Tuesday 31 January 2017

Tracing the cosmic web with star-forming galaxies in the distant universe

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A research group has revealed a picture of the increasing fraction of massive star-forming galaxies in the distant universe. Massive star-forming galaxies in the distant universe, about 5 billion years ago, trace large-scale structure in the universe. In the nearby universe, about 3 billion years ago, massive star-forming galaxies are not apparent. This change is consistent with the picture of galaxy evolution established by other independent studies.
via Science Daily
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Astronauts' brains change shape during spaceflight

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MRIs before and after space missions reveal that astronauts' brains compress and expand during spaceflight, according to a new study.
via Science Daily
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How stressful will a trip to Mars be on the human body?

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Preliminary research results for the NASA Twins Study debuted at NASA's Human Research Program's annual Investigators' Workshop in Galveston, Texas the week of Jan. 23. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned home last March after nearly one year in space living on the International Space Station. His identical twin brother, Mark, remained on Earth.
via Science Daily
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Ultrahigh sensitivity graphene infrared detectors for imaging and spectroscopy

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Researcher have developed a novel graphene-based infrared (IR) detector demonstrating record high sensitivity for thermal detection. Graphene's unique attributes pave the way for high-performance IR imaging and spectroscopy.
via Science Daily

NASA's fermi discovers the most extreme blazars yet

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NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has identified the farthest gamma-ray blazars, a type of galaxy whose intense emissions are powered by supersized black holes. Light from the most distant object began its journey to us when the universe was 1.4 billion years old, or nearly 10 percent of its present age.
via Science Daily
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Where to See the American Eclipse

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Are you planning to see the American Eclipse on August 21? A few hours after sunrise, a rare total eclipse of the Sun will be visible along a narrow path across the USA. Those only near the path will see a partial eclipse. Although some Americans live right in path of totality, surely many more will be able to get there after a well-planned drive. One problem with eclipses, though, is that clouds sometimes get in the way. To increase your clear-viewing odds, you might consult the featured map and find a convenient destination with a historically low chance (more blue) of thick clouds overhead during totality. Given the large fraction of Americans carrying camera-equipped smartphones, this American Eclipse may turn out to be the most photographed event in the history of the world.

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First-ever GPS data release to boost space-weather science

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Today, more than 16 years of space-weather data is publicly available for the first time in history. The data comes from space-weather sensors.
via Science Daily
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Monday 30 January 2017

Science Will Suffer Under Trump’s Travel Ban, Researchers Say

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College officials and policy makers say that new restrictions on travel will affect thousands of students and researchers and set back scientific inquiry.
via New York Times

New source of asymmetry between matter and antimatter

A view of the LHCb experimental cavern (Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN)

The LHCb experiment has found hints of what could be a new piece of the jigsaw puzzle of the missing antimatter in our universe. They have found tantalising evidence of a phenomenon dubbed charge-parity (CP) violation in particles known as baryons – a family of particles whose best-known members are the protons and neutrons that make up all the matter in the universe.

The idea that the baryons made of matter behave exactly like their antimatter counterparts is related to the idea of CP symmetry. Any violation of this symmetry would imply that the laws of physics are not the same for matter and antimatter particles.

This is important because a detailed understanding of how this symmetry is violated in nature can contribute to explaining the overwhelming excess of matter over antimatter observed in our universe, despite the fact that the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the first place.

The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics predicts that a tiny amount of CP violation exists also in the baryon sector. Although CP-violating processes have been studied for over 50 years, no significant effects had been seen with baryonic particles. Moreover, CP violation as described in the SM is not large enough to account for the much larger matter-antimatter unbalance. Therefore, other CP violation sources must contribute, and one of the main goals of LHCb is precisely to search for new sources of CP violation.

The new LHCb result is based on an analysis of data collected during the first three years of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operations. Among all the possible short-living particles created as a result of a proton-proton collision, the collaboration compared the behavior of the Λb0 baryon and its antimatter counterpart, Λb0-bar, when they decay into a proton (or antiproton) and three charged particles called pions. This process is extremely rare and has never previously been observed. The high production rate of these baryons at the LHC and the specialised capabilities of the LHCb detector allowed the collaboration to collect a pure sample of around 6000 such decays.

