Friday 30 March 2018

Is there life adrift in the clouds of Venus?

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In the search for extraterrestrial life, scientists have turned over all sorts of rocks. Mars, for example, has geological features that suggest it once had -- and still has -- subsurface liquid water. Scientists have also eyed Saturn's moons as well as Jupiter's as possible havens for life in the oceans under their icy crusts. Now, however, scientists are dusting off an old idea that promises a new vista in the hunt for life beyond Earth: the clouds of Venus.
via Science Daily
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Elon Musk's vision to colonize Mars updated in New Space

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In a new article, Elon Musk, CEO and Lead Designer at SpaceX, presents the updated design for the Big Falcon Rocket, the powerful rocket intended to propel a newly modified space vehicle to the International Space Station and beyond to fulfill his vision for establishing a human presence on Mars.
via Science Daily
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Beams are back in the LHC

Thursday 29 March 2018

Twisting graphene into spirals

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Researchers report the successful synthesis of the smallest spring you've ever seen -- hexa-peri-hexabenzo[7]helicene, or 'helical nanographene'.
via Science Daily

New math bridges holography and twistor theory

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A new perspective bridges two approaches to understanding quantum gravity.
via Science Daily
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Winning exoplanet rocket sticker selected

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A colourful design capturing the essence of ESA’s Cheops mission, which will measure the size of planets as they cross in front of their parent stars, has been selected for the rocket carrying the satellite into space.


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

First test success for largest Mars mission parachute

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The largest parachute ever to fly on a Mars mission has been deployed in the first of a series of tests to prepare for the upcoming ExoMars mission that will deliver a rover and a surface science platform to the Red Planet.


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

Wednesday 28 March 2018

Most of Earth's water was likely present before the moon-forming giant impact

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Based on an extensive collection of lunar and terrestrial samples, a new study probing the elusive origins of the moon -- now typically thought to have formed from a collision between a proto-Earth and a solid impactor -- supports theories of a collision with extremely high energy. So high, in fact, that it resulted in nearly complete mixing of materials between the impactor and proto-Earth.
via Science Daily
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Next-gen lithium-metal batteries for electric vehicles, smart grids

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Electric vehicles, wind turbines or smart grids require batteries with far greater energy capacity than currently available. A leading contender is the lithium-metal battery. However, dendrite, or sharp needles, made of clumps of lithium atoms can cause the batteries to heat up, lose efficiency and occasionally short-circuit. Using supercomputers, researchers have simulated the behavior of graphene oxide nanosheets that can limit the formation of dendrites.
via Science Daily

Dark Matter Goes Missing in Oddball Galaxy


Galaxy was expected to contain 400 times more dark matter than observations show

Grand, majestic spiral galaxies like our Milky Way are hard to miss. Astronomers can spot these vast complexes because of their large, glowing centers and their signature winding arms of gas and dust, where thousands of glowing stars reside.

But some galaxies aren't so distinctive. They are big, but they have so few stars for their size that they appear very faint and diffuse. In fact, they are so diffuse that they look like giant cotton balls.

Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of one such galaxy have turned up an oddity that sets it apart from most other galaxies, even the diffuse-looking ones. It contains little, if any, dark matter, the underlying scaffolding upon which galaxies are built. Dark matter is an invisible substance that makes up the bulk of our universe and the invisible glue that holds visible matter in galaxies — stars and gas — together.

Called NGC 1052-DF2, this "ghostly" galaxy contains at most 1/400th the amount of dark matter that astronomers had expected. How it formed is a complete mystery. The galactic oddball is as large as our Milky Way, but the galaxy had escaped attention because it contains only 1/200th the number of stars as our galaxy.

