Sunday 30 April 2017

Cassini Looks Out from Saturn

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This is what Saturn looks like from inside the rings. Last week, for the first time, NASA directed the Cassini spacecraft to swoop between Saturn and its rings. During the dive, the robotic spacecraft took hundreds of images showing unprecedented detail for structures in Saturn's atmosphere. Looking back out, however, the spacecraft was also able to capture impressive vistas. In the featured image taken a few hours before closest approach, Saturn's unusual northern hexagon is seen surrounding the North Pole. Saturn's C ring is the closest visible, while the dark Cassini Division separates the inner B ring from the outer A. A close inspection will find the two small moons that shepherd the F-ring, the farthest ring discernable. This image is raw and will be officially verified, calibrated and released at a later date. Cassini remains on schedule to end its mission by plunging into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15.

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Saturday 29 April 2017

Who switches on the LHC?

The LHC has restarted for its 2017 run

Final tests were performed in the LHC at the end of April, ready for the restart this weekend (Image: Maximilien Brice/ CERN)

Today, the LHC once again began circulating beams of protons, for the first time this year. This follows a 17-week-long extended technical stop.

Over the past month, after the completion of the maintenance work that began in December 2016, each of the machines in the accelerator chain have, in turn, been switched on and checked until this weekend when the LHC, the final machine in the chain, could be restarted by the Operations team.

“It’s like an orchestra, everything has to be timed and working very nicely together. Once each of the parts is working properly, that’s when the beam goes in, in phases from one machine to the next all the way up to the LHC,” explains Rende Steerenberg, who leads the operations group responsible for the whole accelerator complex, including the LHC.

Each year, the machines shut down over the winter break to enable technicians and engineers to perform essential repairs and upgrades, but this year the stop was scheduled to run longer, allowing more complex work to take place. This year included the replacement of a superconducting magnet in the LHC, the installation of a new beam dump in the Super Proton Synchrotron and a massive cable removal campaign.

Among other things, these upgrades will allow the collider to reach a higher integrated luminosity – the higher the luminosity, the more data the experiments can gather to allow them to observe rare processes.

“Our aim for 2017 is to reach an integrated luminosity of 45 fb-1 [they reached 40 fb-1 last year] and preferably go beyond. The big challenge is that, while you can increase luminosity in different ways – you can put more bunches in the machine, you can increase the intensity per bunch and you can also increase the density of the beam – the main factor is actually the amount of time you stay in stable beams,” explains Steerenberg.

In 2016, the machine was able to run with stable beams – beams from which the researchers can collect data – for around 49 per cent of the time, compared to just 35 per cent the previous year. The challenge the team faces this year is to maintain this or (preferably) increase it further.

The team will also be using the 2017 run to test new optics settings – which provide the potential for even higher luminosity and more collisions.

“We’re changing how we squeeze the beam to its small size in the experiments, initially to the same value as last year, but with the possibility to go to even smaller sizes later, which means we can push the limits of the machine further. With the new SPS beam dump and the improvements to the LHC injector kickers, we can inject more particles per bunch and more bunches, hence more collisions,” he concludes.

For the first few weeks only, a few bunches of particles will be circulating in the LHC to debug and validate the machine. Bunches will gradually increase over the coming weeks until there are enough particles in the machine to begin collisions and to start collecting physics data. 

 

Learn more about the restart:

Who switches on the LHC?

