Thursday 14 December 2017

Trilobites: An 8th Planet Is Found Orbiting a Distant Star, With A.I.’s Help

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A Google neural network analyzed data collected by NASA and helped astronomers detect another planet around a star some 2,500 light years away.
via New York Times

New insight into battery charging supports development of improved electric vehicles

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A new technique provides a unique insight into how the charging rate of lithium ion batteries can be a factor limiting their lifetime and safety.
via Science Daily

Dawn of a galactic collision

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A riot of color and light dances through this peculiarly shaped galaxy, NGC 5256. Its smoke-like plumes are flung out in all directions and the bright core illuminates the chaotic regions of gas and dust swirling through the galaxy's center. Its odd structure is due to the fact that this is not one galaxy, but two -- in the process of a galactic collision.
via Science Daily
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Artificial intelligence, NASA data used to discover eighth planet circling distant star

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Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.
via Science Daily
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Doing without dark energy

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Three mathematicians have a different explanation for the accelerating expansion of the universe that does without theories of 'dark energy.' Einstein's original equations for General Relativity actually predict cosmic acceleration due to an 'instability,' they argue in a new paper.
via Science Daily
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25 years of Large Hadron Collider experimental programme

This week CERN marks 25 years since the meeting at Evian, where the first ideas for the LHC experimental programme were debuted (Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN)

On Friday 15 December 2017, CERN is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experimental programme. The occasion will be marked with a special scientific symposium looking at the LHC’s history, the physics landscape into which the LHC experiments were born, and the challenging path that led to the very successful LHC programme we know today.

The anniversary is linked to a meeting that took place in 1992, in Evian, entitled Towards the LHC Experimental Programme, marking a crucial milestone in the design and development of the LHC experiments.

The symposium, which will be live webcast, will also include a presentation of the latest results from the four large experiments, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ALICE.

Join the live webcast from 11:00-16:00 CET.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2017/12/25-years-large-hadron-collider-experimental-programme

Günther Hasinger appointed as ESA Director of Science

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The Council of the European Space Agency announced the appointment of Günther Hasinger as the next Director of Science. He will succeed Alvaro Giménez, who has served in the position since 2011.


via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Guenther_Hasinger_appointed_as_ESA_Director_of_Science

Mars upside down

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Which way is up in space? Planets are usually shown with the north pole at the top and the south pole at the bottom. In this remarkable image taken by ESA’s Mars Express, the Red Planet is seen with north at the bottom, and the equator at the top.


via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Mars_upside_down

Breaking data records bit by bit

Magnetic tapes, retrieved by robotic arms, are used for long-term storage (Image: Julian Ordan/CERN)

This year CERN’s data centre broke its own record, when it collected more data than ever before.

During October 2017, the data centre stored the colossal amount of 12.3 petabytes of data. To put this in context, one petabyte is equivalent to the storage capacity of around 15,000 64GB smartphones. Most of this data come from the Large Hadron Collider’s experiments, so this record is a direct result of the outstanding LHC performance, the rest is made up of data from other experiments and backups.

“For the last ten years, the data volume stored on tape at CERN has been growing at an almost exponential rate. By the end of June we had already passed a data storage milestone, with a total of 200 petabytes of data permanently archived on tape,” explains German Cancio, who leads the tape, archive & backups storage section in CERN’s IT department.

The CERN data centre is at the heart of the Organization’s infrastructure. Here data from every experiment at CERN is collected, the first stage in reconstructing that data is performed, and copies of all the experiments’ data are archived to long-term tape storage.

Most of the data collected at CERN will be stored forever, the physics data is so valuable that it will never be deleted and needs to be preserved for future generations of physicists.

“An important characteristic of the CERN data archive is its longevity,” Cancio adds. “Even after an experiment ends all recorded data has to remain available for at least 20 years, but usually longer. Some of the archive files produced by previous CERN experiments have been migrated across different hardware, software and media generations for over 30 years. For archives like CERN’s, that do not only preserve existing data but also continue to grow, our data preservation is particularly challenging.”

While tapes may sound like an outdated mode of storage, they are actually the most reliable and cost-effective technology for large-scale archiving of data, and have always been used in this field. One copy of data on a tape is considered much more reliable than the same copy on a disk.

CERN currently manages the largest scientific data archive in the High Energy Physics (HEP) domain and keeps innovating in data storage,” concludes Cancio.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2017/12/breaking-data-records-bit-bit

Spanning disciplines in the search for life beyond Earth

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Following a gold rush of exoplanet discovery, the next step in the search for life is determining which of the known exoplanets are proper candidates for life -- and for this, a cross-disciplinary approach is essential.
via Science Daily
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Giant storms cause palpitations in Saturn's atmospheric heartbeat

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Immense northern storms on Saturn can disturb atmospheric patterns at the planet's equator, finds the international Cassini mission.
via Science Daily
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