Based on the colors of its globular clusters, NGC 1052-DF2 is about 10 billion years old. It resides about 65 million light-years away.


via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-16

Dark matter goes missing in oddball galaxy

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Galaxies and dark matter go together like peanut butter and jelly. You typically don't find one without the other.
via Science Daily
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What the first American astronauts taught us about living in space

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Project Mercury proved that humans could live and work in space, paving the way for all future human exploration.
via Science Daily
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Tuesday 27 March 2018

NASA’s Webb Telescope Faces More Setbacks

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The space agency announced on Tuesday that its successor to the Hubble telescope has hit a series of testing snags, pushing back a planned launch next year.
via New York Times

Newly-discovered planet is hot, metallic and dense as Mercury

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A hot, metallic, Earth-sized planet with a density similar to Mercury -- situated 260 million light years away -- has been detected and characterized by a global team of astronomers.
via Science Daily
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James Webb Space Telescope update: new launch window under review

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The James Webb Space Telescope is undergoing final integration and testing that will require more time to ensure a successful mission. Following a new assessment of the remaining tasks on the highly complex space observatory, the launch window is now targeted for about May 2020.


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

What interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua can teach us

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The first interstellar object ever seen in our solar system, named 'Oumuamua, is giving scientists a fresh perspective on how planets, asteroids and comets form.
via Science Daily
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CERN experiment sees hints of a rare kaon decay

Understanding gravity: The nanoscale search for extra dimensions

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Scientists have used a pulsed slow neutron beamline to probe the deviation of the inverse square law of gravity below the wavelength of 0.1 nm. The experiment achieved the highest sensitivity for a neutron experiment demonstrated to date, and is a significant step toward determining whether the space we live in is really limited to the three dimensions most are familiar with.
via Science Daily
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Atomically thin light-emitting device opens the possibility for 'invisible' displays

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Engineers have built a bright-light emitting device that is millimeters wide and fully transparent when turned off. The light emitting material in this device is a monolayer semiconductor, which is just three atoms thick.
via Science Daily

Monday 26 March 2018

China’s Space Station May Crash to Earth on April Fools’ Day

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Experts predict the abandoned space station, Tiangong-1, will fall back to Earth around this weekend. But the risk to anyone on the ground is almost nil.
via New York Times

Kepler Solves Mystery of Fast and Furious Explosions


Space Observatory Captures the Details of an Unusual Stellar Detonation

The universe is so huge that it's estimated that a star explodes as a supernova once every second. Astronomers capture a small fraction of these detonations because they are comparatively short-lived, like fireflies flickering on a summer evening. After skyrocketing to a sudden peak in brightness, a supernova can take weeks to slowly fade away.

For the past decade astronomers have been befuddled by a more curious "flash-in-the-pan" that pops up and then disappears in just a few days, not weeks. It's called a Fast-Evolving Luminous Transient (FELT). Only a few FELTs have been seen in telescopic sky surveys because they are so brief.

Then along came NASA's Kepler Space Telescope that caught a FELT in the act. Kepler's outstanding ability to precisely record changes in the brightness of celestial objects was designed to look for planets across our galaxy. But a great spinoff from the observatory is to go supernova hunting too.

Kelper's unique capabilities captured the properties of the blast. This allowed astronomers to exclude a range of theories about how FELTs happen, and converge on a plausible model. They conclude that the brief flash is from a vast shell of material around a supernova that abruptly lights up when the supernova blast wave crashes into it.


via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-18

Particle detectors meet canvas

Slotting a painting into the X-ray scanner, which will analyse it at a high resolution. (Image: InsightArt s.r.o.)

Artworks are part of our cultural and historical heritage. Yet, according to the Fine Arts Expert Institute, nearly half of the artworks circulating on the market are fakes. So how can you tell if a Rembrandt painting is really a Rembrandt and if a Monet is really a Monet? Moreover, how do you make sure a painting of great value is kept in perfect condition for many generations to come? Museums, art galleries, auction houses, art restorers and other art experts may now benefit from the use of particle detectors for art authentication and restoration.

At CERN, the Medipix collaborations have been developing pixel detector readout chips since the 1990s, enabling high-resolution, high-contrast, noise-free images – making them unique for imaging applications. Medipix2, Medipix3, Timepix and Timepix3 are state-of-the-art particle imaging and detection readout chips. Now they are being used to bring about a revolutionary improvement in the field of art authentication and restoration. A new start-up company based in Prague, InsightArt s.r.o., has adopted the technology to perform spectral X-ray scans of paintings.