Everything you ever wanted to know about the LHC


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/04/lhc-has-restarted-its-2017-run

Solar System Grand Tour space tourism advert Shower Curtain

Solar System Grand Tour space tourism advert Shower Curtain
A wonderful, retro-style vacation advert. It urges you to take the same grand tour of the solar system taken by NASA's Voyager mission. Visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and…


Fast, non-destructive test for two-dimensional materials

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A fast, nondestructive optical method for analyzing defects in two-dimensional materials has been developed, with applications in electronics, sensing, early cancer diagnosis and water desalination.
via Science Daily

Arches of Spring

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Two luminous arches stretched across the dome of the sky on this northern spring night. After sunset on March 29, the mountain view panorama was captured in 57 exposures from Chopok peak in central Slovakia at an altitude of about 2,000 meters. The arc of the northern Milky Way is visible toward the right, but only after it reaches above the terrestrial lights from the mountain top perspective. Though dusk has passed, a bright patch of celestial light still hovers near the horizon and fades into a second luminous arch of Zodiacal Light, crossing near the center of the Milky Way. Dust in the ecliptic plane reflects sunlight to create the Zodiacal glow, typically prominent after sunset in clear, dark, skies of the northern spring. Almost opposite the Sun, Jupiter shines brightly near the horizon toward the left. Since Jupiter lies near the ecliptic, it appears within the slight brightening of the Zodiacal band also opposite the Sun called the Gegenschein.

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Friday 28 April 2017

Trilobites: If Mars Is Colonized, We May Not Need to Ship In the Bricks

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A new study suggests the material humanity needs to one day construct structures on Mars may already exist within the red planet’s desolate soil.
via New York Times

Hubble's bright shining lizard star

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The bright object seen in this Hubble image is a single and little-studied star named TYC 3203-450-1, located in the constellation of Lacerta (The Lizard). The star is much closer than the much more distant galaxy.
via Science Daily
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Exploring the Antennae

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Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus, two large galaxies are colliding. Stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, very rarely collide in the course of the ponderous cataclysm that lasts for hundreds of millions of years. But the galaxies' large clouds of molecular gas and dust often do, triggering furious episodes of star formation near the center of the cosmic wreckage. Spanning over 500 thousand light-years, this stunning view also reveals new star clusters and matter flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational tidal forces. The remarkable mosaicked image was constructed using data from the ground-based Subaru telescope to bring out large-scale and faint tidal streams, and Hubble Space Telescope data of extreme detail in the bright cores. The suggestive visual appearance of the extended arcing structures gives the galaxy pair its popular name - The Antennae.

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CERN and American Physical Society sign SCOAP3

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN1) and the American Physical Society (APS2) signed an agreement today for SCOAP3(link is external) – the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics. Under this agreement, high-energy physics articles published in three leading journals of the APS will be open access as from January 2018.

All authors worldwide will be able to publish their high-energy physics articles in Physical Review C, Physical Review D and Physical Review Letters at no direct cost. This will allow free and unrestricted exchange of scientific information within the global scientific community and beyond, for the advancement of science.

“Open access reflects values and goals that have been enshrined in CERN’s Convention for more than sixty years, such as the widest dissemination of scientific results. We are very pleased that the APS is joining SCOAP3 and we look forward to welcoming more partners for the long-term success of this initiative”, said Fabiola Gianotti, CERN’s Director General.

APS CEO Kate Kirby commented that, “APS has long supported the principles of open access to the benefit of the scientific enterprise. As a non-profit society publisher and the largest international publisher of high-energy physics content, APS has chosen to participate in the SCOAP3 initiative in support of this community.”

With this new agreement between CERN and the APS, SCOAP3 will cover about 90 percent of the journal literature in the field of high-energy physics.

Convened and managed by CERN, SCOAP3 is the largest scale global open access initiative ever built. It involves a global consortium of 3,000 libraries and research institutes from 44 countries, with the additional support of eight research funding agencies. Since its launch in 2014, it has made 15 000 articles by about 20 000 scientists from 100 countries accessible to anyone.

