Friday 16 December 2016

Trilobites: Visualizing the Invisible Drivers of Climate Change

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A new visualization from NASA illustrates the concentration of carbon dioxide around the globe over the course of a year.
via New York Times

Magnetic mirror could shed new light on gravitational waves and the early universe

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Researchers have created a new magnetic mirror-based device that could one day help cosmologists discover new details about ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves, particularly those emitted when the universe was extremely young.
via Science Daily
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New graphene-based system could help us see electrical signaling in heart and nerve cells

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Scientists have enlisted the exotic properties of graphene to function like the film of an incredibly sensitive camera system in visually mapping tiny electric fields. They hope to enlist the new method to image electrical signaling networks in our hearts and brains.
via Science Daily

First detection of boron on the surface of Mars

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Boron has been identified for the first time on the surface of Mars, indicating the potential for long-term habitable groundwater in the ancient past.
via Science Daily
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Science News That Stuck With Us in 2016

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Here's a selection of Science desk reporters' most memorable stories of the year, with a focus on archaeology, biology and space.
via New York Times

Slovenia to enter the Associate Member State family of CERN

Today, the Slovenian Minister of Education, Science and Sport, Dr Maja Makovec Brenčič, together with CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti signed the agreement at CERN.

At its 183 session, CERN Council voted unanimously to admit the Republic of Slovenia to Associate Membership in the pre-stage to Membership of CERN.

Today, the Slovenian Minister of Education, Science and Sport, Dr Maja Makovec Brenčič, together with CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti signed the agreement at CERN.

"It is a great pleasure to welcome Slovenia into our ever-growing CERN family as an Associate Member State in the pre-stage to Membership,” said CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti. “This now moves CERN’s relationship with Slovenia to a higher level.”

"Slovenia's membership in CERN will on the one hand facilitate, strengthen and broaden participation and activities of Slovenian scientists (especially in the field of experimental physics), on the other it will bring full access of Slovenian industry to CERN orders which will help to breakthroughs in demanding markets with products with a high degree of embedded knowledge,” said Dr Maja Makovec Brenčič, Slovenian Minister of Education, Science and Sport today on her visit to CERN. “Slovenia is also aware of the CERN offerings in the areas of education and public outreach, therefore it will try to put them to good use for the motivation and education of high-school students and for the training of the young generation of scientists and engineers, and we are therefore looking forward to become eligible for participation in CERN’s Fellows, Associate and Student programmes."

Slovenian physicists contributed to the CERN programme long before Slovenia became an independent state in 1991, participating in an experiment at LEAR (the Low Energy Antiproton Ring) and on the DELPHI experiment – part of CERN’s previous large accelerator, the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP). In 1991, CERN and the Executive Council of the Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia concluded a Co-operation Agreement concerning the further development of scientific and technical co-operation in the research projects of CERN. In 2009, Slovenia applied to become a Member State of CERN.

For the past 20 years, Slovenian physicists have been participating in the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, from research and development, through construction and commissioning, to harvesting the physics results. Their focus has been on silicon tracking, protection devices and computing at the Slovenian TIER-2 data centre. They remain committed to the tracker upgrade, making use of the research reactor in Ljubljana for neutron irradiation studies.   

Following the notification of the completion of its internal approval procedures, Slovenia will join Cyprus and Serbia as an Associate Member State in the pre-stage to Membership of CERN. After a period of five years, Council will decide on the admission of Slovenia to full Membership.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2016/12/slovenia-enter-associate-member-state-family-cern

Full go-ahead for building ExoMars 2020

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The first ExoMars mission arrived at the Red Planet in October and now the second mission has been confirmed to complete its construction for a 2020 launch. 


via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Full_go-ahead_for_building_ExoMars_2020

Meteors vs Supermoon

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Geminid meteors battled supermoonlight in planet Earth's night skies on December 13/14. Traveling at 35 kilometers (22 miles) per second, the bits of dust from the mysterious asteroid 3200 Phaethon that produce the meteor streaks are faster than a speeding bullet. Still, only the brightest were visible during the long night of 2016's final Perigee Full Moon. Captured in exposures made over several hours, a few meteors from the shower's radiant in Gemini can be traced through this composite nightscape. With stars of Orion near the horizon, the overexposed lunar disk illuminates still waters of the Miyun reservoir northeast of Beijing, China.
Tomorrow's picture: by Jove
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Number of known black holes expected to double in two years with new detection method

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A method that will detect roughly 10 black holes per year has now been developed, doubling the number currently known within two years, say scientists. They add that it will likely unlock the history of black holes in a little more than a decade.
via Science Daily
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Ceres: Water ice in eternal polar night

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The cameras of the Dawn space probe discover water ice in Ceres' polar region. It can survive for aeons in the extreme cold traps, even though there is no atmosphere.
via Science Daily
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