Bringing together scientists and art restorers, InsightArt uses these chips to perform highly detailed X-ray scans of artworks. Unlike more conventional X-ray systems used in art authentication, the InsightArt scanner produces “colour” X-rays where colours represent different materials, i.e. pigments, in a painting. Differences in materials are detected by measuring the wavelength of X-ray photons. Furthermore, by using a system with robotic arms, analysis can be expanded to sculptures and other antique objects.

It can take between ten minutes and two hours to scan a piece of art, depending on its type and size. The read-out chips work like cameras, recording images based on the number of photons that hit the pixels when the shutter is open. The result is an X-ray image with unprecedented contrast and information on X-ray wavelengths, permitting researchers to estimate the materials used to create the piece. This helps for instance to determine whether any modifications have been performed on it over time, and even whether or not it is an authentic piece. The InsightArt company is supported by the ESA-BIC business incubator in Prague.

The Medipix collaboration was initially established at CERN to adapt particle-tracking chips, which had been developed for the LHC, to imaging applications in other fields. Subsequently, these chips have found applications in a wide range of sectors including medicine, space research, education and art. They are one of the many CERN technologies available for knowledge transfer.

Read more about other CERN projects linked to cultural heritage, in the Knowledge Transfer annual report, page 18. 


via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/03/particle-detectors-meet-canvas

Out There: Meet Tess, Seeker of Alien Worlds

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NASA’s new spacecraft, to be launched next month, will give scientists a much clearer view of the planets orbiting stars near to us.
via New York Times

Star-forming filaments

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Space Science Image of the Week: Herschel views chaotic web of gas filaments peppered with bright star-forming hotspots in the Galactic plane
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2018/03/Chaotic_web_of_filaments_in_a_Milky_Way_stellar_nursery

Saturday 24 March 2018

Revolutionary new filter can improve drinking water quality

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Scientists have developed a world-first, graphene-based, laboratory-scale filter that can remove more than 99 percent of the natural organic matter left behind during conventional treatment of drinking water. The filter is being scaled up for possible use in conventional plants.
via Science Daily

Friday 23 March 2018

Elon Musk Joins #DeleteFacebook With a Barrage of Tweets

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Mr. Musk deleted the Facebook pages of two of his companies, SpaceX and Tesla. He and the Facebook C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, have, er, not always gotten along.
via New York Times

Explore the cosmos

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Meet ESASky, a discovery portal that provides access to the entire sky as observed by ESA's astronomy missions
via ESA Space Science
http://sci.esa.int/astrophysics/60099-explore-the-cosmos-with-esasky/

Thursday 22 March 2018

For graphite pellets, just add elbow grease

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Researchers crush and press functionalized graphene to make strong, light graphite pellets that hold promise for electronic and catalytic applications.
via Science Daily

Hubble solves cosmic 'whodunit' with interstellar forensics

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On the outskirts of our galaxy, a cosmic tug-of-war is unfolding-and only NASA's Hubble Space Telescope can see who's winning.
via Science Daily
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Op-Ed Contributor: Avoiding Collisions in Outer Space

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To sustain the commercial space race, we need to streamline and coordinate rules to manage the proliferation of private satellites.
via New York Times

Hubble Solves Cosmic 'Whodunit' with Interstellar Forensics


Winner Declared in Tug-of-War Between Two Satellite Galaxies of the Milky Way

In a cosmic tug-of-war between two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, only NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope can see who’s winning. The players are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and as they gravitationally tug at each other, one of them has pulled out a huge amount of gas from its companion. This shredded and fragmented gas, called the Leading Arm, is being devoured by the Milky Way and feeding new star birth in our galaxy. But which dwarf galaxy is doing the pulling, and whose gas is now being feasted upon? Scientists used Hubble’s ultraviolet vision to chemically analyze the gas in the Leading Arm and determine its origin. After years of debate, we now have the answer to this “whodunit” mystery.