The initiative is possible through funds made available from the redirection of former subscription money. Publishers reduce subscription prices for journals participating in the initiative, and those savings are pooled by SCOAP3 partners to pay for the open access costs, for the wider benefit of the community.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/04/cern-and-american-physical-society-sign-scoap3

Gary Steigman, Who Teased Out the Universe’s Dark Secrets, Dies at 76

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Through Big Bang studies, Dr. Steigman helped show that most matter in the universe was not made of atoms, a finding that led to modern conceptions of dark matter and dark energy.
via New York Times

Thursday 27 April 2017

Intergalactic gas and ripples in the cosmic web

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A team of astronomers has made the first measurements of small-scale ripples in primeval hydrogen gas using rare double quasars.
via Science Daily
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Using math to investigate possibility of time travel

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After some serious number crunching, a researcher says that he has come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine: a Traversable Acausal Retrograde Domain in Space-time (TARDIS). He describes it as a bubble of space-time geometry which carries its contents backward and forwards through space and time as it tours a large circular path. The bubble moves through space-time at speeds greater than the speed of light at times, allowing it to move backward in time.
via Science Daily
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Cassini spacecraft dives between Saturn and its rings

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft is back in contact with Earth after its successful first-ever dive through the narrow gap between the planet Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017.
via Science Daily
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Engineers investigate a simple, no-bake recipe to make bricks from Martian soil

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Explorers planning to settle on Mars might be able to turn the planet's soil into bricks without needing to use an oven or additional ingredients. Instead, they would need to apply pressure to compact the soil--the equivalent of a blow from a hammer.
via Science Daily
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Lyrids in Southern Skies

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Earth's annual Lyrid meteor shower peaked before dawn on April 22nd, as our fair planet plowed through dust from the tail of long-period comet Thatcher. Seen from the high, dark, and dry Atacama desert a waning crescent Moon and brilliant Venus join Lyrid meteor streaks in this composited view. Captured over 5 hours on the night of April 21/22, the meteors stream away from the shower's radiant, a point not very far on the sky from Vega, alpha star of the constellation Lyra. The radiant effect is due to perspective as the parallel meteor tracks appear to converge in the distance. In the foreground are domes of the Las Campanas Observatory housing (left to right) the 2.5 meter du Pont Telescope and the 1.3 meter Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) telescope.

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Wednesday 26 April 2017

Seeing is believing: Diamond quantum sensor reveals current flows in next-gen materials

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In a world-first, researchers have imaged electrons moving in graphene using a quantum probe found only in diamonds. The technique could be used to understand electron behavior and allow researchers to improve the reliability and performance of existing and emerging technologies. These images could reveal the microscopic behavior of currents in quantum computing devices, graphene and other 2-D materials, and be used to develop next generation electronics, energy storage (batteries), flexible displays and bio-chemical sensors.
via Science Daily

New atomically layered, thin magnet discovered

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An unexpected magnetic property in a 2-D material has been found by scientists. The new atomically thin, flat magnet could have major implications for a wide range of applications, such as nanoscale memory, spintronic devices, and magnetic sensors, they say.
via Science Daily

Physicists design 2-D materials that conduct electricity at almost the speed of light

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New two-dimensional quantum materials have been created with breakthrough electrical and magnetic attributes that could make them building blocks of future quantum computers and other advanced electronics. The researchers explored the physics behind the 2-D states of novel materials and determined they could push computers to new heights of speed and power.
via Science Daily

Scientists propose mechanism to describe solar eruptions of all sizes

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From long jets to massive explosions of solar material and energy, eruptions on the sun come in many shapes and sizes. Scientists now propose that a universal mechanism can explain the whole spectrum of solar eruptions.
via Science Daily
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Cassini's first grand finale dive: Milestones

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft is set to make its first dive through the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017.
via Science Daily
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'Iceball' planet discovered through microlensing

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Scientists have discovered a new planet with the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at the same distance that we orbit our sun. The planet is likely far too cold to be habitable for life as we know it, however, because its star is so faint. But the discovery adds to scientists' understanding of the types of planetary systems that exist beyond our own.
via Science Daily
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'Ageless' silicon throughout milky way may indicate a well-mixed galaxy

