Mineralogy of potential lunar exploration site

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Scientists have long wanted to retrieve rock samples from the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin, and a new study could be helpful in locating an ideal landing site.
via Science Daily
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Search for first stars uncovers 'dark matter'

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New research offers the first direct proof that dark matter exists and that it is composed of low-mass particles.
via Science Daily
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Black holes from small galaxies might emit gamma rays

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Researchers have discovered seven galaxies that could shake up what astrophysicists thought they knew about how the size of a galaxy -- and the black hole at its center -- can affect its behavior.
via Science Daily
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When Stars Were Born: Earliest Starlight’s Effects Are Detected

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Using a telescope in Australia, astronomers say they have glimpsed farther back in time than the Hubble Telescope to see what was happening when the first stars were forming.
via New York Times

Within 180 million years of the Big Bang, stars were born

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After 12 years of experimental effort, a team of scientists, led by Arizona State University astronomer Judd Bowman, has detected the fingerprints of the earliest stars in the universe. Using radio signals, the detection provides the first evidence for the oldest ancestors in our cosmic family tree, born by a mere 180 million years after the universe began.
via Science Daily
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The ideal settlement site on Mars? Hotspots, if you asked a crop

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Selecting the perfect landing site will be essential for the successful establishment of the first Mars colony. Growing food crops will be one of the key tasks for the astronauts. Scientists have identified places on Mars that are favorable for plant species to grow.
via Science Daily
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Aqueous storage device needs only 20 seconds to go

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A research team developed a new hybrid energy storage device that can be charged in less than half a minute. It employs aqueous electrolytes instead of flammable organic solvents, so it is both environmentally friendly and safe. It also facilitates a boosting charge with high energy density, which makes it suitable for portable electronic devices.
via Science Daily

The moon formed inside a vaporized Earth synestia

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A new explanation for the Moon's origin has it forming inside the Earth when our planet was a seething, spinning cloud of vaporized rock, called a synestia. The new model resolves several problems in lunar formation.
via Science Daily
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How does water change the Moon's origin story?

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The Moon formed when an object collided with the proto-Earth. For years, scientists thought that in the aftermath, hydrogen and other so-called 'volatile elements' escaped and were lost to space. This would have led to a dry and volatile element-depleted Moon, which seemed to be consistent with previous analyses of lunar samples. But ongoing research about the Moon's chemistry is revealing that it may be wetter than initially thought, raising questions about this origin story.
via Science Daily
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When ‘colder’ means ‘hotter’: Explaining the increasing temperature of cooling granular gases

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A mathematician has developed a theory to explain ‘heating by cooling’, where the temperature of a granular gas increases while the total energy drops down - a peculiar phenomenon which can be observed both on Earth and in space.
via Science Daily
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LIVE: From the LHC tunnel

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator (Image: Maximilien Brice/Julien Ordan/CERN)

Join CERN today, 28 February 2018, at 4pm (CET), when we will be live for the first time on Facebook from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel, 100 metres underground. 

This is the last chance to go to the LHC tunnel before the CERN accelerators complex restarts soon. Our scientists will be answering your questions as well as explaining how CERN’s accelerators work and why they stop in winter, and what physicists are up to when there’s no beams and no collisions.

Find out more about what has been happening during the winter shutdown for the LHC, injectors and the experiments.

Watch the live on Facebook or below, from 4pm.

via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/02/live-lhc-tunnel

Individual quantum dots imaged in 3-D for first time

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Researchers have developed an imaging technique that uses a tiny, super sharp needle to nudge a single nanoparticle into different orientations and capture 2-D images to help reconstruct a 3-D picture. The method demonstrates imaging of individual nanoparticles at different orientations while in a laser-induced excited state.
via Science Daily

Sleuths find metal in 'metal-free' catalysts

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Scientists find the metal in supposedly 'metal-free' graphene catalysts for oxygen reduction reactions that turn chemical energy into electrical energy. The discovery could allow for better tuning of two-dimensional materials for fuel cells and other applications.
via Science Daily

Galactic mystery of ultraluminous sources of x-rays

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An astronomy team is homing in on the nature of extreme objects known as ULXs.
via Science Daily
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Stars around the Milky Way: Cosmic space invaders or victims of galactic eviction?

