NASA Hosts NASA TV News Briefing on Upcoming Lunar Mission

NASA will host a news briefing at 3 p.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 22, at NASA Headquarters, 300 E St. SW in Washington, to discuss the agency's next, and first mission to the moon launching from the Virginia coast.

via NASA Breaking News

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/august/nasa-hosts-nasa-tv-news-briefing-on-upcoming-lunar-mission

NASA Commercial Crew Partner SpaceX Completes Orbit and Entry Review

NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) partner Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) recently reviewed the systems critical to sustaining crews in orbit and returning them safely to Earth aboard the company's Dragon spacecraft.

via NASA Breaking News

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/august/nasa-commercial-crew-partner-spacex-completes-orbit-and-entry-review

NASA gives up fixing planet-hunting telescope

more »

NASA called off all attempts to fix its crippled Kepler space telescope Thursday. But it's not quite ready to call it quits on the remarkable, robotic planet hunter.



Zazzle Space market place

Voyager 1 has left the solar system

more »

Voyager 1 appears to have at long last left our solar system and entered interstellar space, says a University of Maryland-led team of researchers. Their model indicates Voyager 1 actually entered interstellar space a little more than a year ago, a finding directly counter to recent articles suggesting the spacecraft was still in a fuzzily-defined transition zone between the Sun's sphere of influence and the rest of the galaxy.

via Science Daily

Zazzle Space Exploration market place

NASA Ends Attempts to Fully Recover Kepler Spacecraft, Potential New Missions Considered

Following months of analysis and testing, the Kepler Space Telescope team is ending its attempts to restore the spacecraft to full working order, and now is considering what new science research it can carry out in its current condition.

via NASA Breaking News

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/august/nasa-ends-attempts-to-fully-recover-kepler-spacecraft-potential-new-missions

Dwarf galaxy caught ramming into a large spiral

more »

Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have revealed a massive cloud of multimillion-degree gas in a galaxy about 60 million light years from Earth. The hot gas cloud is likely caused by a collision between a dwarf galaxy and a much larger galaxy called NGC 1232. If confirmed, this discovery would mark the first time such a collision has been detected only in X-rays, and could have implications for understanding how galaxies grow through similar collisions.



Zazzle Space market place

Mysterious magnetar boasts one of strongest magnetic fields in Universe

more »

(Phys.org) —A team of astronomers including two researchers from UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory has made the first ever measurement of the magnetic field at a specific spot on the surface of a magnetar. Magnetars are a type of neutron star, the dense and compact core of a giant star which has blasted away its outer layers in a supernova explosion.



Zazzle Space market place

Teleported by electronic circuit: Physicists 'beam' information

more »

ETH-researchers cannot "beam" objects or humans of flesh and blood through space yet, a feat sometimes alluded to in science fiction movies. They managed, however, to teleport information from A to B – for the first time in an electronic circuit, similar to a computer chip.



Zazzle Space market place

NASA Aircraft Take to Skies over Houston for Air Pollution Study

A multi-year NASA science mission soon will be airborne over Houston to help scientists measure and forecast air quality from space.

via NASA Breaking News

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/august/nasa-aircraft-take-to-skies-over-houston-for-air-pollution-study

A strong magnetic field around the Milky Way's black hole

more »

(Phys.org) —Astronomers have made an important measurement of the magnetic field emanating from a swirling disk of material surrounding the black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The measurement, made by observing a recently-discovered pulsar, is providing them with a powerful new tool for studying the mysterious region at the core of our home galaxy.



Zazzle Space market place

Small-molecule solar cells get 50% increase in efficiency with optical spacer

more »

(Phys.org) —In the world of organic solar cells, polymer-based devices may currently be at the top, but other organic materials such as "small molecules" also prove to be promising. Although small-molecule organic solar cells currently have lower efficiencies than polymer solar cells, they are generally easier to fabricate and their efficiencies are improving.



Zazzle Space market place

Cosmic turbulences result in star and black hole formation

more »

Just how stars and black holes in the Universe are able to form from rotating matter is one of the big questions of astrophysics. What we do know is that magnetic fields figure prominently into the picture. However, our current understanding is that they only work if matter is electrically well conductive—but in rotating discs this isn't always the case. Now, a new publication by Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf physicists in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters shows how magnetic fields can also cause turbulences within "dead zones," thus making an important contribution to our current understanding of just how compact objects form in the cosmos.