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New surveys with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT), of the element silicon may mean that the Milky Way is more efficient at mixing its contents than previously thought, thereby masking the telltale signs of chemical aging.
via Science Daily
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Mt. Etna Lava Plume

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Mt. Etna has been erupting for hundreds of thousands of years. Located in Sicily, Italy, the volcano produces lava fountains over one kilometer high. Mt. Etna is not only one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, it is one of the largest, measuring over 50 kilometers at its base and rising nearly 3 kilometers high. Pictured in mid-March, a spectacular lava plume erupts upwards, dangerous molten volcanic bombs fly off to the sides, while hot lava flows down the volcano's exterior. The Earth's rotation is discernable on this carefully time, moon-lit, long duration image as star trails.

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Tuesday 25 April 2017

Cassini completes final -- and fateful -- Titan flyby: Dive to Saturn next

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has had its last close brush with Saturn's hazy moon Titan and is now beginning its final set of 22 orbits around the ringed planet.
via Science Daily
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Stellar Nursery R136 in the Tarantula Nebula Square Wall Clock

Stellar Nursery R136 in the Tarantula Nebula Square Wall Clock
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series: Hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds in appear in this the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our…


Lull in Mars' giant impact history

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From the earliest days of our solar system's history, collisions between astronomical objects have shaped the planets and changed the course of their evolution. Studying the early bombardment history of Mars, scientists have discovered a 400-million-year lull in large impacts early in Martian history.
via Science Daily
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Graphenea hires Business Development Manager for US market

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Graphenea is expanding its business capacities by hiring a new Business Development Manager for the US market. Our new staff member, Tom Fedolak, earned his B.S. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from Michigan State University in 2010 and started his career in the bio-chemical industry at Draths Corporation as a molecular biologist. He then furthered his education at Georgetown University earning his M.S. in Biotechnology in 2013. While in Washington D.C., he transitioned from the laboratory to business development by working at the investment banking firm FOCUS LLC. After graduating, he moved to Boston where he furthered his experience in business development by joining U.K. Trade & Investment as a business development associate at the British consulate and most recently working at the non-profit plasmid repository Addgene as a business development analyst.

Photo: Tom Fedolak, Business Development Manager for the US market.

Tom will reside at Graphenea’s office in Cambridge, MA, that the company opened in October 2014. The Cambridge office services the US market for graphene products, but also acts as a liaison point for the company’s research ties with MIT and Harvard. In addition, Graphenea’s Cambridge office houses an “Applications Laboratory” to help develop custom graphene materials, with application focus on advanced polymers, thermal interface materials, energy storage, and (bio)sensors.

About Graphenea

Graphenea, a leading graphene producer venture backed by Repsol, was established in 2010, and has since grown to be one of the world's largest providers of graphene. The company is headquartered at the nanotechnology cluster CIC nanoGune in San Sebastian, Spain and the MIT campus in Cambridge, Boston, MA. Graphenea employs 23 people and exports graphene materials to more than 600 customers in 55 countries. The company has focused on constant improvement of graphene quality, becoming a supplier customers can rely on. Graphenea employs a team of skilled laboratory staff who have brought graphene production techniques to a new level. The company produces CVD graphene wafers and graphene oxide. Graphenea partners with large multinationals to develop custom graphene materials for their applications. Its research agility and ability to keep pace with the progress of graphene science and technology has allowed Graphenea to become a core partner in the Graphene Flagship, a ten year project of the European Commission worth a billion euros. The company keeps a close relation with the world's leading scientists, regularly publishing scientific articles of the highest level and holds a strong patent portfolio.
via Graphenea

Countdown to Cassini's Grand Finale

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After nearly 13 years in orbit around Saturn, the international Cassini–Huygens mission is about to begin its final chapter: the spacecraft will perform a series of daring dives between the planet and its rings, leading to a dramatic final plunge into Saturn's atmosphere on 15 September. 


via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens/Countdown_to_Cassini_s_Grand_Finale