The LHCb collaboration compared the distribution of the four decay products of the Λb0and Λb0-bar baryons and computed specific quantities that are sensitive to the CP symmetry. Any significant difference, or asymmetry, between such quantities for the matter and antimatter cases would be a manifestation of CP violation.

The LHCb data revealed a significant level of asymmetries in those CP-violation-sensitive quantities for the Λb0and Λb0-bar baryon decays, with differences in some cases as large as 20%.

Overall, the statistical significance – which is how physicists refer to the probability that this result hasn’t occurred by chance – is at the level of 3.3 standard deviations, and a discovery is claimed when this value reaches 5 standard deviations. These results, published today in Nature Physics, will soon be updated with the larger data set collected so far during the second run of the LHC. If this earlier evidence for CP violation is seen again with greater significance in the larger sample, the result will be an important milestone in the study of CP violation.

Further reading on the LHCb website and LHCb collaboration 2017 Nature Physics DOI: 10.1038/nphys4021.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/01/new-source-asymmetry-between-matter-and-antimatter

Both push and pull drive our galaxy's race through space

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What is propelling the Milky Way's race through space? By 3-D mapping the flow of galaxies through space, researchers found that the Milky Way galaxy is speeding away from a large, previously unidentified region of low density.
via Science Daily
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The Cat's Eye Nebula from Hubble

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To some, it may look like a cat's eye. The alluring Cat's Eye nebula, however, lies three thousand light-years from Earth across interstellar space. A classic planetary nebula, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of dusty concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. But the formation of the beautiful, more complex inner structures is not well understood. Seen so clearly in this digitally reprocessed Hubble Space Telescope image, the truly cosmic eye is over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.

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Gazing Into Danakil Depression’s Mirror, and Seeing Mars Stare Back

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Scientists are studying this area in a remote region of Ethiopia — one of the hottest places on Earth — to understand the possibilities of life on other planets and moons.
via New York Times

Solar cell test

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Space Science Image of the Week: Testing the solar cells of ESA’s exoplanet mission
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/01/Cheops_solar_cells

Sunday 29 January 2017

Red Aurora Over Australia

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Why would the sky glow red? Aurora. A solar storm in 2012, emanating mostly from active sunspot region 1402, showered particles on the Earth that excited oxygen atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere. As the excited element's electrons fell back to their ground state, they emitted a red glow. Were oxygen atoms lower in Earth's atmosphere excited, the glow would be predominantly green. Pictured here, this high red aurora is visible just above the horizon last week near Flinders, Victoria, Australia. The sky that night, however, also glowed with more familiar but more distant objects, including the central disk of our Milky Way Galaxy on the left, and the neighboring Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies on the right. A time-lapse video highlighting auroras visible that night puts the picturesque scene in context. Why the sky did not also glow green remains unknown.

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Saturday 28 January 2017

50 Years After Apollo Disaster, Memorial for 3 Men, and for Era

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Families of astronauts and fans of space travel gathered at Cape Canaveral for what may have been the last memorial for three astronauts.
via New York Times

N159 in the Large Magellanic Cloud

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Over 150 light-years across, this cosmic maelstrom of gas and dust is not too far away. It lies south of the Tarantula Nebula in our satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud a mere 180,000 light-years distant. Massive stars have formed within. Their energetic radiation and powerful stellar winds sculpt the gas and dust and power the glow of this HII region, entered into the Henize catalog of emission stars and nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds as N159. The bright, compact, butterfly-shaped nebula above and left of center likely contains massive stars in a very early stage of formation. Resolved for the first time in Hubble images, the compact blob of ionized gas has come to be known as the Papillon Nebula.

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Friday 27 January 2017

Boron atoms stretch out, gain new powers

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Ribbons and single-atom chains of boron would have unique physical and electronic properties, according to theoretical physicists.
via Science Daily

NASA studies cosmic radiation to protect high-altitude travelers

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NASA scientists studying high-altitude radiation recently published new results on the effects of cosmic radiation in our atmosphere to help improve real-time radiation monitoring for aviation industry crew and passengers.
via Science Daily
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2017: What can we expect?

