Friday 10 August 2018

Watch NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Launch

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There’s a lot we don’t know about the sun and its power, and this mission will help to fill in the blanks in the years to come.
via New York Times

Touching the Sun

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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will fly through the punishing heat of the sun’s outer atmosphere.
via New York Times

Vote for your favourite picture from the CERN Photowalk

The best 20 photographs from the 2018 CERN Photowalk as chosen by the jury

Our jury has selected the 20 best pictures from our Photowalk. Now, you can help pick one of the three photos that will be submitted to the Global Physics Photowalk contest.

On 1 June 2018, 20 photographers visited CERN for an exclusive opportunity to explore the world’s largest particle physics laboratory and record behind-the-scenes views with their lenses as part of a Physics Photowalk. This year, for the fourth time, CERN has teamed up with major science laboratories around the world for an international photography competition: the 2018 Global Physics Photowalk.

For the competition at CERN, we opened the doors of four unique spaces in the laboratory: the photographers discovered the SMI2 hall where magnets for the Large Hadron Collider’s High-Luminosity upgrade are being built; one of the workshops for manufacture and testing magnets; the CERN Control Centre, from where the laboratory’s entire accelerator complex is controlled; and the Antiproton Decelerator, also known as the “Antimatter Factory”.

A jury from CERN has chosen the 20 best photos from the event. The jury was composed of Cassandre Simon-Poirier, an artist who spent a few months at CERN as part of the Arts at CERN programme; Julien Ordan, a photographer from CERN’s Audiovisual Production Team; and Nicolas Peray, representative of the CERN Photo Club.

In addition to picking these best photos, they also chose two of the three winners of the CERN competition, which will be sent to the Global Physics Photowalk contest. We need your help to choose the third photo from CERN.

Follow this link and vote for the one you like the most: https://cern.ch/photowalk2018/vote


via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/08/vote-your-favourite-picture-cern-photowalk

Today the Parker Solar Probe Is Named for Him. 60 Years Ago, No One Believed His Ideas About the Sun.

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Eugene N. Parker predicted the existence of solar wind in 1958. The NASA spacecraft, scheduled to launch on Saturday, is the first named for a living person.
via New York Times

Students digging into data archive spot mysterious X-ray source

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An enigmatic X-ray source revealed as part of a data-mining project for high-school students shows unexplored avenues hidden in the vast archive of ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory.


via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Students_digging_into_data_archive_spot_mysterious_X-ray_source

Balloon-borne telescope looks for cosmic gamma rays

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Cosmic gamma rays can provide us with important insights into the high-energy phenomena in our universe. The GRAINE (Gamma-Ray Astro-Imager with Nuclear Emulsion) collaboration aims to high resolution record high-energy cosmic gamma rays using a balloon-borne nuclear emulsion telescope. In April 2018 the team successfully completed another balloon flight test.
via Science Daily
Zazzle Space Exploration market place

For UW physicists, the 2-D form of tungsten ditelluride is full of surprises

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Researchers report that the 2-D form of tungsten ditelluride can undergo 'ferroelectric switching.' Materials with ferroelectric properties can have applications in memory storage, capacitors, RFID card technologies and even medical sensors -- and tungsten ditelluride is the first exfoliated 2-D material known to undergo ferroelectric switching.
via Science Daily