A Split Ion Tail for Comet Lovejoy E4

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What's happened to Comet Lovejoy? In the pictured image, a processed composite, the comet was captured early this month after brightening unexpectedly and sporting a long and intricate ion tail. Remarkably, the typically complex effect of the Sun's wind and magnetic field here caused the middle of Comet Lovejoy's ion tail to resemble the head of a needle. Comet C/2017 E4 (Lovejoy) was discovered only last month by noted comet discoverer Terry Lovejoy. The comet reached visual magnitude 7 earlier this month, making it a good target for binoculars and long duration exposure cameras. What's happened to Comet Lovejoy (E4) since this image was taken might be considered even more remarkable -- the comet's nucleus appeared to be disintegrating and fading as it neared its closest approach to the Sun two days ago.

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That Ghostly, Glowing Light Above Canada? It’s Just Steve

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Scientists are investigating a stream of hot, bright gas visible not far from the northern lights. Amateurs saw it first, and they gave it a name from a 2006 animated movie.
via New York Times

Peggy Whitson Breaks Another Record in Space

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The astronaut Peggy Whitson on Monday surpassed the 534-day record for most time in space by an American. Throughout her career, she has paved the way for women in space exploration.
via New York Times

Monday 24 April 2017

First-ever direct observation of chiral currents in quantum Hall atomic simulation

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Using an atomic quantum simulator, scientists have achieved the first-ever direct observation of chiral currents in the model topological insulator, the 2-D integer quantum Hall system.
via Science Daily

NASA's Cassini, Voyager missions suggest new picture of sun's interaction with galaxy

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New data from three NASA missions show that the heliosphere -- the bubble of the sun's magnetic influence that surrounds the inner solar system -- may be much more compact and rounded than previously thought.
via Science Daily
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People Are Seeing U.F.O.s Everywhere, and This Book Proves It

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An unlikely new reference guide breaks down U.F.O. sightings county by county, shape by shape, month by month.
via New York Times

Trump Calls @AstroPeggy at the International Space Station

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Ivanka Trump joined the call, in which the president congratulated Peggy Whitson for setting a new U.S. space record.
via New York Times

New ALICE results show novel phenomena in proton collisions

As the number of particles produced in proton collisions (the blue lines) increase, the more of these so-called strange hadrons are measured (as shown by the orange to red squares in the graph) (Image: ALICE/CERN)

In a paper published today in Nature Physics, the ALICE collaboration reports that proton collisions sometimes present similar patterns to those observed in the collisions of heavy nuclei. This behaviour was spotted through observation of so-called strange hadrons in certain proton collisions in which a large number of particles are created. Strange hadrons are well-known particles with names such as Kaon, Lambda, Xi and Omega, all containing at least one so-called strange quark. The observed ‘enhanced production of strange particles’ is a familiar feature of quark-gluon plasma, a very hot and dense state of matter that existed just a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, and is commonly created in collisions of heavy nuclei. But it is the first time ever that such a phenomenon is unambiguously observed in the rare proton collisions in which many particles are created. This result is likely to challenge existing theoretical models that do not predict an increase of strange particles in these events.

“We are very excited about this discovery,” said Federico Antinori, Spokesperson of the ALICE collaboration. “We are again learning a lot about this primordial state of matter. Being able to isolate the quark-gluon-plasma-like phenomena in a smaller and simpler system, such as the collision between two protons, opens up an entirely new dimension for the study of the properties of the fundamental state that our universe emerged from.”

The study of the quark-gluon plasma provides a way to investigate the properties of strong interaction, one of the four known fundamental forces, while enhanced strangeness production is a manifestation of this state of matter. The quark-gluon plasma is produced at sufficiently high temperature and energy density, when ordinary matter undergoes a transition to a phase in which quarks and gluons become ‘free’ and are thus no longer confined within hadrons. These conditions can be obtained at the Large Hadron Collider by colliding heavy nuclei at high energy. Strange quarks are heavier than the quarks composing normal matter, and typically harder to produce. But this changes in presence of the high energy density of the quark-gluon plasma, which rebalances the creation of strange quarks relative to non-strange ones. This phenomenon may now have been observed within proton collisions as well.