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Astronomers investigated a small population of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy's halo, finding its chemical composition closely matches the Galactic disk. This similarity provides compelling evidence that these stars have originated from within the disc, rather than from merged dwarf galaxies. The reason for this stellar migration is thought to be theoretically proposed oscillations of the Milky Way disc, induced by the tidal interaction of the Milky Way with a passing massive satellite galaxy.
via Science Daily
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The long road to Linac4

Magnetic Sun

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Space Science Image of the Week: SOHO’s snaps reveal the Sun’s magnetic cycle
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2018/02/22_years_of_SOHO

Reinventing the inductor

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A basic building block of modern technology, inductors are everywhere: cellphones, laptops, radios, televisions, cars. And surprisingly, they are essentially the same today as in 1831, when they were first created by English scientist Michael Faraday. Now, a team has taken a materials-based approach to reinventing this fundamental component of modern electronics.
via Science Daily

Improved Hubble yardstick gives fresh evidence for new physics in the universe

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Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to make the most precise measurements of the expansion rate of the universe since it was first calculated nearly a century ago. Intriguingly, the results are forcing astronomers to consider that they may be seeing evidence of something unexpected at work in the universe.
via Science Daily
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NASA's SDO Reveals How Magnetic Cage on the Sun Stopped Solar Eruption

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A dramatic magnetic power struggle at the Sun's surface lies at the heart of solar eruptions, new research shows.
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Model based on hydrothermal sources evaluate possibility of life on Jupiter's icy moon

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Scientists compare primitive Earth scenario with satellite Europa's conditions; the Jupiterian moon could host microorganisms at the bottom of a huge warm ocean located underneath its frozen crust.
via Science Daily
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On second thought, the Moon's water may be widespread and immobile

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A new analysis of data from two lunar missions finds evidence that the Moon's water is widely distributed across the surface and is not confined to a particular region or type of terrain.
via Science Daily
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Roadmap to enhance radioresistance for space colonization

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An international team of researchers has published a roadmap toward enhancing human radioresistance for space exploration and colonization.
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Fifty years since Charpak revolutionised particle detectors

Harriet Jarlett

Georges Charpak’s 'multiwire proportional chamber' particle detector consisted of many parallel wires, each connected to individual amplifiers. Linked to a computer, it could achieve a counting rate a thousand times better than existing detection techniqu

Fifty years ago today, Georges Charpak revolutionised particle detection while working at CERN when his paper detailing the invention of a new particle detection system, was published. The new detector technique could record millions of particle tracks each second, instead of the one or two tracks captured by earlier methods. The first multiwire proportional chamber was born.

Until 1968, most detection in particle physics meant examining thousands of photographs from bubble or spark chambers, flash tubes or scintillation counters, to look for interesting tracks left behind from the debris of particle collisions. Discovering new particles or phenomenon often meant searching for rare one-in-a-billion interactions.  These early photographic methods were not able to quickly choose that one, making the discovery of new particles and new phenomenon time-consuming, painstaking work.

Then came a revolution in transistor amplifiers. While a camera can detect a spark, a detector wire connected to an amplifier can detect a much smaller effect. Georges Charpak realised that with modern electronics, and by connecting the detector directly to a computer, you could dramatically increase data collection. On 23 February 1968, he and colleagues published a paper entitled “the use of multiwire proportional counters to select and localize charged particles”.

The multiwire proportional chamber used a much older piece of equipment – the proportional counter, such as a Geiger Müller tube – in a new way.

In a proportional counter, an electrical voltage is applied to a gas-filled tube with a wire running through its centre. The voltage ionises the gas, as negatively-charged electrons are liberated from the gas atoms and move towards the wire in the centre. Here the high electrical field means these negative ions move faster, ionising more of the gas, freeing more electrons to be accelerated, and so on. This avalanche of ions creates an electrical signal on the wire, which shows the position of the first ionisation.

Charpak proposed, instead of a tube and a single wire, to use a gas-filled box with a large number of parallel detector wires running through it. Each wire was connected to individual amplifiers, so acted as an independent proportional counter. When linked to a computer, this could achieve a counting rate a thousand times better than any existing detectors.

The invention revolutionised particle detection, pushing it into the electronic era.