via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-15

High-energy ions' movement affected by silicon crystal periodicity

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The thinner the silicon crystal, the easier it is to manipulate the trajectories of very high-energy ions in particle accelerators. Further applications include materials analysis, semiconductor doping and beam transport in large particle accelerators. All of these rely on our understanding of how positively-charged high-energy particles move through crystals.
via Science Daily

Scientists control molecular alignment on a graphene surface

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Scientists have developed a simple way to align molecules in one direction on a flat graphene surface. Efficiently controlling molecular alignment is expected to lead to significant progress in surface chemistry and molecular engineering, as well as materials science.
via Science Daily

Arts at CERN announces the winners of the Collide awards

Arts at CERN pioneers new ways of bringing together artists and scientists, leads the conversation about art and science, and supports artistic creativity and curiosity towards fundamental research. Artists from all over the world are invited, through our cultural programmes, to spend time at CERN and work alongside particle physicists and engineers.

Today, we announce the winners of Collide International and Collide Geneva. Both awards offer a fully funded residency of up to three months to one artist in each category in order to research new ideas and crossovers between artistic practice and scientific research at the largest particle laboratory in the world.

Arts at CERN aims to break down the silos between arts and science, helping us to understand the world around us from different perspectives. It enriches all of us when barriers are overcome and new knowledge is enabled. We are grateful to all the participants in Collide International and Collide Geneva for helping us towards this goal and congratulate them on their achievements,” says Charlotte Lindberg Warakaulle, CERN’s Director for International Relations.

Collide International is a three-month residency programme in collaboration with the UK’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) that provides a fully funded residency of up to two months at CERN and a month at FACT in Liverpool. A jury of experts in art and science selected Suzanne Treister as the winner of the international award. She will undertake a residency during spring 2018 to further develop her investigation ‘Holographic Universe’ and explore the artist’s motivations and intentions through the history of art, from cave painting to modernism and global contemporary art, including outsider and psychedelic art, passing through the art of the ancient world, the Americas, Africa, Asia, Islamic art and the European Renaissance. Taiwanese artist Yu-Chen Wang and Danish artist Lea Porsager received Honorary Mentions this year and will be invited to CERN for a short visit as Guest Artists in 2018.

The Collide Geneva award was dedicated to performance and was assigned to the artists Anne Sylvie Henchoz and Julie Lang. They will spend three months at CERN during the autumn of 2018 further developing their project ‘Space Time Energy’ around the potential analogies between the human body and particles. Collide Geneva is a partnership between Arts at CERN, the Republic and Canton of Geneva and the City of Geneva to foster research on artistic expression and fundamental research.

Today, artists from all over the world are invited to CERN, through our programmes, to explore new ideas and work alongside particle physicists and engineers. I am thrilled to provide these opportunities in this unique environment where artistic practice acquires a new dimension and understanding,” says Mónica Bello, Head of Arts at CERN.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/03/arts-cern-announces-winners-collide-awards

Wednesday 21 March 2018

Stephen Hawking to Be Interred at Westminster Abbey

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The cosmologist’s ashes will be buried there later this year, near a few legendary scientists like Darwin and Newton.
via New York Times

Scientists detect radio echoes of a black hole feeding on a star

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A scientist has detected radio echoes of a black hole feeding on a star, suggesting black hole emits a jet of energy proportional to the stellar material it gobbles up.
via Science Daily
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Tuesday 20 March 2018

Monday 19 March 2018

A new kind of quantum bits in two dimensions

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Two novel materials, each composed of a single atomic layer and the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope - these are the ingredients to create a novel kind of a so-called 'quantum dot'. These extremely small nanostructures allow delicate control of individual electrons by fine-tuning their energy levels directly. Such devices are key for modern quantum technologies.
via Science Daily