Venus Through Water Drops

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Now the brilliant "star" in planet Earth's evening skies, Venus is captured in this creative astrophotograph. Taken with a close-focusing lens on January 18 from Milton Keynes, UK, it shows multiple images of the sky above the western horizon shortly after sunset. The images were created by water drops on a glass pane fixed to a tree. Surface tension has drawn the water drops into simple lens-like shapes. Refracting light, the drops create images that are upside-down, so the scene has been rotated to allow comfortable right-side up viewing of a macro-multiple-skyscape.

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Thursday 26 January 2017

High-tech maps of tropical forest diversity identify new conservation targets

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New remote sensing maps of the forest canopy in Peru identify new regions for conservation effort. Scientists used airborne laser-guided imaging spectroscopy, to identify preservation targets by undertaking a new approach to study global ecology -- one that links a forest's variety of species to the strategies for survival and growth employed by canopy trees and other plants.
via Science Daily
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New space weather model helps simulate magnetic structure of solar storms

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A new model is mapping out the path of coronal mass ejections as they travel from the sun to Earth, where these storms can interact with our planet's magnetic fields and cause a variety of space weather effects.
via Science Daily
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Cosmic lenses support finding on faster than expected expansion of the universe

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By using galaxies as giant gravitational lenses, an international group of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have made an independent measurement of how fast the universe is expanding. The newly measured expansion rate for the local Universe is consistent with earlier findings. These are, however, in intriguing disagreement with measurements of the early universe. This hints at a fundamental problem at the very heart of our understanding of the cosmos.
via Science Daily
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Antioxidants get small: Molecular compounds mimic effective graphene agents, show potential for therapies

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New single-molecule compounds that are efficient antioxidants in their own right help scientists understand how larger nanoparticles quench damaging reactive oxygen species in the body.
via Science Daily

GOES-16: Moon over Planet Earth

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Launched last November 19 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the satellite now known as GOES-16 can now observe planet Earth from a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. Its Advanced Baseline Imager captured this contrasting view of Earth and a gibbous Moon on January 15. The stark and airless Moon is not really the focus of GOES-16, though. Capable of providing a high resolution full disk image of Earth every 15 minutes in 16 spectral channels, the new generation satellite's instrumentation is geared to provide sharper, more detailed views of Earth's dynamic weather systems and enable more accurate weather forecasting. Like previous GOES weather satellites, GOES-16 will use the moon over our fair planet as a calibration target.

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Wednesday 25 January 2017

Today's rare meteorites were once common

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Four hundred and sixty-six million years ago, there was a giant asteroid collision in outer space, and the debris from that collision has been falling to Earth ever since. But for the first time, scientists have created a reconstruction of the kinds of meteorites that fell before this collision. They discovered that today's common meteorites were once rare, while many meteorites that are rare today were common before the collision.
via Science Daily
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Physicists patent detonation technique to mass-produce graphene

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A detonation technique has been patented that can mass-produce graphene with three ingredients: hydrocarbon gas, oxygen and a spark plug.
via Science Daily

Trilobites: Better Weather Forecasts, and These Pretty Pictures, Too

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NOAA released the first batch of images taken by its GOES-16 satellite, which it says is like going from black and white to HDTV.
via New York Times

Cassini's Grand Finale Tour at Saturn

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Cassini is being prepared to dive into Saturn. The robotic spacecraft that has been orbiting and exploring Saturn for over a decade will end its mission in September with a spectacular atmospheric plunge. Pictured here is a diagram of Cassini's remaining orbits, each taking about one week. Cassini is scheduled to complete a few months of orbits that will take it just outside Saturn's outermost ring F. Then, in April, Titan will give Cassini a gravitational pull into Proximal orbits, the last of which, on September 15, will impact Saturn and cause the spacecraft to implode and melt. Cassini's Grand Finale orbits are designed to record data and first-ever views from inside the rings -- between the rings and planet -- as well as some small moons interspersed in the rings. Cassini's demise is designed to protect any life that may occur around Saturn or its moons from contamination by Cassini itself.