In particular, the new results show that the production rate of these strange hadrons increases with the ‘multiplicity’ – the number of particles produced in a given collision – faster than that of other particles generated in the same collision. While the structure of the proton does not include strange quarks, data also show that the higher the number of strange quarks contained in the induced hadron, the stronger is the increase of its production rate. No dependence on the collision energy or the mass of the generated particles is observed, demonstrating that the observed phenomenon is related to the strange quark content of the particles produced. Strangeness production is in practice determined by counting the number of strange particles produced in a given collision, and calculating the ratio of strange to non-strange particles.

Enhanced strangeness production had been suggested as a possible consequence of quark-gluon plasma formation since the early eighties, and discovered in collisions of nuclei in the nineties by experiments at CERN[1]’s Super Proton Synchrotron. Another possible consequence of the quark gluon plasma formation is a spatial correlation of the final state particles, causing a distinct preferential alignment with the shape of a ridge. Following its detection in heavy-nuclei collisions, the ridge has also been seen in high-multiplicity proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, giving the first indication that proton collisions could present heavy-nuclei-like properties. Studying these processes more precisely will be key to better understand the microscopic mechanisms of the quark-gluon plasma and the collective behaviour of particles in small systems.

The ALICE experiment has been designed to study collisions of heavy nuclei. It also studies proton-proton collisions, which primarily provide reference data for the heavy-nuclei collisions. The reported measurements have been performed with 7 TeV proton collision data from LHC run 1.

 

via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/04/new-alice-results-show-novel-phenomena-proton-collisions

Titanic adventure

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Space Science Image of the Week: A final close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan puts Cassini–Huygens on course for its grand finale
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/04/Titan_flyby_22_April_2017

In experiments on Earth, testing possible building blocks of alien life

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Extraterrestrial life, if it exists, could use different amino acid building blocks than living things here on Earth. To better understand what alien life might look like, researchers are studying which amino acids stand up to the types of extreme conditions found on other planets and moons.
via Science Daily
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A White Battle in the Black Sea

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Trillions have died in the Earth's seas. Calcified shields of the dead already make up the white cliffs of Dover. The battle between ball-shaped light-colored single-celled plants -- phytoplankton called coccolithophores -- and even smaller, diamond-shaped viruses dubbed coccolithoviruses -- has raged for tens of millions of years. To help fight this battle, the coccolithophores create their chalky armor by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This battle is so epic that coccolithophores actually remove a significant fraction of Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide, bolstering the breathability of air for animals including humans. Pictured in this 2012 image from NASA's Aqua satellite, the Black Sea was turned light blue by coccolithophore blooms.

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SPS: the last injector now up and running

The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is the second-largest machine in CERN’s accelerator complex. (Image: Piotr Traczyk/CERN)

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is due to resume operation in early May 2017 and preparations are even ahead of schedule, by three days. On 21 April beams circulated in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) for the first time this year. All four elements of CERN’s accelerator chain – Linear Accelerator 2 (Linac2), the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB), the Proton Synchrotron (PS) and the Super Proton Synchrotron – are now in operation.

Measuring nearly seven kilometres in circumference, the SPS takes particles from the PS and accelerates them to provide high-energy beams to the LHC. It also feeds the SPS North experimental area where, among others, the Common Muon and Proton Apparatus for Structure and Spectroscopy (COMPASS), and the NA61/ShineNA62 and NA63 experiments are situated. Since June 2016 the SPS also supplies protons to a new proof-of-principle experiment – the Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment (AWAKE).