A future colorfully lit by mystifying physics of paint-on semiconductors

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It defies conventional wisdom about semiconductors. It's baffling that it even works. It eludes physics models that try to explain it. This newly tested class of light-emitting semiconductors is so easy to produce from solution that it could be painted onto surfaces to light up our future in myriad colors shining from affordable lasers, LEDs, and even window glass.
via Science Daily

Mars' oceans formed early, possibly aided by massive volcanic eruptions

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A new theory about how oceans and volcanoes interacted during the early history of Mars supports the idea that liquid water was once abundant and may still exist underground. Geophysicists propose that the oceans originated several hundred million years earlier than thought, as the volcanic province Tharsis formed, and that greenhouse gases enabled the oceans. The theory predicts smaller oceans, more in line with estimates of water underground and at the poles today.
via Science Daily
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Higgs results take centre stage at annual Moriond conference

Collision events* recorded by ATLAS (left) and CMS (right) showing characteristics of a Higgs produced in proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV (Image: left – ATLAS/CERN, right – Tom McCauley/CMS/CERN)

Nearly six years after its discovery by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the Higgs boson remains in the spotlight at particle physics conferences. At the 53rd annual Rencontres de Moriond conference taking place between 10 and 24 March 2018 in La Thuile in the Aosta Valley in Italy, ATLAS and CMS have unveiled a suite of new measurements of the properties of the scalar boson associated with the Brout-Englert-Higgs field. These results come from the examination of data from proton-proton collisions at an energy of 13 TeV that the LHC delivered in 2015 and 2016. The data sets used by ATLAS and CMS each contained around two million Higgs bosons, of which around 10,000 were readily accessible to the detectors.

Since all elementary particles gain their respective masses through interactions with the Brout-Englert-Higgs field, studying how these particles interact with the Higgs boson itself is of the utmost importance. CMS and ATLAS studied the various processes through which the Higgs bosons are produced in proton-proton collisions and the different transformations they subsequently undergo. Their experimental observations demonstrated good agreement with the theoretical predictions from the Standard Model of particle physics.

When a Higgs boson – a heavy and unstable particle – is produced in interactions between colliding protons, it transforms (or “decays”) almost instantaneously into lighter and more-stable particles; these transformations may involve intermediary particles and each type of transformation is called a “decay channel”. However, these lighter particles may also have been produced by known and well-understood processes, which make up the background when looking for rarer particles like the Higgs boson. Detectors such as ATLAS and CMS are designed to identify the end products of such decays, using this information to determine the source particle that was produced in the collisions and separate the source particle’s signal from the background of known processes.

The new data enable physicists to examine individual decay channels even more closely to probe the fundamental laws of the universe and search for signs of physics beyond the Standard Model. One way to do so is to look for subtle deviations from theoretical predictions, which might arise, for example, due to the unaccounted-for presence of particles of dark matter. To look for such deviations, physicists consider two parameters for the different decay channels. The first is a channel’s decay likelihood, which is the probability of a given heavy particle following one particular decay channel out of several possibilities. For instance, around one in five Higgs bosons will transform into two W bosons. The second parameter is the rate at which certain interactions between colliding protons produce the Higgs boson in the first place; it is determined by studying properties such as the momenta and the angle of flight of the particles detected by the experiments or by identifying instances where additional particles are produced along with the Higgs boson.

In the context of these parameters, ATLAS presented an important result for two specific production modes each involving decays into two W bosons. The number of Higgs bosons counted by ATLAS that followed these production-and-decay paths is in strong agreement with the number expected according to the Standard Model. ATLAS also combined data from the two “cleanest” Higgs decay channels (to pairs of photons and to pairs of Z bosons) and measured with unprecedented precision the variations in Higgs production rates in these channels versus properties such as the momenta of the decay end-products. Furthermore, ATLAS presented searches for Higgs decays to particles not present in the Standard Model – such as “dark” Z bosons – which might herald the discovery of particles of dark matter. They did not find evidence for a decay to “dark” Z bosons in the current data.

