‘Naked’ black holes seen
Black holes are usually detected by the effects of their vast gravitational field on the orbits of nearby astronomical objects such as stars. Naked black holes have no such material near them making i...
Physicist queries test-ban evidence to US Senate
Since the US stopped testing in 1992 it has relied on the “stockpile Stewardship” programme to maintain the reliability and safety of its nuclear weapons. But a number of misconceptions we...
Adaptive-optics to cover the sky
Adaptive-optic telescopes differ from normal telescopes by using a thin flexible primary mirror that can easily be deformed. A bright guide star near the observing area acts as a “beacon” ...
NAUTILUS detects cosmic rays
NAUTILUS was designed to observe the gravitational waves produced by collisions between objects such as black holes or neutron stars. According to the Frascati’s group calculations, signals from...
Solitons formed in Bose–Einstein condensate
Bose–Einstein condensates are trapped atoms that are cooled to low temperatures and occupy the same quantum state. They are ideal for studying and manipulating quantum effects such as solitons a...
Read article: Nuclear physics with lasers
Nuclear physics with lasers
About 20 years ago Toshi Tajima and John Dawson, then at the University of California at Los Angeles, suggested that laser-produced plasmas could be used to accelerate particles to high energies. The ...
CERN-Gran Sasso neutrino experiment is approved
Italy is paying over half of the cost of the SwFr 71million experiment, with voluntary contributions from Belgium, France, Germany and Spain covering the rest. The experiment will start taking data in...
Astronomy and physics dominate Science top ten
Confirmation that the universe is flat – expanding at just the right rate not to collapse – came from measurements of ripples in the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang...
Time unaffected by eclipse
The experiments were carried out by Thomas Udem from the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and colleagues. Udem and colleagues placed four atomic clocks – one rubidium clock, t...
Light glimpsed from extra-solar planet
Light from the planet is almost completely obliterated by the bright glare from the star. Although the reflected signal is 10-20,000 times weaker than the glare from tau Bootis, the planet studied by ...