Zazzle Space market place

Cosmologist suggests universe might not be expanding after all

more »

(Phys.org) —Cosmologist Christof Wetterich of the University of Heidelberg has uploaded a paper to the arXiv server in which he claims it's possible that the theory of expansion of the universe might be incorrect. He suggests instead that the redshift observed by researchers here on Earth might be caused by an increase in the mass in the universe.



Zazzle Space market place

New electron beam writer enables next-gen biomedical and information technologies

more »

(Phys.org) —The new electron beam writer housed in the Nano3 cleanroom facility at the Qualcomm Institute is important for electrical engineering professor Shadi Dayeh's two major areas of research. He is developing next-generation, nanoscale transistors for integrated electronics; and he is developing neural probes that have the capacity to extract electrical signals from individual brain cells and transmit the information to a prosthetic device or computer. Achieving this level of signal extraction or manipulation requires tiny sensors spaced very closely together for the highest resolution and signal acquisition. Enter the new electron beam writer.



Zazzle Space market place

Zero-dimensional transistor harvests bubble energy wasted during water electrolysis

more »

(Phys.org) —When hydrogen is produced from water during electrolysis, some energy is lost as tiny bubbles. In a new study, researchers have demonstrated that 25-nm transistors—so small that they're considered zero-dimensional (0D)—can be used to transform this lost energy into electric pulses. Millions of these 0D transistors could be used to detect individual bubbles and generate electric pulses at an optimal efficiency, gathering part of the energy lost during electrolysis and making it available for other uses.



Zazzle Space market place

Team succeeded in precisely measuring expansion velocity of shockwave of supernova remnant W44

more »

A research team led by Tomoro Sashida and Tomoharu Oka (Keio University) has succeeded in precisely measuring the expansion velocity of a shockwave of the supernova remnant W44. The remnant is located in the constellation of Aquila, approximately 10,000 light-years away from our solar system. The team observed the high-temperature and high-density molecular gas in the millimeter/submillimeter wave ranges. The analysis shows that the expansion velocity of the W44 shockwave is 12.9±0.2 km/sec. In addition, it became clear that the supernova explosion released kinetic energy of (1-3)×1050 erg into the interstellar medium. The energy emitted from the Sun is approximately 3.6 × 1033 ergs/sec. Can you image how enormous amount of energy is released from the supernova explosion? Furthermore, other molecular gas with an extremely high velocity of higher than 100 km/sec was also detected. The origin of this super-high-velocity molecular gas remains unclear at the present time.



Zazzle Space market place

Researchers examine dynamics of liquid metal particles at nanoscale

more »

Two NJIT researchers have demonstrated that using a continuum-based approach, they can explain the dynamics of liquid metal particles on a substrate of a nanoscale. "Numerical simulation of ejected molten metal nanoparticles liquified by laser irradiation: Interplay of geometry and dewetting," appeared in Physical Review Letters (July 16, 2013).



Zazzle Space market place

Galaxies had 'mature' shapes 11. 5 billion years ago

more »

Astronomers have established that mature-looking galaxies existed much earlier than previously known, about 11.5 billion years ago.

via Science Daily

Zazzle Space Exploration market place

NASA, Commercial Crew Partners Fund Additional Development Milestones

NASA announced Thursday it is adding some additional milestones to agreements with three U.S. commercial companies that are developing spaceflight capabilities that could eventually provide launch services to transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil.

via NASA Breaking News

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/august/nasa-commercial-crew-partners-fund-additional-development-milestones

Bubbles are the new lenses for nanoscale light beams

more »

Bending light beams to your whim sounds like a job for a wizard or an a complex array of bulky mirrors, lenses and prisms, but a few tiny liquid bubbles may be all that is necessary to open the doors for next-generation, high-speed circuits and displays, according to Penn State researchers.



Zazzle Space market place

Quantum teleportation: Transfer of flying quantum bits at the touch of a button

more »

By means of the quantum-mechanical entanglement of spatially separated light fields, researchers in Tokyo and Mainz have managed to teleport photonic qubits with extreme reliability. This means that a decisive breakthrough has been achieved some 15 years after the first experiments in the field of optical teleportation. The success of the experiment conducted in Tokyo is attributable to the use of a hybrid technique in which two conceptually different and previously incompatible approaches were combined.



Zazzle Space market place

When galaxies switch off: Hubble's COSMOS survey solves 'quenched' galaxy mystery

more »

Some galaxies hit a point in their lives when their star formation is snuffed out, and they become "quenched". Quenched galaxies in the distant past appear to be much smaller than the quenched galaxies in the Universe today. This has always puzzled astronomers—how can these galaxies grow if they are no longer forming stars? A team of astronomers has now used a huge set of Hubble observations to give a surprisingly simple answer to this long-standing cosmic riddle.