Similarly, CMS examined five prominent decay channels (where the Higgs boson transforms into pairs of: W bosons, Z bosons, photons, tau (Ï„) leptons or b quarks), and compared their production rates and their decay likelihoods with the predictions from the Standard Model. CMS obtained a result about 17% above the predictions, which is compatible with the Standard Model but not perfectly so; more scrutiny of these measurements with additional data is needed before drawing further conclusions. CMS also looked for Higgs decays to forms of “invisible” matter but found no evidence for these processes at the present level of sensitivity.

Both experiments also presented strong evidence for instances where a Higgs boson is produced along with a pair of top quarks. Studying these instances allows scientists to probe the interactions between the two heaviest elementary particles we know of.

ATLAS and CMS also measured the mass of the Higgs boson with a precision up to 12% higher than before, using advances in analysis techniques combined with larger data sets available thanks to the exceptional performance of the LHC in the last few years. Their measurements of the Higgs mass are 124.98 ± 0.28 GeV and 125.26 ± 0.21 GeV respectively.

Other results from ATLAS and CMS, as well as presentations made by ALICE and LHCb, can be found on the Moriond conference websites: Electroweak physics and QCD physics. The LHC experiments are now preparing their detectors to receive 2018’s first collisions, which are expected in April.

* See high-resolution images from ATLAS at http://cds.cern.ch/record/2309698 and from CMS at https://cds.cern.ch/record/2210658.


Read more about these results:


via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/03/higgs-results-take-centre-stage-annual-moriond-conference

Ultraviolet crab

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Space Science Image of the Week: The Crab Nebula in ultraviolet light, as seen by ESA's XMM-Newton telescope
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2018/03/Crab_Nebula_in_ultraviolet

Friday 16 March 2018

Plasmons triggered in nanotube quantum wells

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A novel quantum effect observed in a carbon nanotube film could lead to the development of near-infrared lasers and other optoelectronic devices, according to scientists.
via Science Daily

Astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly Are Still Twins, Despite What You May Have Read

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A rash of news stories this week stemmed from a misinterpreted NASA update from January.
via New York Times

Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)

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ESA is saddened by the news of the passing of Professor Stephen Hawking, FRS, cosmologist and one of the pioneers of theoretical studies of black holes, on 14 March at the age of 76.


via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Stephen_Hawking_1942-2018

Thursday 15 March 2018

Trilobites: Steve, a Famous Northern Light, Stays Mysterious (and Keeps His Name)

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Steve is a glowing strip in the night sky, not far from the northern lights. It was named after a cartoon. Now scientists have learned more.
via New York Times

A new use for graphene: Making better hair dyes

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Graphene, a naturally black material, could provide a new strategy for dyeing dark hair that will make it less prone to staticky flyaways. Researchers have put it to the test. They used sheets of graphene to make a dye that adheres to the surface of hair, forming a coating that is resistant to 30 washes without the need for chemicals that damage the hair cuticle.
via Science Daily

Graphene flakes for future transistors

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Tiny and very promising for possible applications in the field of nanoelectronics: they are the graphene nanoflakes. These hexagonal shaped nanostructures would allow to exploit quantum effects to modulate the current flow. Thanks to their intrinsic magnetic properties, they could also represent a significant step forward in the field of spintronics, which is based on the electron spin.
via Science Daily

Space radiation more hazardous: Implication sfor astronauts and satellites

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It might sound like something from a science fiction plot - astronauts traveling into deep space being bombarded by cosmic rays - but radiation exposure is science fact. As future missions look to travel back to the moon or even to Mars, new research cautions that the exposure to radiation is much higher than previously thought and could have serious implications on both astronauts and satellite technology.
via Science Daily
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Jupiter's atmospheric beauty is more than skin deep

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In the year and a half NASA's Juno spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter, the scientists have discovered that the orange and white bands that characterize Jupiter's outer atmosphere extend thousands of miles into the gas giant's atmosphere.
via Science Daily
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Wednesday 14 March 2018