In 1992 Charpak won the Physics Nobel Prize for his “breakthrough in the technique for exploring the innermost parts of matter”, and today many experiments in particle physics routinely use some type of track detector based on the principle of Charpak’s multiwire proportional chamber. It has contributed to important discoveries in particle physics including the charm quark, the W and Z bosons, and the gluon, and it has had several other applications in medicine and biology.

---

Find out more in the CERN Courier:

An interview with George Charpak on the occasion of his 85^th birthday.

A tribute to George Charpak by his friend and colleague, Ioannis Giomataris.

via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/02/fifty-years-charpak-revolutionised-particle-detectors

Improved Hubble Yardstick Gives Fresh Evidence for New Physics in the Universe

New Survey Is the Most Precise Measurement of the Universe's Expansion Rate

The good news: Astronomers have made the most precise measurement to date of the rate at which the universe is expanding since the big bang. The possibly unsettling news: This may mean that there is something unknown about the makeup of the universe. The new numbers remain at odds with independent measurements of the early universe's expansion. Is something unpredicted going on in the depths of space?

Astronomers have come a long way since the early 1900s when they didn't have a clue that we lived in an expanding universe. Before this could be realized, astronomers needed an accurate celestial measuring stick to calculate distances to far-flung objects. At that time, faint, fuzzy patches of light that we now know as galaxies were thought by many astronomers to be objects inside our Milky Way. But, in 1913, Harvard astronomer Henrietta Leavitt discovered unique pulsating stars that maintain a consistent brightness no matter where they reside. Called Cepheid variables, these stars became reliable yardsticks for astronomers to measure cosmic distances from Earth.

A few years later, building on Leavitt's pioneering work, astronomer Edwin Hubble found a Cepheid variable star in the Andromeda nebula. By measuring the star's tremendous distance, Hubble proved that the nebula was really an entire galaxy — a separate island of billions of stars far outside our Milky Way.

He went on to find many more galaxies across space. When he used Cepheid variables to measure galaxy distances, he found that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be receding from us. This led him to the monumental discovery that our universe is uniformly expanding in all directions. And, even the universe's age, which today we know is 13.8 billion years, could be calculated from the expansion rate.

Little would Leavitt have imagined that her Cepheid variable work would become the solid bottom rung of a cosmic distance ladder of interlinked techniques that would allow for measurements across billions of light-years.

The latest Hubble telescope results that solidify the cosmic ladder confirm a nagging discrepancy showing the universe is expanding faster now than was expected from its trajectory seen shortly after the big bang. Researchers suggest that there may be new physics at work to explain the inconsistency. One idea is that the universe contains a new high-speed subatomic particle. Another possibility is that dark energy, already known to be accelerating the cosmos, may be shoving galaxies away from each other with even greater — or growing — strength.

The Hubble study extends the number of Cepheid stars analyzed to distances of up to 10 times farther across our galaxy than previous Hubble results. The new measurements help reduce the chance that the discrepancy in the values is a coincidence to 1 in 5,000.

via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-12

Amateur astronomer captures rare first light from massive exploding star

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First light from a supernova is hard to capture; no one can predict where and when a star will explode. An amateur astronomer has now captured on film this first light, emitted when the exploding core hits the star's outer layers: shock breakout. Subsequent observations by astronomers using the Lick and Keck observatories helped identify it as a Type IIb supernova that slimmed down from 20 to 5 solar masses before exploding.
via Science Daily
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Trilobites: He Took a Picture of a Supernova While Setting Up His New Camera

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Astronomers rarely see the beginnings of these explosions, but an Argentine amateur’s lucky picture helped them study the start of a massive star’s violent death.
via New York Times

'Ultramassive' black holes discovered in far-off galaxies

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Thanks to data collected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope on galaxies up to 3.5 billion light years away from Earth, an international team of astrophysicists was able to detect what is likely to be the most massive black holes ever discovered in the universe. The team’s calculations showed that these “ultramassive” black holes are growing faster than the stars in their respective galaxies.
via Science Daily
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Splitting crystals for 2-D metallic conductivity

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Adding oxygen atoms to a perovskite-like crystal material splits it into layers, giving it unique electrical properties.
via Science Daily

Collimators: the LHC’s bodyguards

Iva Raynova

Installation of a collimator in the LHC. Collimators protect the sensitive equipment from escaping particles. (Image: Maximilien Brice, Julien Ordan/CERN)

The performance of the LHC relies on accelerating and colliding beams made of tiny particles with unprecedented intensities. If even a small fraction of the circulating particles deviates from the precisely set trajectory, it can quench a super-conducting LHC magnet or even destroy parts of the accelerator. The energy in the two LHC beams is sufficient to melt almost one tonne of copper.

