Unusual gamma-ray flash may have come from star being eaten by massive black hole:
What researchers think the star may have looked like at the start of its disruption by a black hole at the center of a galaxy 3.8 billion light years distant resulting in the outburst known as Sw 1644+57. Credit: University of Warwick / Mark A. GarlickA bright flash of gamma rays observed March 28 by the Swift satellite may have been the death rattle of a star falling into a massive black hole and being ripped apart, according to a team of astronomers led by the University of California, Berkeley.
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Nanotechnology news
(PhysOrg.com) -- The world's first three-dimensional plasmon rulers, capable of measuring nanometer-scale spatial changes in macrmolecular systems, have been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with researchers at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. These 3D plasmon rulers could provide scientists with unprecedented details on such critical dynamic events in biology as the interaction of DNA with enzymes, the folding of proteins, the motion of peptides or the vibrations of cell membranes.
Physics news
The Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology's Daniel Pierce has provided an overview of three decades of applications of spin-polarized measurement techniques to understanding metallic ferromagnetism.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Physics researchers working at the National Research Council in Canada have succeeded in developing a way to directly measure the wavefunction of a photon. The technique, as described in their paper published in Nature, combines both strong and weak measurements, and offers researchers a new tool for use in understanding the intricacies of quantum mechanics. The wavefunction is a mathematical function that describes the quantum state of a particle.
Glass, by definition, is amorphous; its atoms lack order and are arranged every which way. But when scientists squeezed tiny samples of a metallic glass under high pressure, they got a surprise: The atoms lined up in a regular pattern to form a single crystal.
Space & Earth news
The largest fire in the history of the state of Arizona continues to burn and emergency managers and responders are using satellite data from a variety of instruments to plan their firefighting containment strategies and mitigation efforts once the fires are out.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists using the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument on board NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), have detected quasi-periodic waves in the low solar corona that travel at speeds as high as 2,000 kilometers per second (4.5 million miles per hour). These observations provide, for the first time, unambiguous evidence of propagating fast mode magnetosonic waves at such high speeds in the Sun’s low atmosphere. Dr. Wei Liu, a Stanford University Research Associate at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL) at the company’s Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto, presented the findings today at the annual meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society, in Las Cruces, N.M. A paper detailing the discovery has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
NASA says an instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft studying Saturn and its moons is temporarily out of service.
Iran plans to send a live monkey into space in the summer, the country's top space official said after the launch of the Rassad-1 satellite, state television reported on its website on Thursday.
Piraeus, the main port of Athens, was an island from 4 800 – 3 400 BC, in other words 4 500 years before the Parthenon was built on the Acropolis. This discovery was made by a French-Greek team led by Jean-Philippe Goiran, a CNRS researcher, who studied and dated sediments collected in the Piraeus area. The research was carried out in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Athens, Paris 1 and Paris Ouest, and is published in the June 2011 issue of the journal Geology.
Organisms found in the Antarctic region are not quick to adapt to changes in the environment, new international research shows. The study, carried out by 200 scientists from 15 countries, is the culmination of a 7-month expedition on board the Polarstern vessel of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) for Polar and Marine Research in the German-based Helmholtz Association.
Residing in space 6500 light-years away in the constellation of Cepheus, an aged star designated as IRAS 22036+5306 is making its final curtain call. Its stellar play is ending and its making the transition through the protoplanetary, or preplanetary, nebula phase. This isn’t an unusual occurrence, but considering we’ve only been able to witness perhaps a few hundred such events out of the millions of stars we’ve observed – it is a rare visual example. Behold a red giant turning into a white dwarf...
(AP) -- Asian and African night owls were treated to a lunar eclipse, and ash in the atmosphere from a Chilean volcano turned it blood red for some viewers.
In a Landsat 5 satellite image captured June 11, 2011, flooding is still evident both east and west of the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, Miss. Standing water is most apparent, however, in the floodplain between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers north of Vicksburg.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a close-up view of the galaxy Centaurus A. Hubble’s out-of-this-world location and world-class Wide Field Camera 3 instrument reveal a dramatic picture of a dynamic galaxy in flux.
The longest lunar eclipse in more than a decade turned the moon blood red on Thursday, yielding a rare visual treat for stargazers across a large swathe of the planet from Australia to Europe.
(PhysOrg.com) -- This glowing emerald nebula seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is reminiscent of the glowing ring wielded by the superhero Green Lantern. In the comic books, the diminutive Guardians of the Planet "Oa" forged his power ring, but astronomers believe rings like this are actually sculpted by the powerful light of giant "O" stars. O stars are the most massive type of star known to exist.
(PhysOrg.com) -- While most of us could find no better use for Google Earth than checking out a holiday destination, scientists in Sydney have shown it can reveal a lot about the behaviour of marine life on the Great Barrier Reef.
To search for life on Mars, future astronauts would naturally want to step outside their living habitat for a walk. But the spacesuits keeping them alive might also carry Earth microbes or ingredients of life that could contaminate the red planet and complicate the search for extraterrestrial life.
Planetary nebulae come in a dazzling array of shapes, from spherical shells of gas, to blobby structures barely containing symmetry at all. Controversy has surrounded the cause for this diversity. Could it be magnetic fields, high rotation rates, unseen companions, or something else entirely? Recently, there has been a growing consensus that binary companions are the main culprit for the most irregular of these nebulae, but exploring the connection is only possible with a statistically significant sample of planetary nebulae with binary cores can be found, giving hints as to what properties they may, or may not, create.
The Defense Department first proposed Star Wars. Now it wants Star Trek.
A bright flash of gamma rays observed March 28 by the Swift satellite may have been the death rattle of a star falling into a massive black hole and being ripped apart, according to a team of astronomers led by the University of California, Berkeley.
Comet Hartley 2, is in a hyperactive class of its own compared to other comets visited by spacecraft, says a University of Maryland-led study published in the June 17 issue of the journal Science.
On March 18, 2011, the MESSENGER spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury to become that planet's first orbiter. The spacecraft's instruments are making a complete reconnaissance of the planet's geochemistry, geophysics, geologic history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment. MESSENGER is providing a wealth of new information and some surprises. For instance, Mercury's surface composition differs from that expected for the innermost of the terrestrial planets, and Mercury's magnetic field has a north-south asymmetry that affects interaction of the planet's surface with charged particles from the solar wind.
Chemistry news
Researchers from Imperial College London and University College London are planning to develop a new material that mimics dolphin skin, so that water can flow more efficiently down pipes, in one of seven early-stage projects that will receive support from a new scheme announced today.
(Medical Xpress) -- Patricia Clark, the Rev. John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C. Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame, and Bonnie Berger, professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have published a paper on the development of a computer algorithm that can accurately predict which parts of protein sequences help prevent the proteins from aggregating.
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