Blue skies and water ice discovered on Pluto

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The first color images of Pluto's atmospheric hazes, returned by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft last week, reveal that the hazes are blue.
via Science Daily
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Wet paleoclimate of Mars revealed by ancient lakes at Gale Crater

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Scientists have described ancient water flows and lakes on Mars, and what this might mean about the ancient climate.
via Science Daily
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Perfectly accurate clocks turn out to be impossible

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Can the passage of time be measured precisely, always and everywhere? The answer will upset many watchmakers. A team of physicists have just shown that when we are dealing with very large accelerations, no clock will actually be able to show the real passage of time, known as 'proper time.'
via Science Daily
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M83: The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy

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Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern Pinwheel. But reddish star forming regions that dot the sweeping arms highlighted in this sparkling color composite also suggest another nickname, The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp composite color image also features spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. The image data was taken from the Subaru Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Wide Field Imager camera, and the Hubble Legacy Archive.

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Graphene market and applications

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Horizon, the EU Research & Innovation Magazine, published an interview with Graphenea's Scientific Director Amaia Zurutuza. In the interview, Amaia spoke about the graphene market.

 

In the interview, Amaia gives some examples on future uses of graphene, like in sensors, photodetectors, and high-speed electronics, but points out that the Graphene Flagship roadmap specifies many more applications to come.

 

Amaia predicts a gradual increase in market size for the next few years, and explains that Graphenea is following the market carefully and choosing research and business directions with great care. She warns that the current market might still be showing some effects of hype:

 

“I don’t know what will be the [market] increase each year. But until we have industrial applications, it will be a modest increase.”

 

Amaia emphasizes our position as a most active participant in the Flagship program, and how that has enabled us to play an important role in increasing the technology readiness level of graphene applications.

 

 

Horizon magazine is the European Union magazine that writes about research and innovation trends and reports on the EU's Framework Programmes, which have funded breakthrough research since 1984. Apart from directing our scientific research team, Amaia is a graphene applications champion, having given many interviews and conference talks on the topic. Her commentary in Nature Nanotechnology titled “Challenges and opportunities in graphene commercialization” has drawn over 10,000 views in the year since its publication, and she is widely considered an expert on graphene commercialization and applications.

via Graphenea

Unexpected role of electrons in creating pulsating auroras

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Thanks to a lucky conjunction of two satellites, a ground-based array of all-sky cameras, and some spectacular aurora borealis, researchers have uncovered evidence for an unexpected role that electrons have in creating the dancing auroras. Though humans have been seeing auroras for thousands of years, we have only recently begun to understand what causes them.
via Science Daily
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