This is why the LHC shows its teeth every time particles misbehave. These “teeth” are part of special devices around the LHC, called collimators. Their jaws – moveable blocks of robust materials – close around the beam to clean it of stray particles before they come close to the collision regions. The materials the jaws are made of can withstand extreme conditions of temperature and pressure, as well as high levels of radiation.

More than a hundred of these bodyguards are placed around the LHC. They are also installed on each side of the LHC experiments to absorb the stray particles before they come close to the collision regions.

With the expected increase in the number of particle collisions in the High-Luminosity LHC, the beam intensity will be much higher. New collimators are being developed by CERN’s Engineering department to meet the beam-cleaning requirements of the future project. Some of the recent innovations in the LHC collimation system include a wire and a crystal collimator. You can learn more about them in this article.

via CERN: Updates for the general public
https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/02/collimators-lhcs-bodyguards

Surfing complete

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Slowed by skimming through the very top of the upper atmosphere, ESA’s ExoMars has lowered itself into a planet-hugging orbit and is about ready to begin sniffing the Red Planet for methane.

via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Surfing_complete

Researchers achieve 'Olympic ring' molecule breakthrough just in time for Winter Games

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More than 7,000 miles away from the snowcapped peaks of PyeongChang, scientists in Florida have unlocked a novel strategy for synthesizing a highly versatile molecule called olympicene -- a compound of carbon and hydrogen atoms named for its familiar Olympic ring shape.
via Science Daily

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to reveal secrets of the Red Planet

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Mars rovers and orbiters have found signs that Mars once hosted liquid water on its surface. Much of that water escaped over time. How much water was lost, and how does the water that’s left move from ice to atmosphere to soil? During its first year of operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will seek answers. Webb also will study mysterious methane plumes that hint at possible geological or even biological activity.
via Science Daily
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to Reveal Secrets of the Red Planet

Webb will investigate how Mars went from wet to dry

Mars rovers and orbiters have found signs that Mars once hosted liquid water on its surface. Much of that water escaped over time. How much water was lost, and how does the water that’s left move from ice to atmosphere to soil? During its first year of operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will seek answers. Webb also will study mysterious methane plumes that hint at possible geological or even biological activity.

via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-10

Astronomers reveal secrets of most distant supernova ever detected

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Astronomers have confirmed the discovery of the most distant supernova ever detected -- a huge cosmic explosion that took place 10.5 billion years ago, or three-quarters the age of the Universe itself.
via Science Daily
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Many colors from a single dot

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Physicists have shown how even a separate single nanoparticle can be used to emit different colors of light. Their results show that the particles under consideration may be a very efficient and versatile tool to produce light of all colors at tiny scales.
via Science Daily

Out There: Astronomers’ Dark Energy Hopes Fade to Gray

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The Wfirst project, which would have investigated the force of dark energy in the universe and searched for more planets, has been cut from NASA’s proposed budget.
via New York Times

Off-piste

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Space Science Image of the Week: These enticing peaks in the outer Solar System would challenge even skilled Olympic skiers
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2018/02/Saturn_s_B_ring_peaks

A lonely beauty

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Beauty, grace, mystery -- this magnificent spiral galaxy has all the qualities of a perfect galactic Valentine. The galaxy NGC 3344 presents itself face-on, allowing astronomers a detailed look at its intricate and elegant structure. And Hubble's ability to observe objects over a wide range of different wavelengths reveals features that would otherwise remain invisible.
via Science Daily
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Why we have yet to find extraterrestrial life

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Are we alone in the universe? Few questions have captured the public imagination more than this. Yet to date we know of just one sample of life, that which exists here on Earth.
via Science Daily
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Precision experiments reveal gaps in van der Waals theory

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Scientists have used single-crystal synchrotron X-ray diffraction measurements to establish the electron density of TiS2. Given the broad range of applications for 2-D materials, this fundamental understanding is expected to have a wide-reaching influence on their uses, such as in topological insulators, electrode materials, catalysts, and charge-density-wave materials.
via Science Daily