An Appraisal: Stephen Hawking Taught Us a Lot About How to Live

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The cosmologist not only overturned our imaginations, he became an icon of mystery, curiosity and determination to understand this place we are in.
via New York Times

Stephen Hawking, Pop Culture Icon

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Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest physicists of our time, died on Wednesday. He is immortalized by his brilliant research, but also by his pop culture appearances.
via New York Times

CERN pays tribute to Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, Who Examined the Universe and Explained Black Holes, Dies at 76

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A physicist and best-selling author, Dr. Hawking did not allow his physical limitations to hinder his quest to answer “the big question: Where did the universe come from?”
via New York Times

The Expansive Life of Stephen Hawking

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Dr. Hawking captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world with his exploration of black holes and gravity.
via New York Times

Tuesday 13 March 2018

Study IDs 'white graphene' architecture with unprecedented hydrogen storage capacity

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Engineers have zeroed in on the optimal architecture for storing hydrogen in 'white graphene' nanomaterials -- a design like a Lilliputian skyscraper with 'floors' of boron nitride sitting one atop another and held by boron nitride pillars.
via Science Daily

Optometrist investigates changes in eye structure in astronauts

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An optometrist studies the vision of returning International Space Station astronauts and demonstrates a structural change to their eyes.
via Science Daily
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Double or nothing: Astronomers rethink quasar environment

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Astronomers have identified nearly 200 'protoclusters,' the progenitors of galaxy clusters, in the early Universe, about 12 billion years ago, about ten times more than previously known. They also found that quasars don't tend to reside in protoclusters; but if there is one quasar in a protocluster, there is likely a second nearby. This result raises doubts about the relation between protoclusters and quasars.
via Science Daily
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Graphene optical communications gain speed

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Optical communication formed the backbone of the internet age and is expected to be equally pivotal for the developing 5G networks. Modern communications rely on optical links that fly information at the speed of light, and on circuitry such as photodetectors and modulators which is able to encode a wealth of information onto these light beams. Although silicon is the material of choice for photonic waveguides on optical chips, photodetectors are made from other semiconductors such as GaAs, InP, or GaN, because silicon is transparent at standard telecomm wavelengths. Integrating these other semiconductors with silicon is difficult, complicating fabrication processes and raising expenses. Also, thermal management is becoming a problem as photonic devices keep shrinking while using more power.

Graphene is a promising material for telecomm photodetectors, because it absorbs light over a large bandwidth, including standard telecomm wavelengths. It is also compatible with CMOS technology, which means it can be technologically integrated with silicon photonics. Furthermore, graphene is an excellent heat conductor, promising a reduction in heat consumption of graphene-based photonic devices. For these reasons, graphene for optical communications has been an intense field of research, which is now gaining fruition in full working prototypes.

The first graphene photodetectors were developed in a research lab at IBM already in 2009. These transistor-based photodetectors had bandwidths exceeding 25 GHz and were subsequently used to transfer data over a 10 Gbit s-1 optical data link. The efficiency of detection in those devices was improved by employing an asymmetric metal-graphene-metal transistor configuration. Analysis suggests that the bandwidth of such graphene photodetectors may ultimately exceed 500 GHz.

Figure: Graphene photodetectors speed up

2013 was a productive year for graphene photodetector results. Several teams reported graphene photodetectors of different geometries, utilizing different physical principles, resulting in CMOS-compatible photodetectors that covered all communication bands at bandwidths up to 18 GHz. In all these new realizations, graphene was positioned directly on top of silicon waveguides and light was absorbed as it propagated down the waveguide. These were the first truly CMOS-compatible graphene photodetectors.