Zazzle Space market place

Physicists discover atomic clock can simulate quantum magnetism

more »

Researchers at JILA have for the first time used an atomic clock as a quantum simulator, mimicking the behavior of a different, more complex quantum system.



Zazzle Space market place

Hubble finds source of Magellanic Stream

more »

(Phys.org) —Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have solved the 40-year-old mystery of the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around the Milky Way. New Hubble observations reveal that most of this stream was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud some two billion years ago, with a smaller portion originating more recently from its larger neighbour.



Zazzle Space market place

Molecules form 2-D patterns never before observed: Experiments produce elusive 5-vertex tilings

more »

Tessellation patterns that have fascinated mathematicians since Johannes Kepler worked out their systematics 400 years ago – and that more recently have caught the eye of both artists and crystallographers – can now be seen in the laboratory. They first took shape on a surface more perfectly two-dimensional than any sheet of writing paper, a single layer of atoms and molecules atop an atomically smooth substrate. Physicists coaxed these so-called Kepler tilings "onto the page" through guided self-assembly of nanostructures.



Zazzle Space market place

First hundred thousand years of our universe: Researchers find tantalizing new hints of clues

more »

Mystery fans know that the best way to solve a mystery is to revisit the scene where it began and look for clues. To understand the mysteries of our universe, scientists are trying to go back as far they can to the Big Bang. A new analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation data by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has taken the furthest look back through time yet – 100 years to 300,000 years after the Big Bang - and provided tantalizing new hints of clues as to what might have happened.



Zazzle Space market place

Magnetic switching simplified

more »

An international team of researchers has described a new physical effect that could be used to develop more efficient magnetic chips for information processing. The quantum mechanical effect makes it easier to produce spin-polarized currents necessary for the switching of magnetically stored information. The research findings were published online on 28 July in the high-impact journal Nature Nanotechnology.



Zazzle Space market place

Squeezed light produced using silicon micromechanical system

more »

One of the many counterintuitive and bizarre insights of quantum mechanics is that even in a vacuum—what many of us think of as an empty void—all is not completely still. Low levels of noise, known as quantum fluctuations, are always present. Always, that is, unless you can pull off a quantum trick. And that's just what a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has done. The group has engineered a miniature silicon system that produces a type of light that is quieter at certain frequencies—meaning it has fewer quantum fluctuations—than what is usually present in a vacuum.



Zazzle Space market place

Around the world in four days: NASA tracks Chelyabinsk meteor plume

more »

Atmospheric physicist Nick Gorkavyi missed witnessing an event of the century last winter when a meteor exploded over his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia. From Greenbelt, Md., however, NASA's Gorkavyi and colleagues witnessed a never-before-seen view of the atmospheric aftermath of the explosion.

via Science Daily

Zazzle Space Exploration market place

Quasar observed in six separate light reflections

more »

(Phys.org) —Quasars are active black holes—primarily from the early universe. Using a special method where you observe light that has been bent by gravity on its way through the universe, a group of physics students from the Niels Bohr Institute have observed a quasar whose light has been deflected and reflected in six separate images. This is the first time a quasar has been observed with so many light reflections. The results are published in the scientific journal, Astrophysical Journal.



Zazzle Space market place

A Starburst Galaxy - Messier 82 (Cigar Galaxy) Journal

A Starburst Galaxy - Messier 82 (Cigar Galaxy) Journal

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series This mosaic image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (aka Cigar Galaxy) is a really sharp wide-angle view of M82. It is a galaxy remarkable for its webs of shredded clouds and flame-like plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out from its central regions where young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside in our Milky Way Galaxy.

more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series
image code: sbglxymet

Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI) and P. Puxley (NSF).

via Zazzle Astronomy market place

The odd couple: Two very different gas clouds in the galaxy next door (w/ Video)

more »

(Phys.org) —ESO's Very Large Telescope has captured an intriguing star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud—one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. This sharp image reveals two distinctive glowing clouds of gas: Red-hued NGC 2014, and its blue neighbour NGC 2020. While they are very different, they were both sculpted by powerful stellar winds from extremely hot newborn stars that also radiate into the gas, causing it to glow brightly.



Zazzle Space market place

Explosion illuminates invisible galaxy in the dark ages

more »

(Phys.org) —More than 12 billion years ago a star exploded, ripping itself apart and blasting its remains outward in twin jets at nearly the speed of light. At its death it glowed so brightly that it outshone its entire galaxy by a million times. This brilliant flash traveled across space for 12.7 billion years to a planet that hadn't even existed at the time of the explosion - our Earth. By analyzing this light, astronomers learned about a galaxy that was otherwise too small, faint and far away for even the Hubble Space Telescope to see.



