Signals produced by the satellites are over a 100 times stronger than the radio sources studied by astronomers. Under the new agreement, European radio astronomers will get 24 hours of ‘unpolluted’ observation time from 1 January 2006. However, they will have to negotiate for ‘restricted’ observation times with Iridium until that date. The CRAF has […]
Speculation on the origin of high energy cosmic rays has existed for some time. The best candidates are massive supernova explosions or the decay of superheavy particles near the beginning of the universe. The AGASA results show that the energy spectrum extends beyond 1020 eV, but they have been unable to identify sources for any […]
Each plane has a 3m wingspan and weighs 13.1 kg. During normal operations the craft will measure temperature, humidity and pressure over the ocean. At a cost of just $25000 each, the planes could dramatically cut the costs of gathering such information. Meanwhile, during a test flight in Hawaii, NASA’s Pathfinder-Plus – a remote controlled […]
The technique uses an iron-silica catalyst created by coating a quartz plate with an iron-silica solution. Once the solution dries it cracks into a film 30-50 microns thick. After the substrate is heated in a vacuum and then in a hydrogen-nitrogen atmosphere to make sure that it becomes chemically unreactive, the film breaks into large […]
The citation highlights Adler’s derivation of a sum rule for pion-nucleon scattering that marked a breakthrough in our understanding of the currents and broken symmetries of the strong interaction. One of Jackiw’s major contributions was his discovery (with Rebbi) of fractional charge and spin when field theories are applied to condensed matter physics. The paths […]
Starman: Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin by Piers Bizony and Jamie Doran Bloomsbury p256 £12.59 On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human in history to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and venture into space. This biography is based on material from sensitive KGB files and restricted documents from the Russian space […]
Previous attempts to use DNA as a molecular building block failed because its double helix structure is so flexible. However, Seeman and colleagues realized that if two synthetic DNA chains were placed side-by-side and linked at two cross over junctions, they would form a very rigid structure – called a DX molecular unit – that […]
Arima has long been a keen advocate for reforming Japanese science. Previously he helped shape the 1996 Basic Law for Science and Technology, which aimed to increase Japan’s spending on science. He also proposed educational and administrative reforms during the last government. Monbusho has an annual budget of 5819 billion yen (£24.6 billion) and accounts […]
Zeilinger had invited the Dalai Lama to his laboratory following a meeting at Dharamsala in Northern India last October at which he and four other physicists had, over the course of five days, discussed physics and cosmology with the Buddhist leader. In Dharamsala, Zeilinger had demonstrated some basic quantum phenomena – such as wave-particle duality […]
The interferometer was built by Mark Kasevich and colleagues at Yale University in the US and used individual atoms, rather than macroscopic man-made objects, to measure the gradient. By observing the phase and frequency shifts of laser light passed through two cooled ensembles of atoms, they believe that the interferometer has the potential to be […]
