UK plans to sell off defence research agency
There has been speculation over the long term future of DERA and its 11 500 employees – 9 000 of whom are research scientists – since 1998 when the government’s strategic defence rev...
Read article: Hubble sees mystery object
Hubble sees mystery object
There are four possible explanations for the object: a highly obscured galaxy, an old elliptical galaxy at redshift 3 or 4, a galaxy at redshift 12, or an intergalactic carbon star. However, there are...
New evidence for superconducting stripes
The neutron scattering experiments were carried out by Herb Mook from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and colleagues, while the ion channelling experiments were performed by Rajeshwar Sharma from th...
Snooker moves to the atomic scale
Scanning tunnelling microscopes (STMs) rely on an ultrafine ‘tip’ to push atoms over a surface. The atoms are pushed either by the tip itself, or by an electric field. The new technique re...
Astronomers look to ‘virtual’ observatories
The first virtual observatory to receive significant funding will be a European project called ASTROVIRTEL, which is based at the ESO headquarters in Garching, Germany. European astronomers will be ab...
High-speed switching at low voltages
Converting electrical signals into optical pulses is one of the speed ‘bottlenecks’ in current telecommunications systems. To reach high data speeds, a series of electro-optic devices call...
Universities receive third funding boost
The JIF scheme is designed to bring facilities at UK universities to the forefront of international research. Nearly £600m has been awarded to 109 projects in 28 different institutions since the ...
Comet Hyakutake makes a mark on Ulysses
Ulysses was launched to make continuous measurements of the solar wind, a steady stream of ionized particles that flows outwards from the star. In 1998 Pete Riley and colleagues from Los Alamos Nation...
Quantum computers think big
The Innsbruck model relies on ions stored in an array of microtraps. Because the microtraps can be fabricated in a solid state device, thousands of traps can be put into an array. The internal quantum...
Read article: Dark-matter dispute intensifies
Dark-matter dispute intensifies
The controversy surrounding evidence for the discovery of “dark matter” particles has heated up following two conflicting talks given at a conference at the end of February. The papers wer...