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Tuesday 24 January 2017

How satellite data changed chimpanzee conservation efforts

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Chimpanzees are an endangered species and scientists and conservationists are turning to the NASA-US Geological Survey Landsat satellites to help bolster their efforts to preserve their forest homes.
via Science Daily
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Bursts of methane may have warmed early Mars

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The presence of water on ancient Mars is a paradox. There's plenty of geographical evidence that rivers periodically flowed across the planet's surface yet Mars should have been too cold to support liquid water at that time. Now, researchers suggest that early Mars may have been warmed intermittently by a powerful greenhouse effect. They found interactions between methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen in the early Martian atmosphere may have created warm periods when the planet could support liquid water on the surface.
via Science Daily
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Dr. Margaret Meixner and Dr. Marc Postman Promoted to STScI Distinguished Astronomers


The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, has appointed Dr. Margaret Meixner and Dr. Marc Postman to the position of STScI Distinguished Astronomer. Distinguished Astronomer is the highest level of appointment on the tenure track at STScI and represents a rank commensurate with the highest level of professorial appointments at major universities.

Meixner's promotion recognizes her long-term contributions to research and service at STScI. She has led international teams to study the life cycle of dust in the Magellanic Clouds using the Hubble, Spitzer and Herschel space telescopes. Postman is being recognized for his long-term contributions to the study of the formation and evolution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. He has led important research to determine how the environments of galaxies determine their shapes and how the most massive galaxies evolve.


via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-05

Micro spacecraft investigates cometary water mystery

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In September 2015, a team of astronomers successfully observed the entire hydrogen coma of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, using the LAICA telescope onboard the PROCYON spacecraft. They also succeeded in obtaining the absolute rate of water discharge from the comet. Through our observations, we were able to test the coma models for the comet for the first time. This result is the first scientific achievement by a micro spacecraft for deep space exploration.
via Science Daily
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M78 and Orion Dust Reflections

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In the vast Orion Molecular Cloud complex, several bright blue nebulas are particularly apparent. Pictured here are two of the most prominent reflection nebulas - dust clouds lit by the reflecting light of bright embedded stars. The more famous nebula is M78, in the image center, cataloged over 200 years ago. To its left is the lesser known NGC 2071. Astronomers continue to study these reflection nebulas to better understand how interior stars form. The Orion complex lies about 1500 light-years distant, contains the Orion and Horsehead nebulas, and covers much of the constellation of Orion.

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Monday 23 January 2017

Quantum optical sensor tested in space for the first time, with a laser system from Berlin

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For the first time ever, a cloud of ultra-cold atoms has been successfully created in space on board of a sounding rocket. The MAIUS mission demonstrates that quantum optical sensors can be operated even in harsh environments like space – a prerequisite for finding answers to the most challenging questions of fundamental physics and an important innovation driver for everyday applications.
via Science Daily
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Astronomers find seven dwarf-galaxy groups, the building blocks of massive galaxies

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A team of astronomers has discovered seven distinct groups of dwarf galaxies with just the right starting conditions to eventually merge and form larger galaxies, including spiral galaxies like the Milky Way.
via Science Daily
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Experiment resolves mystery about wind flows on Jupiter

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A team of geophysicists has recreated Jupiter's jets in the laboratory for the first time and shown that they likely extend thousands of kilometers below Jupiter's visible atmosphere.
via Science Daily
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Winter Hexagon over Manla Reservoir

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If you can find Orion, you might be able to find the Winter Hexagon. The Winter Hexagon involves some of the brightest stars visible, together forming a large and easily found pattern in the winter sky of Earth's northern hemisphere. The stars involved can usually be identified even in the bright night skies of a big city, although here they appeared recently in dark skies above the Manla Reservoir in Tibet, China. The six stars that compose the Winter Hexagon are Aldebaran, Capella, Castor (and Pollux), Procyon, Rigel, and Sirius. Here, the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs through the center of the Winter Hexagon, while the Pleiades open star cluster is visible just above. The Winter Hexagon asterism engulfs several constellations including much of the iconic steppingstone Orion.