In 2016, the bandwidth of graphene photodetectors reached 65 GHz, utilizing graphene/silicon pn junctions with potential bit rates of ~90 Gbit s-1. Already in 2017, graphene photodetectors with a bandwidth exceeding 75 GHz were fabricated in a 6” wafer process line. These record-breaking devices were showcased at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2018, where visitors could experience the world’s first all-graphene optical communication link operating at a data rate of 25 Gbit s-1 per channel. In this demonstration, all active electro-optic operations were performed on graphene devices. A graphene modulator processed the data on the transmitter side of the network, encoding an electronic data stream to an optical signal. On the receiver side, a graphene photodetector did the opposite, converting the optical modulation into an electronic signal. The devices were made with Graphenea CVD graphene and showcased at the Graphene Pavilion. At the same show, Ericsson showed the first graphene-based optical ultrafast interconnection in mobile access networks, with a graphene-based photonic switch. From the financial aspect, if cost was a barrier to adoption of graphene technology just several years ago, it no longer is.

Graphene-based integrated photonics are seen as a key area of future development, with potential for high-speed optical networks that use less energy than networks based on semiconductor photonics, while keeping the costs low and providing integration with existing technology.


via Graphenea

Monday 12 March 2018

Arrested Development: Hubble Finds Relic Galaxy Close to Home


Ghostly-Looking Galaxy Stopped Making Stars Long Ago

The adventuring cinema archeologist Indiana Jones would be delighted to find a long-sought relic in his own backyard. Astronomers have gotten lucky enough to achieve such a quest. They identified a very rare and odd assemblage of stars that has remained essentially unchanged for the past 10 billion years. The diffuse stellar island provides valuable new insights into the origin and evolution of galaxies billions of years ago.

As far as galaxy evolution goes, this object is clearly a case of “arrested development.” The galaxy, NGC 1277, started its life with a bang long ago, ferociously churning out stars 1,000 times faster than seen in our own Milky Way today. But it abruptly went quiescent as the baby boomer stars aged and grew ever redder. Though Hubble has seen such “red and dead” galaxies in the early universe, one has never been conclusively found nearby. Where the early galaxies are so distant, they are just red dots in Hubble deep-sky images. NGC 1277 offers a unique opportunity to see one up close and personal.

The telltale sign of the galaxy’s state lies in the ancient globular clusters that swarm around it. Massive galaxies tend to have both metal-poor (appearing blue) and metal-rich (appearing red) globular clusters. The red clusters are believed to form as the galaxy forms, while the blue clusters are later brought in as smaller satellites are swallowed by the central galaxy. However, NGC 1277 is almost entirely lacking in blue globular clusters. The red clusters are the strongest evidence that the galaxy went out of the star-making business long ago. However, the lack of blue clusters suggests that NGC 1277 never grew further by gobbling up surrounding galaxies.


via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-17

Method to grow large single-crystal graphene could advance scalable 2-D materials

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A new method to produce large, monolayer single-crystal-like graphene films more than a foot long relies on harnessing a 'survival of the fittest' competition among crystals. The novel technique may open new opportunities for growing the high-quality two-dimensional materials necessary for long-awaited practical applications.
via Science Daily

Robert Lightfoot, NASA’s Acting Administrator, to Retire as Trump’s Nominee Is Stalled

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via New York Times

Arrested development: Hubble finds relic galaxy close to home

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Astronomers have put NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on an Indiana Jones-type quest to uncover an ancient 'relic galaxy' in our own cosmic backyard.
via Science Daily
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15 new planets confirmed around cool dwarf stars

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via Science Daily
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Spaceport calling

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Space Science Image of the Week: New views of BepiColombo as teams prepare to move to Europe's spaceport in Kourou
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2018/03/BepiColombo_image_montage

Sunday 11 March 2018

Three NASA satellites recreate solar eruption in 3-D

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Scientists have developed a model that simulates how shocks following coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, propagate from the sun -- an effort made possible only by combining data from three different NASA satellites.
via Science Daily
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Saturday 10 March 2018

A new class of two-dimensional materials

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Scientists and engineers have developed a method to make new kinds of artificial "superlattices" -- materials composed of alternating layers of ultra-thin "two-dimensional" sheets, which are only one or a few atoms thick. Unlike current state-of-the art superlattices, in which alternating layers have similar atomic structures, and thus similar electronic properties, these alternating layers can have radically different structures, properties and functions, something not previously available.
via Science Daily