The Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees fusion research in the US, wanted to sign the extension. However, the Republican-controlled Congress insisted that the US should not sign it without “Congressional concurrence”. Key members of Congress had such strong doubts about ITER that they withheld their concurrence up to and beyond the deadline. That struggle […]
Russia and the US each have 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium to dispose of by either converting it into fuel, or mixing it in with radioactive waste. At the same time, France and the UK separate 20 tons of plutonium a year from spent civilian nuclear fuel but burn only 9 tons a year as […]
Rignot used radar data taken between 1992 and 1996 by two European satellites, ERS-1 and ERS-2, to generate interference patterns that are sensitive to small vertical movements. These patterns provide information on the velocity of the ice – how fast it is creeping towards the bay – and the hinge point – the position on […]
Sonoluminescence occurs because sound waves cause a bubble to expand and then collapse in a liquid. The bubble first expands to almost 10 times its original dimensions, and then collapses at supersonic velocities to a minimum diameter that depends on atomic forces in the bubble. At this point the implosion produces a flash of light […]
In the past similar approaches have been used to crack encryption codes or calculate the largest prime number, but this is the first time such a scheme has been used for analysing raw scientific data. The system works by fooling the computer into running a screen-saver package called SETI@home every time the machine is idle. […]
The report suggests that governments should move more university researchers onto short-term contracts to encourage mobility between academia and industry. It also recommends that scientists should rely on specific research grants rather than general research funding provided by institutions. Such a system already operates in the UK, US and Australia and has been very successful […]
Shepard was born in East Derry, New Hampshire, on November 18, 1923, and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the US Naval Academy in 1944. Before joining NASA, he flew as a Navy pilot. Shepard features in one of the most memorable images from the US space programme – he was the first golfer […]
Satellites have been used to provide email access in isolated regions of the world for at least eight years. Until now, however, all such systems have relied on bulky equipment costing tens of thousands of pounds, or on commercial satellites with high usage fees. For example, the British Antarctic Survey uses IMARSAT-B, a commercial satellite, […]
When a star explodes as a supernova, the remnants of the explosion can fall inwards to form a neutron star or a black hole. Neutron stars are easy to detect because they emit powerful radio waves. Black holes, on the other hand, are difficult to detect because they do not emit any radiation. They can […]
Andrew Belmonte of the University of Pittsburgh, and Hagai Eisenberg and Elisha Moses of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel dropped thin strips of plastic, brass and steel in various liquids and filmed their motion with a high-speed video camera. The liquids used by the team included water, petroleum ether and a 40:60 mixture […]