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Seasons turn

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Space Science Image of the Week: Two observations over a month apart show the appearance of frost at Mars’ north pole
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/01/Frost_build-up_near_Mars_north_pole

Extreme space weather-induced blackouts could cost US more than $40 billion daily

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The daily US economic cost from solar storm-induced electricity blackouts could be in the tens of billions of dollars, with more than half the loss from indirect costs outside the blackout zone, according to a new study.
via Science Daily
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Sunday 22 January 2017

SpaceX Falcon 9 to Orbit

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Birds don't fly this high. Airplanes don't go this fast. The Statue of Liberty weighs less. No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago. The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description. Pictured here, a SpaceX Falcon 9 V rocket lifted off through a cloud deck from Cape Canaveral, Florida last July to deliver cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. From a standing start, the 300,000+ kilogram rocket ship lifted its Dragon Capsule up to circle the Earth, where the outside air is too thin to breathe. Rockets bound for space are now launched from somewhere on Earth about once a week.

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Saturday 21 January 2017

First colour image from the joint UK, Algeria CubeSat Mission

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A newly captured image marks an important milestone as AlSat Nano is Algeria’s first CubeSat mission. AlSat Nano stuck to a tight development schedule, with less than 18 months between payload selection and flight readiness, allowing UK industry and academia to stay ahead of the curve in the competitive global CubeSat market.
via Science Daily
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Daphnis the Wavemaker

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Plunging close to the outer edges of Saturn's rings, on January 16 the Cassini spacecraft captured this closest yet view of Daphnis. About 8 kilometers across and orbiting within the bright ring system's Keeler gap, the small moon is making waves. The 42-kilometer wide outer gap is foreshortened in the image by Cassini's viewing angle. Raised by the influenced of the small moon's weak gravity as it crosses the frame from left to right, the waves are formed in the ring material at the edge of the gap. A faint wave-like trace of ring material is just visible trailing close behind Daphnis. Remarkable details on Daphnis can also be seen, including a narrow ridge around its equator, likely an accumulation of particles from the ring.

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Friday 20 January 2017

How can high energy physics help the water shortage?

'Our Place In Space:' Astronomy and Art Combine in Brand New Hubble-Inspired Exhibition


Since the dawn of civilization, we have gazed into the night sky and attempted to make sense of what we saw there, asking questions such as: Where do we come from? What is our place in the universe? And are we alone? As we ask those questions today and new technology expands our horizons further into space, our yearning for their answers only grows. Since its launch in 1990, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has continued this quest for answers while orbiting Earth every 90 minutes. Hubble has not only made countless new astronomical discoveries, but also brought astronomy to the public eye, satisfying our curiosity, sparking our imaginations, and greatly impacting culture, society, and art.

A new traveling exhibition, "Our Place in Space" features iconic Hubble images. It presents not only a breathtaking pictorial journey through our solar system and to the edges of the known universe, but also Hubble-inspired works by selected Italian artists. By seamlessly integrating perspectives from both artists and astronomers, the exhibition will inspire visitors to think deeply about how humanity fits into the grand scheme of the universe. Before moving to other venues, the exhibition will be on display from February 1 to April 17, 2017, in the Istituto Veneto di Science, Lettere ed Arti, Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti, on the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. For more information about the traveling exhibition and Hubble, visit: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1701.


via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-04

Layer Cake Sunset

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On January 18 a tantalizing sunset was captured in this snapshot. Seemingly sliced into many horizontal layers the Sun shimmered moments before it touched the horizon, setting over the Pacific Ocean as seen from the mountaintop Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Pink hues of filtered sunlight were created by the long sight-line through the hazy atmosphere. But the remarkable layers correspond to low atmospheric layers of sharply different temperature and density also along the line of sight. Over a long path through each layer the rays of sunlight are refracted strongly and create different images or mirages of sections of the setting Sun.