There were quite a few interventions in the SPS during the extended year-end technical stop (EYETS), including a massive de-cabling campaign in the PS Booster and the SPS, which has paved the way for the installation of new equipment for the LHC Injector Upgrade (LIU) project. This project is crucial to the planned increase of luminosity – number of collisions – of the High-Luminosity LHC, the future upgrade of the LHC, operational as from 2025.

Last year issues with the SPS internal beam dump limited the number of particle bunches that could be injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In response to that, a new beam dump was re-designed, produced, and successfully installed in the second week of March. This will allow the SPS to reach its full performance again for this year’s run.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/04/sps-last-injector-now-and-running

Sunday 23 April 2017

The Holographic Principle

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Is this picture worth a thousand words? According to the Holographic Principle, the most information you can get from this image is about 3 x 1065 bits for a normal sized computer monitor. The Holographic Principle, yet unproven, states that there is a maximum amount of information content held by regions adjacent to any surface. Therefore, counter-intuitively, the information content inside a room depends not on the volume of the room but on the area of the bounding walls. The principle derives from the idea that the Planck length, the length scale where quantum mechanics begins to dominate classical gravity, is one side of an area that can hold only about one bit of information. The limit was first postulated by physicist Gerard 't Hooft in 1993. It can arise from generalizations from seemingly distant speculation that the information held by a black hole is determined not by its enclosed volume but by the surface area of its event horizon. The term "holographic" arises from a hologram analogy where three-dimension images are created by projecting light though a flat screen. Beware, other people looking at the featured image may not claim to see 3 x 1065 bits -- they might claim to see a teapot.

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Space technologies improve surgeries back on earth

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A novel surgical robotic system has been developed that provides tactile feedback and is capable of single-incision and natural orifice (incision-free) robotic surgery. The system minimizes surgical trauma and is safer than currently available robotic systems.
via Science Daily
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Saturday 22 April 2017

Monogram Carina Nebula Pillars of Creation Throw Pillow

Monogram Carina Nebula Pillars of Creation Throw Pillow
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series: A beautiful space photograph featuring the 7500 light year distant Carina Nebula. This Hubble image shows rich, interstellar gas clouds feeding…


New discovery could aid in detecting nuclear threats

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A new way to detect nuclear materials has been developed by researchers. Made of graphene and carbon nanotubes, the researchers' detector far outpaces any existing one in its ultrasensitivity to charged particles, minuscule size, low-power requirements, and low cost.
via Science Daily

Wonder material? Novel nanotube structure strengthens thin films for flexible electronics

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Reflecting the structure of composites found in nature and the ancient world, researchers have synthesized thin carbon nanotube (CNT) textiles that exhibit both high electrical conductivity and a level of toughness that is about fifty times higher than copper films, currently used in electronics.
via Science Daily

Between the Rings

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On April 12, as the Sun was blocked by the disk of Saturn the Cassini spacecraft camera looked toward the inner Solar System and the gas giant's backlit rings. At the top of the mosaicked view is the A ring with its broader Encke and narrower Keeler gaps visible. At the bottom is the F ring, bright due to the viewing geometry. The point of light between the rings is Earth, 1.4 billion kilometers in the distance. Look carefully and you can even spot Earth's large moon, a pinprick of light to the planet's left. Today Cassini makes its final close approach to Saturn's own large moon Titan, using Titan's gravity to swing into the spacecraft's Grand Finale, the final set of orbits that will bring Cassini just inside Saturn's rings.

