Friday 19 May 2017

Trilobites: Spotting Mysterious Twinkles on Earth From a Million Miles Away

more »
Hundreds of reflections observed by a satellite are a result of ice crystals floating in clouds at high altitudes, NASA scientists say.
via New York Times

Mapping super massive black holes in the distant universe

more »
Astronomers have constructed the first map of the Universe based on the positions of supermassive black holes, which reveals the large-scale structure of the Universe.
via Science Daily
Zazzle Space Exploration market place

First direct exploration of magnetic fields in the upper solar atmosphere

more »
Scientists have explored the magnetic field in upper solar atmosphere by observing the polarization of ultraviolet light with the CLASP sounding rocket experiment during its 5-minute flight in space on Sept. 3, 2015. The data show that the structures of the solar chromosphere and transition region are more complicated than expected. It is proven that ultraviolet spectropolarimetry can be used in future investigations of the magnetic fields in upper solar chromosphere and transition region.
via Science Daily
Zazzle Space Exploration market place

Graphene-nanotube hybrid boosts lithium metal batteries

more »
Scientists have built high-capacity lithium metal batteries with anodes made of a graphene-carbon nanotube hybrid. The anodes quench the formation of damaging dendrites.
via Science Daily

200th spacewalk upgrades Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

Astronaut Peggy Whitson during the 200th spacewalk from the International Space Station (Image credit: NASA)

The 200th spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS) included a new installation on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) – a particle-physics detector that was assembled at CERN.

On 12 May, Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA conducted the four-hour spacewalk, while ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet stayed inside the ISS to drive the station arm that positions the two astronauts.

One of their tasks involved replacing a cable with a bus terminator – a type of connector – to carry data between AMS and the space shuttle. During the spacewalk, the AMS team stationed at CERN in the experiment’s Payload and Operations Control Centre (POCC), were able to check that the bus terminator was properly functioning. This connection will be used from 2018, when a new thermal cooling system for the AMS silicon tracker is put into place.

The AMS cooling pump system was developed by the collaboration at CERN, and a similar system is now also used by some of the LHC experiments to cool their trackers. Despite only needing one pump, AMS was flown to space with four. Now, three of the four pumps are no longer functioning and so multiple spacewalks are planned for 2018 to replace these with a new cooling system, which would extend the life of AMS in space by 12 years.

AMS was launched in 2011 on the penultimate flight of the Space Shuttle and has been collecting data during the last six years. It is a particle-physics detector looking for dark matter, antimatter and missing matter and also performs precision measurements of cosmic rays. It reached the milestone of recording 100 billion cosmic ray events on 8 May.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/05/200th-spacewalk-upgrades-alpha-magnetic-spectrometer

Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte

more »
Named for the three astronomers instrumental in its discovery and identification, Wolf - Lundmark - Melotte (WLM) is a lonely dwarf galaxy. Seen toward the mostly southern constellation Cetus, about 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, it is one of the most remote members of our local galaxy group. In fact, it may never have interacted with any other local group galaxy. Still, telltale pinkish star forming regions and hot, young, bluish stars speckle the isolated island universe. Older, cool yellowish stars fade into the small galaxy's halo, extending about 8,000 light-years across. This sharp portrait of WLM was captured by the 268-megapixel OmegaCAM widefield imager and survey telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory.

Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Molecular Lego for nanoelectronics

more »
The ability to assemble electronic building blocks consisting of individual molecules is an important objective in nanotechnology. An interdisciplinary research group is now significantly closer to achieving this goal. The team of researchers has successfully assembled and tested conductors and networks made up of individual, newly developed building block molecules. These could in future serve as the basis of components for optoelectronic systems, such as flexible flat screens or sensors.
via Science Daily