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TEDxCERN “Ripples of Curiosity” videos are now online

Thursday 19 January 2017

Astronomer searches for signs of life on Wolf 1061 exoplanet

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Astronomers have located the habitable zone, the region where water could exist on the surface of a planet, on the Wolf 1061, a planetary system that's 14 light years away.
via Science Daily
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Graphene's sleeping superconductivity awakens

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The intrinsic ability of graphene to superconduct (or carry an electrical current with no resistance) has been activated for the first time. This further widens the potential of graphene as a material that could be used in fields such as energy storage, high-speed computing, and molecular electronics.
via Science Daily

Creating atomic scale nanoribbons

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A recent study has demonstrated the first important step toward integrating atomically precise graphene nanoribbons (APGNRs) onto nonmetallic substrates.
via Science Daily

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula in Cepheus

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Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission nebula and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Also known as vdB 142, the cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long. This colorful close-up view includes image data from a narrow band filter that transmits the light from ionized hydrogen atoms in the region. The resulting composite highlights the bright swept-back ridges that outline pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas. Such embedded, dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees. This dramatic scene spans a 1 degree wide field, about the size of 2 Full Moons.

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Wednesday 18 January 2017

Likely cause -- and potential prevention -- of vision deterioration in space

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Vision deterioration in astronauts who spend a long time in space is likely due to the lack of a day-night cycle in intracranial pressure. But using a vacuum device to lower pressure for part of each day might prevent the problem, researchers said.
via Science Daily
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Deep-space mission to metal asteroid

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Scientists are planning to send a deep-space probe to a metal asteroid, enabling them to see what is believed to be a planetary core. Psyche, an asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, is made almost entirely of nickel-iron metal.
via Science Daily
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Milestone in graphene production

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For the first time, it is now possible to produce functional OLED electrodes from graphene. The OLEDs can, for example, be integrated into touch displays, and the miracle material graphene promises many other applications for the future.
via Science Daily

Space Station Vista: Planet and Galaxy

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If you could circle the Earth aboard the International Space Station, what might you see? Some amazing vistas, one of which was captured in this breathtaking picture in mid-2015. First, visible at the top, are parts of the space station itself including solar panels. Just below the station is the band of our Milky Way Galaxy, glowing with the combined light of billions of stars, but dimmed in patches by filaments of dark dust. The band of red light just below the Milky Way is airglow -- Earth's atmosphere excited by the Sun and glowing in specific colors of light. Green airglow is visible below the red. Of course that's our Earth below its air, with the terminator between day and night visible near the horizon. As clouds speckle the planet, illumination from a bright lightning bolt is seen toward the lower right. Between work assignments, astronauts from all over the Earth have been enjoying vistas like this from the space station since the year 2000.

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BASE precisely measures antiproton’s magnetic moment

The BASE collaboration at CERN reports the most precise measurement ever made of the magnetic moment of the antiproton, allowing a fundamental comparison between matter and antimatter (Image: Maximilien Brice/ CERN)

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Communications, the BASE collaboration at CERN reports the most precise measurement ever made of the magnetic moment of the antiproton, allowing a fundamental comparison between matter and antimatter. The BASE measurement shows that the magnetic moments of the proton and antiproton are identical, apart from their opposite signs, within the experimental uncertainty of 0.8 parts per million. The result improves the precision of the previous best measurement by the ATRAP collaboration in 2013, also at CERN, by a factor of 6.

At the scale of elementary particles, an almost perfect symmetry between matter and antimatter exists. On cosmological scales, however, the amount of matter outweighs that of antimatter. Understanding this profound contradiction demands that physicists compare the fundamental properties of particles and their antiparticles with high precision.

BASE uses antiprotons from CERN’s unique antimatter factory, the Antiproton Decelerator (AD), and is designed specifically to perform precision measurements of the antimatter counterparts of normal matter particles. The magnetic moment, which determines how a particle behaves when immersed in a magnetic field, is one of the most studied intrinsic characteristics of a particle. Although different particles have different magnetic behaviour, the magnetic moments of protons and antiprotons are supposed to differ only in their sign as a consequence of so-called charge-parity-time symmetry. Any difference in their magnitudes would challenge the Standard Model of particle physics and would offer a glimpse of new physics.