Novel exciton interactions in carbon nanotubes

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Nanotechnology researchers studying small bundles of carbon nanotubes have discovered an optical signature showing excitons bound to a single nanotube are accompanied by excitons tunneling across closely interacting nanotubes.
via Science Daily

Hidden talents: Converting heat into electricity with pencil and paper

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Thermoelectric materials can use thermal differences to generate electricity. Now there is an inexpensive and environmentally friendly way of producing them with the simplest of components: a normal pencil, photocopy paper, and conductive paint are sufficient to convert a temperature difference into electricity via the thermoelectric effect.
via Science Daily

Soft tissue fossil clues could help search for ancient life on Earth and other planets

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Fossils that preserve entire organisms (including both hard and soft body parts) are critical to our understanding of evolution and ancient life on Earth. However, these exceptional deposits are extremely rare. New research suggests that the mineralogy of the surrounding earth is key to conserving soft parts of organisms, and finding more exceptional fossils. The work could potentially support the Mars Rover Curiosity in its sample analysis, and speed up the search for traces of life on other planets.
via Science Daily
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Hubble Sees Neptune's Mysterious Shrinking Storm

Storms on Neptune Play Peek-A-Boo With Planetary Astronomers

Three billion miles away on the farthest known major planet in our solar system, an ominous, stinky, dark storm is shrinking out of existence as seen in pictures of Neptune taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Immense dark storms on Neptune were first discovered in the late 1980s by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Since then, only Hubble has tracked these elusive features that play a game of peek-a-boo over the years. Hubble found two dark storms that appeared in the mid-1990s and then vanished. This latest storm was first seen in 2015, but is now shrinking away. The dark spot material may be hydrogen sulfide, with the pungent smell of rotten eggs.

via Hubble - News feed
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-08

Scientists discover almost 100 new exoplanets

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Based on data from NASA's K2 mission an international team of scientists have just confirmed nearly 100 new exoplanets, planets located outside our solar system. This brings the total number of new exoplanets found with the K2 mission up to almost 300.
via Science Daily
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System draws power from daily temperature swings

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A new device can draw power out of the daily cycle of temperature swings to power remote sensors or communications systems.
via Science Daily

Hubble sees Neptune's mysterious shrinking storm

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Three billion miles away on the farthest known major planet in our solar system, an ominous, dark storm -- once big enough to stretch across the Atlantic Ocean from Boston to Portugal -- is shrinking out of existence as seen in pictures of Neptune taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
via Science Daily
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Tiny membrane key to safe drinking water

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Using their own specially designed form of graphene, 'Graphair' scientists have supercharged water purification, making it simpler, more effective and quicker.
via Science Daily

Supermassive black hole model predicts characteristic light signals at cusp of collision

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A new simulation of supermassive black holes -- the behemoths at the centers of galaxies -- uses a realistic scenario to predict the light signals emitted in the surrounding gas before the masses collide, said researchers.
via Science Daily
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Dance of auroras: First direct observation of electron frolic

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The shower of electrons bouncing across Earth's magnetosphere -- commonly known as the Northern Lights -- has been directly observed for the first time by an international team of scientists. While the cause of these colorful auroras has long been hypothesized, researchers had never directly observed the underlying mechanism until now.
via Science Daily
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Donald Lynden-Bell, Quasar and Black Hole Expert, Dies at 82

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An astrophysicist, he joined six colleagues in suggesting that the universe is expanding sideways, and not evenly, challenging conventional theories.
via New York Times

Recreating outer space in the lab

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Thermodynamics provides insight into the internal energy of a system and the energy interaction with its surroundings. This relies on the local thermal equilibrium of a system.
via Science Daily
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ESO's VLT working as 16-meter telescope for first time

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The ESPRESSO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile has used the combined light of all four of the 8.2-meter Unit Telescopes for the first time. Combining light from the Unit Telescopes in this way makes the VLT the largest optical telescope in existence in terms of collecting area.
via Science Daily
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Graphene on toast, anyone?

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The same scientists who introduced laser-induced graphene have enhanced their technique to produce what may become a new class of edible electronics.
via Science Daily