Category: Seein’ the light
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How superconducting sheets could reflect gravitational waves
Gravitational waves are the elusive distortions in spacetime created by the universe’s most violent events–collisions between black holes, stars exploding and even the big bang itself. Nobody has bagged a confirmed sighting of these waves but that may change thanks to an intriguing idea from Raymond Chiao and pals at the University of California, Merced.…
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First evidence of a supernova in an ice core
There hasn’t been a decent supernova in our part of the universe in living memory but astronomers in the 11th century were a little more fortunate. In 1006 AD, they witnessed what is still thought to be the brightest supernova ever seen on Earth (SN 1006) and just 48 years later saw the birth of…
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The puzzle of planet formation
“The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics.” That’s how Rafael Millan-Gabet at Caltech and John Monnier from the University of Michigan begin their account of how our understanding of planet formation is about to undergo a revolution. Driving this change will be a new generation of telelscopes and…
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The telescope that Antarctica broke
First light from any instrument is always exciting but particularly so when exotic locations and exciting goals are involved. The CORONA experiment offers both. CORONA is a stellar coronagraph designed to spot extrasolar planets orbiting other stars. It is based at Dome C, some 10,000 feet above sea level in in Antarctica, a location that…
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Watch this space for the chemistry of dust
It’s not often that chemists get new tools with which to investigate the building blocks of the world around us, so a paper on the arXiv today gives them good reason to pop a few corks. Vladlen Shvedov at the Australian National University in Canberra and a few mates have today unveiled a way of…
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Challenging the nature of black holes
The nature of black holes has puzzled physicists for decades. But while the debate has fizzled in recent years, some new thinking is about to set it alight again. Black holes are fundamentally a product of general relativity, which allows for a gravitational collapse so violent that no other force can oppose it. When that…
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Trick of the light boosts atom interferometer sensitivity
While preparing for the job of US Secretary of Energy in the incoming Obama administration (and being director of one the top labs in the US and Nobel Prize winner to boot), Steven Chu has somehow found time to post the results of his latest experiment on the arXiv. And it’s an impressive piece of…
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Why Saturn’s rings are so sharp
Here’s a conundrum for you: why do Saturn’s rings have such sharp edges? It’s question that has puzzled planetary scientists for many years. Various ideas have been put forward but none adequately explain the structure we see today. To understand just how sharp the edges are consider this: pictures from Cassini show that the density…
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The strange right hand of the universe
Is the Universe right handed? If Michael Longo at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is to be believed, the answer is yes; and the evidence comes from the right or left-handed shape of spiral galaxies. Astronomers have images of many thousands of spiral galaxies. But classifying them as left or right handed is…
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Astronomers find hottest and fastest exoplanet
As astronomers discover greater numbers of planets orbiting other stars, they are able to revise their theorie sof planet formation accordingly. Exotic planets are particularly prized because they push the boundaries of theoretical understanding to its limits. Today, Leslie Hebb at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and colleagues announce the discovery of one…