NSF grant to support research on colloidal materials
The University of Delaware’s Eric Furst is leading one of five projects recently selected to conduct fluid dynamics investigations in the International Space Station’s U.S. National Laboratory. (more…)
Findings by UCLA-led team hold promise for new ways to protect telecommunication and navigation satellites
New findings by a UCLA-led international team of researchers answer a fundamental question about our space environment and will help scientists develop methods to protect valuable telecommunication and navigation satellites. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications. (more…)
Study by UCLA researchers and others could explain mysterious plasma waves in space
In the 1960s, NASA launched six satellites to study the Earth’s atmosphere, magnetosphere and the space between Earth and the moon. Using observations from those satellites, Christopher Russell, a UCLA graduate student at the time, detected mysterious plasma waves in the Van Allen radiation belts, the donut-shaped rings surrounding the Earth that contain high-energy particles trapped by the planet’s magnetic field. (more…)
Viertes CCF-Experiment auf der ISS erfolgreich abgeschlossen
Blasenfrei Treibstoff zapfen: Das ist kein Problem an der Tankstelle um die Ecke – sehr wohl aber im Weltraum, wo es keine Schwerkraft gibt. Heute ging die vierte und letzte Experimentserie des Strömungsexperimentes Capillary Channel Flow (CCF) auf der Internationalen Raumstation ISS zu Ende, die am 5. August 2014 begonnen hatte. In dem Kooperationsprojekt der US-amerikanischen Luft- und Raumfahrtbehörde NASA und des Raumfahrtmanagements des Deutschen Zentrums für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) haben Wissenschaftler das Strömungsverhalten von Flüssigkeiten unter Schwerelosigkeit erforscht, um wichtige Erkenntnisse für die Raumfahrttechnologie, aber auch für Anwendungen auf der Erde – etwa in der Biomedizin – zu gewinnen. (more…)
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network have uncovered evidence Saturn’s moon Enceladus harbors a large underground ocean of liquid water, furthering scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extraterrestrial microbes.
Researchers theorized the presence of an interior reservoir of water in 2005 when Cassini discovered water vapor and ice spewing from vents near the moon’s south pole. The new data provide the first geophysical measurements of the internal structure of Enceladus, consistent with the existence of a hidden ocean inside the moon. Findings from the gravity measurements are in the Friday, April 4 edition of the journal Science. (more…)
On January 24, the journal Nature published an article entitled “There are no black holes.” 1 It doesn’t take much to spark controversy in the world of physics…But what does this really mean? In a brief article published on arXiv, a scientific preprint server, Stephen Hawking proposed a theory of black holes that could reconcile the principles of general relativity and quantum physics.
To better understand Hawking’s remarks, Forum interviewed Robert Lamontagne, an astrophysicist at the Department of Physics, Université de Montréal, and Executive Director of the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic.
What is a black hole? (more…)
Noble gas molecules have been detected in space for the first time in the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant, by astronomers at UCL.
Led by Professor Mike Barlow (UCL Physics & Astronomy) the team used ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory to observe the Crab Nebula in far infrared light. (more…)
Talk about a precious stone — the largest piece of the only known meteorite from the planet Mercury has found its way to Yale, where it is now on display at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Known as NWA 7325, the fist-size, greenish space rock is a rarity among rarities: there just aren’t many verified planetary meteorites. Scientists know of about 70 from Mars and, until now, none from any of the other planets in Earth’s solar system. There are about 180 known meteorites from the moon. NWA 7325 is the first believed to be from Mercury. (more…)