To perform the experiments, the BASE collaboration cools down antiprotons to the extremely low temperature of about 1 degree above absolute zero, and traps them using sophisticated electromagnetic containers so that they do not come into contact with matter and annihilate (thanks to such devices, BASE has recently managed to store a bunch of antiprotons for more than one year). From here, antiprotons are fed one-by-one to further traps where their behaviour under magnetic fields allows researchers to determine their intrinsic magnetic moment. Similar techniques have already been successfully applied in the past to electrons and their antimatter partners, positrons, but antiprotons present a much bigger challenge because their magnetic moments are considerably weaker. The new BASE measurement required a specially designed magnetic “bottle” that is more than 1000 times stronger than that used in electron/positron experiments.

“This measurement is so far the culmination point of 10 years of hard work by the BASE team,” said Stefan Ulmer, spokesperson of the BASE collaboration. “Together with other AD experiments, we are really making rapid progress in our understanding of antimatter.”

BASE now plans to measure the antiproton magnetic moment using a new trapping technique that should enable a precision at the level of a few parts per billion – i.e. a factor of 200 to 800 improvement. “The implementation of this method is much more challenging than the method which was used here and will require several additional iteration steps,” says first author Hiroki Nagahama.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/01/base-precisely-measures-antiprotons-magnetic-moment

Utilizing 2D crystals in methanol fuel cells

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Fuel cells are a technology of interest as future energy sources, as they aid in production of sustainable energy using simple hydrocarbons as fuels. They function by a simple operational mechanism with fuel oxidation on one side, and oxidant reduction on the other side of a membrane, liberating electrons thus contributing to electrical energy generation. A wide variety of fuels, such as methanol, ethanol, and propanol have been used so far. Among these fuels, methanol remains a favourable candidate due to its high energy density, ease of handling and other operational characteristics.

Hence methanol fuel cells find their potential use in laptop chargers, military applications or other scenarios where access to electricity is difficult. However the wider spectrum of commercial potential for methanol systems is greatly hindered by methanol cross over in the membrane. Cross over is the leaking of methanol from the anode to the cathode through the membrane, which creates a short circuit and adversely affects fuel cell performance. Cross over is mitigated by using a barrier layer on top of the membrane used. Previous work in this field tested different materials that yielded improved performance by reducing methanol crossover, but those materials also significantly reduced proton transport thereby significantly reducing performance, as membrane proton conductivity is one of the dominant factors for energy generation in fuel cells.

It is known that Andre Geim and co-workers (Nature, A.K. Geim et.al 2014), discovered proton transfer through single layer graphene and other 2D materials. Also graphene is known for its dense lattice packing structure, inhibiting the passage of methanol and other hydrocarbon-based molecules across the membrane. However, the actual application of these 2D materials in fuel cell systems has not yet been realized.

Figure: Schematic showing proton transport through the membrane region of a methanol fuel cell.

Researchers from the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science at the University of Manchester have come up with a way to utilize these 2D materials in an actual operating direct methanol fuel cell. In their recently published paper in the journal Advanced Energy Materials (Holmes et al, 2016), they have shown that the addition of single layer graphene by chemical vapour deposition on to the membrane area has significantly reduced methanol cross over, while simultaneously causing negligible resistance to proton transport, thereby enhancing the cell performance by 50%. This first proof of concept shows that 2D materials make for excellent barrier materials for fuel cells.

Moreover, the work shows that high efficiency membraneless fuel cells could be realized in the near future. This technology could further be extended to other fuel cells types, namely hydrogen fuel cells.

Hydrogen fuel cells suffer from the usage of high cost humidifiers that keep the membrane in a humid atmosphere for improved proton conductivity. Graphene however, as reported in earlier studies, showed improved proton conductivity with increasing temperature without the need for humidifier systems. Utilizing graphene in fuel cells could make a significant contribution to satisfying future energy demands.

Article: Holmes, Stuart M., Prabhuraj Balakrishnan, Vasu. S. Kalangi, Xiang Zhang, Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo, Pulickel M. Ajayan, and Rahul R. Nair. 2016. "2D Crystals Significantly Enhance The Performance Of A Working Fuel Cell". Advanced Energy Materials, 1601216. doi:10.1002/aenm.201601216.


via Graphenea