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Celestial Bauble - Nebula N90 and Pulsar SXP1062 Brushed Polyester Tree Skirt

Celestial Bauble - Nebula N90 and Pulsar SXP1062 Brushed Polyester Tree Skirt
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series: In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton have been colored blue and optical data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American…


Two-dimensional melting of hard spheres experimentally unravelled after 60 years

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Experimental evidence of melting in two-dimensional substances has finally been gained by researchers. Findings from the study could be used to support technological improvements to thin film materials such as graphene.
via Science Daily

Friday 21 April 2017

Out There: Cassini’s Grand Finale: A Dive Between Saturn and Its Rings

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The spacecraft is set to venture into the gap between Saturn and its innermost ring 22 times until Sept. 15, then crash into the planet.
via New York Times

NGC 4302 and NGC 4298

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Seen edge-on, spiral galaxy NGC 4302 (left) lies about 55 million light-years away in the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. A member of the large Virgo Galaxy Cluster, it spans some 87,000 light-years, a little smaller than our own Milky Way. Like the Milky Way, NGC 4302's prominent dust lanes cut along the center of the galactic plane, obscuring and reddening the starlight from our perspective. Smaller companion galaxy NGC 4298 is also a dusty spiral. But tilted more nearly face-on to our view, NGC 4298 can show off dust lanes along spiral arms traced by the bluish light of young stars, as well as its bright yellowish core. In celebration of the 27th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990, astronomers used the legendary telescope to take this gorgeous visible light portrait of the contrasting galaxy pair.

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Making batteries from waste glass bottles

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Researchers have used waste glass bottles and a low-cost chemical process to create nanosilicon anodes for high-performance lithium-ion batteries. The batteries will extend the range of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and provide more power with fewer charges to personal electronics like cell phones and laptops.
via Science Daily

Thursday 20 April 2017

New quantum liquid crystals may play role in future of computers

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The first 3-D quantum liquid crystals may have applications in quantum computing, report scientists. Liquid crystals fall somewhere in between a liquid and a solid: they are made up of molecules that flow around freely as if they were a liquid but are all oriented in the same direction, as in a solid. Liquid crystals can be found in nature, such as in biological cell membranes. Alternatively, they can be made artificially -- such as those found in the liquid crystal displays commonly used in watches, smartphones, televisions, and other items that have display screens.
via Science Daily

Light rays from a supernova bent by the curvature of space-time around a galaxy

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Astronomers have detected for the first time multiple images from a gravitationally lensed Type Ia supernova. The new observations suggest promising new avenues for the study of the accelerated expansion of the universe, gravity and distribution of dark matter in the universe.
via Science Daily
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Living with a star: NASA and partners survey space weather science

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Storms from the sun can affect our power grids, railway systems and underground pipelines. Now scientists and engineers from NASA have assessed the state of science surrounding space weather.
via Science Daily
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Hubble celebrates 27 years with two close friends

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This stunning cosmic pairing of the two very different looking spiral galaxies NGC 4302 and NGC 4298 was imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image brilliantly captures their warm stellar glow and brown, mottled patterns of dust.
via Science Daily
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Detailed map of potential Mars rover landing site

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Mineral deposits in a region on Mars called Northeast Syrtis Major suggest a plethora of once-habitable environments. By mapping those deposits in the region's larger geological context, the research could help set the stage for a possible rover mission.
via Science Daily
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A New Angle on Two Spiral Galaxies for Hubble’s 27th Birthday


Hubble Celebrates Its Anniversary with a Spectacular Pair of Galaxies

When the Hubble Space Telescope launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990, astronomers could only dream what they might see. Now, 27 years and more than a million observations later, the telescope delivers yet another magnificent view of the universe — this time, a striking pair of spiral galaxies much like our own Milky Way. These island cities of stars, which are approximately 55 million light-years away, give astronomers an idea of what our own galaxy would look like to an outside observer. The edge-on galaxy is called NGC 4302, and the tilted galaxy is NGC 4298. Although the pinwheel galaxies look quite different because they are angled at different positions on the sky, they are actually very similar in terms of their structure and contents.


via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-14

Searching for ET: Breakthrough Listen initiative publishes initial results

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Breakthrough Listen -- the initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe -- has released its 11 events ranked highest for significance as well as summary data analysis results. It is considered unlikely that any of these signals originate from artificial extraterrestrial sources, but the search continues.
via Science Daily
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