Thursday 27 July 2017

SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

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Elon Musks’s rocket company raised $350 million in a new financing, raising its valuation to about $21 billion.
via New York Times

Giant Telescope Atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Should Be Approved, Judge Says

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The Thirty Meter Telescope, which would be the largest in the Northern Hemisphere, could survey black holes and planets orbiting distant stars, but opponents say it would desecrate a sacred mountain.
via New York Times

Solar eclipse science along the path of totality

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A number of research projects will take place across the country during the upcoming Aug. 21 solar eclipse. The research will advance our knowledge of the sun's complex and mysterious magnetic field and its effects on Earth's atmosphere and land.
via Science Daily
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Galactic David and Goliath

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The gravitational dance between two galaxies in our local neighbourhood has led to intriguing visual features in both as witnessed in this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The tiny NGC 1510 and its colossal neighbour NGC 1512 are at the beginning of a lengthy merger, a crucial process in galaxy evolution. Despite its diminutive size, NGC 1510 has had a significant effect on NGC 1512's structure and amount of star formation.
via Science Daily
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Reality check for 'wonder material'

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Topological insulators, a class of materials which has been investigated for just over a decade, have been heralded as a new 'wonder material', as has graphene. But so far, topological insulators have not quite lived up to the expectations fueled by theoretical studies. Physicists now have an idea about why.
via Science Daily

ICARUS lands at Fermilab

Over the last six weeks, ICARUS has traveled across land and sea. Yesterday, the neutrino detector finally arrived at Fermilab near Chicago, Illinois. (Image © Fermilab)

After six weeks on the road, the two ICARUS modules have finally arrived at Fermilab near Chicago, Illinois. The Italian-made detector will be put to work, along with two others on the Fermilab site, to capture and inspect one of the most enigmatic particles in the cosmos: neutrinos. Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe, but little is known about them because they rarely interact with ordinary matter. The ICARUS detector will use Fermilab’s neutrino beam to measure the properties of the three types of neutrinos that have been seen, and search for a long-theorised but never-detected cousin.

“We’ve seen hints that there might be a fourth kind of neutrino, but we haven’t detected it yet,” said Fermilab scientist Angela Fava, a member of the ICARUS collaboration. “The ICARUS experiment will join our suite of neutrino detectors to help us resolve this long-standing, open question of whether there is indeed a fourth member of the neutrino family.”

The ICARUS experiment was designed and built at Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy and started its career as a neutrino hunter in 2010. In 2014, scientists transported ICARUS to CERN for updating and refurbishment, and in June packaged and shipped it to Fermilab, where it will start the next phase of its life.

Over the last six weeks ICARUS has traveled across land and sea by truck, barge and ship. On the outside the two modules look like extra-large shipping containers, but inside the walls are lined with incredibly delicate panels of wires.

“The wire planes look like enormous harps and are very fragile,” says Andrea Zani, a researcher at CERN. “We worked for several months to prepare for the shipment and ensure that our detectors arrive in the US safety. However, you can never control everything, especially the passage across the sea.”

Zani and his colleagues attached impact sensors onto the shipping containers to measure if their irreplaceable detectors met any unexpected turbulence during their journey to the United States. From CERN, the modules traveled by truck to Basel, where they were lifted onto a barge and then cruised down the Rhine river to Antwerp, Belgium, and then into the Atlantic. Luckily, the ocean was calm during the two-week voyage to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in Quebec, Canada. From there, ICARUS snaked its way up the Saint Lawrence River, drifted through Montreal, traversed the Great Lakes and finally docked in Burns Harbor, Indiana, on Lake Michigan. The last leg of the journey was a slow three-day drive to Fermilab.

“We met the convoy every time it stopped to check the shock sensors and verify that CERN’s handling instructions were respected during all operations of movement from one means of transport to the other,” Zani said. “An unexpected challenge was learning about and abiding by the different transport regulations in Europe and the United States.”

Now that ICARUS has finally arrived at Fermilab, the next step will be a series of final checks followed by its installation inside a building specifically constructed and outfitted for it, and preparing it for operation.

“It feels good to have ICARUS here in its new Midwestern U.S. home," Fava said. "And now that it is, we can go full-bore in hunting down that elusive fourth.”

 


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/07/icarus-lands-fermilab

A tale of three stellar cities

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Using new observations from ESO's VLT Survey Telescope, astronomers have discovered three different populations of baby stars within the Orion Nebula Cluster. This unexpected discovery adds very valuable new insights for the understanding of how such clusters form. It suggests that star formation might proceeds in bursts, where each burst occurs on a much faster time-scale than previously thought.
via Science Daily
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A Sagittarius Triplet

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These three bright nebulae are often featured on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula above and left of center, and colorful M20 near the bottom of the frame. The third emission region includes NGC 6559, right of M8 and separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. Over a hundred light-years across the expansive M8 is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae. In striking contrast, blue hues in the Trifid are due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful composite skyscape was recorded with two different telescopes to capture a widefield image of the area and individual close-ups at higher resolution.

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