Zazzle Space market place

Battery design gets boost from aligned carbon nanotubes

more »

Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a new flexible nano-scaffold for rechargeable lithium ion batteries that could help make cell phone and electric car batteries last longer.



Zazzle Space market place

Quantum communication controlled by resonance in 'artificial atoms'

more »

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, together with colleagues in the US and Australia, have developed a method to control a quantum bit for electronic quantum communication in a series of quantum dots, which behave like artificial atoms in the solid state. The results have been published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.



Zazzle Space market place

Astronomers image lowest-mass exoplanet around a sun-like star

more »

Using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, an international team of astronomers has imaged a giant planet around the bright star GJ 504. Several times the mass of Jupiter and similar in size, the new world, dubbed GJ 504b, is the lowest-mass planet ever detected around a star like the sun using direct imaging techniques.



Zazzle Space market place

Making a mini Mona Lisa

more »

The world's most famous painting has now been created on the world's smallest canvas. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have "painted" the Mona Lisa on a substrate surface approximately 30 microns in width – or one-third the width of a human hair. The team's creation, the "Mini Lisa," demonstrates a technique that could potentially be used to achieve nanomanufacturing of devices because the team was able to vary the surface concentration of molecules on such short-length scales.



Zazzle Space market place

An infallible quantum measurement

more »

Entanglement is a key resource for upcoming quantum computers and simulators. Now, physicists in Innsbruck and Geneva realized a new, reliable method to verify entanglement in the laboratory using a minimal number of assumptions about the system and measuring devices. Hence, this method witnesses the presence of useful entanglement.



Zazzle Space market place

Hubble finds telltale fireball after gamma ray burst

more »

(Phys.org) —NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided the strongest evidence yet that short-duration gamma-ray bursts are triggered by the merger of two small, super-dense stellar objects, such as a pair of neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole.



Zazzle Space market place

Astronomers show galaxies had 'mature' shapes 11.5 billion years ago

more »

Studying the evolution and anatomy of galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers led by doctoral candidate BoMee Lee and her advisor Mauro Giavalisco at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have established that mature-looking galaxies existed much earlier than previously known, when the universe was only about 2.5 billion years old, or 11.5 billion years ago. "Finding them this far back in time is a significant discovery," says lead author Lee.



Zazzle Space market place

Mission to build world's most advanced telescope reaches major milestone

more »

(Phys.org) —With the signing last week of a "master agreement" for the Thirty Meter Telescope—destined to be the most advanced and powerful optical telescope in the world—the University of California and UCLA moved a step closer to peering deeper into the cosmos than ever before.



Zazzle Space market place

Monster galaxies lose their appetite with age

more »

(Phys.org) —Our universe is filled with gobs of galaxies, bound together by gravity into larger families called clusters. Lying at the heart of most clusters is a monster galaxy thought to grow in size by merging with neighboring galaxies, a process astronomers call galactic cannibalism.



Zazzle Space market place

Towards a global quantum network: Photoelectron trapping in double quantum dots

more »

(Phys.org) —While the journey from today's fledgling quantum computers to a global quantum information network may seem daunting, researchers are continually, and at an accelerating pace, making progress towards that goal. One key element essential to that progress is the transfer of quantum information between single photons and solid-state quanta – and the properties of semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) make them excellent candidates for photon-electron quantum coupling. One historical stumbling block has been that although quantum circuits require nondestructive transfer between separate dots, using single QDs usually fails due to destructive transfer in which photoelectrons are immediately lost upon measurement.



Zazzle Space market place

Scientists realize quantum bit with a bent nanotube

more »

One of the biggest challenges in quantum science is to build a functioning quantum bit, the basic element for the quantum computer. An important theoretical candidate for such a quantum bit is using a bent carbon nanotube. Scientists at the Delft University of Technology and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), led by Professor Leo Kouwenhoven, have succeeded for the first time to create a working quantum bit using a carbon nanotube. On July 28 they published their results in Nature Nanotechnology.



Zazzle Space market place

When fluid dynamics mimic quantum mechanics

more »

In the early days of quantum physics, in an attempt to explain the wavelike behavior of quantum particles, the French physicist Louis de Broglie proposed what he called a "pilot wave" theory. According to de Broglie, moving particles—such as electrons, or the photons in a beam of light—are borne along on waves of some type, like driftwood on a tide.



