heated) by the intense ultraviolet radiation from this star and emit strongly at specific wavelengths.

This image is the beautiful by-product of a technical test of some FORS1 narrow-band optical interference filters. They only allow light in a small wavelength range to pass and are used to isolate emissions from particular atoms and ions.

In this three-colour composite, a short exposure was first made through a wide-band filter registering blue light from the nebula. It was then combined with exposures through two interference filters in the light of double-ionized oxygen atoms and atomic hydrogen. They were colour-coded as “blue”, “green” and “red”, respectively, and then combined to produce this picture that shows the structure of the nebula in “approximately true” colours.



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ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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