Zazzle Space market place

What if quantum physics worked on a macroscopic level?

more »

Quantum physics concerns a world of infinitely small things. But for years, researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have been attempting to observe the properties of quantum physics on a larger scale, even macroscopic. In January 2011, they managed to entangle crystals, therefore surpassing the atomic dimension. Now, Professor Nicolas Gisin's team has successfully entangled two optic fibers, populated by 500 photons. Unlike previous experiments which were carried out with the fiber optics of one photon, this new feat (which has been published in Nature Physics) begins to answer a fundamental question: can quantum properties survive on a macroscopic level?



Zazzle Space market place

"Valleytronics" – a new type of electronics in diamond

more »

(Phys.org) —An alternative and novel concept in electronics is to utilize the wave quantum number of the electron in a crystalline material to encode information. In a new article in Nature Materials, Isberg et.al. propose using this valley degree of freedom in diamond to enable valleytronic information processing or as a new route to quantum computing.



Zazzle Space market place

Making big 'Schroedinger cats': Quantum research pushes boundary by testing micro theory for macro objects

more »

Since Erwin Schroedinger's famous 1935 cat thought experiment, physicists around the globe have tried to create large scale systems to test how the rules of quantum mechanics apply to everyday objects.



Zazzle Space market place

Searching for quantum physics in all the right places

more »

An improved method for measuring quantum properties offers new insight into the unique characteristics of quantum systems.



Zazzle Space market place

Oxford Questions seek to pull back the curtain on the foundations of quantum physics

more »

(Phys.org) —Relativity and quantum theory form the backbone of modern physics, but a group of physicists stresses that daily use of these theories can numb the sense of wonder at their immense empirical success. At the same time, fundamental questions on the foundations of these two theories remain. In 2010, experimentalists, theorists, and philosophers of physics convened at a conference at the University of Oxford called Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality. They produced a set of "Oxford Questions" aimed at identifying some specific open problems about the nature of quantum reality in order to stimulate and guide future research.



Zazzle Space market place

Physicists publish solution to the quantum measurement problem

more »

(Phys.org) —Quantum mechanics is a highly successful theory, but its interpretation has still not been settled. In their recent opus magnum, Theo Nieuwenhuizen (Institute of Physics, UvA) and colleagues claim to have found a solution to the so-called quantum measurement problem.



Zazzle Space market place

Link between quantum physics and game theory found

more »

(Phys.org) —A deep link between two seemingly unconnected areas of modern science has been discovered by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Geneva.



Zazzle Space market place

Physicists build quantum refrigerator based on four quantum dots

more »

(Phys.org) —With the goal of understanding the relation between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, physicists have recently been investigating the fundamental limits of the smallest possible quantum refrigerator. As a refrigerator, the device must be able to transfer heat from one reservoir to another. In a new study, physicists have proposed a quantum refrigerator consisting of just four quantum dots, each in contact with a thermal reservoir. They theoretically show that this system can extract heat from the coldest reservoir and cool the nearby quantum dot, making it one of the smallest quantum refrigerators proposed to date.



Zazzle Space market place

Detection of single photons via quantum entanglement

more »

Almost 200 years ago, Bavarian physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer discovered dark lines in the sun's spectrum. It was later discovered that these spectral lines can be used to infer the chemical composition and temperature of the sun's atmosphere. Today we are able to gain information about diverse objects through light measurements in a similar way. Because often very little light needs to be detected for this, physicists are looking for ever more sensitive spectroscopy methods. In extreme cases, also single particles of light (photons) need to be measured reliably, which is technically challenging.



Zazzle Space market place

Two papers investigate the thermodynamics of quantum systems

more »

(Phys.org) —As one of the pillars of the natural sciences, thermodynamics plays an important role in all processes that involve heat, energy, and work. While the principles of thermodynamics can predict the amount of work done in classical systems, for quantum systems there is instead a distribution of many possible values of work. Two new papers published in Physical Review Letters have proposed theoretical schemes that would significantly ease the measurement of the statistics of work done by quantum systems.



Zazzle Space market place

MIT researchers build an all-optical transistor

more »

Optical computing—using light rather than electricity to perform calculations—could pay dividends for both conventional computers and quantum computers, largely hypothetical devices that could perform some types of computations exponentially faster than classical computers.



Zazzle Space market place

Exhibit highlights advances in quantum communication and computing

more »

Researchers from the Cambridge Research Laboratory of Toshiba Research Europe Limited and the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge will today present the world's most secure chat and video conferencing network at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London. It uses quantum physics to automatically detect tapping of the network and alert users of any potential threat.



Zazzle Space market place