Integral’s IBIS instrument captured the gamma-ray burst (GRB) of 19 December 2004 that Philippe Laurent and colleagues have now analysed in detail. It was so bright that Integral could also measure its polarisation, allowing Laurent and colleagues to look for differences in the signal from different energies. The GRB shown here, on 25 November 2002, was the first captured using such a powerful gamma-ray camera as Integral’s. When they occur, GRBs shine as brightly as hundreds of galaxies each containing billions of stars. Credits: ESA/SPI Team/ECF
ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has provided results that will dramatically affect the search for physics beyond Einstein. It has shown that any underlying quantum 'graininess' of space must be at much smaller scales than previously predicted.
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(PhysOrg.com) -- In a recent article in Applied Physics Letters, CNST researchers demonstrated how commercially available electro-optic modulators can be used to tailor the single photon output of quantum dots (QDs) for use in broadband quantum memories and other systems.
(PhysOrg.com) -- In yet another stab at trying to prove the existence of dark matter, Dan Hooper and colleagues have published a paper on arXiv describing what they believe to be credible evidence of the material believed to comprise most of the mass in the Universe. They say, according to a recent BBC post, that it could be that electrons are created when high energy dark matter particles crash into one another, giving rise to the synchrotron radiation that has thus far puzzled scientists here on Earth. The result, it is postulated, are the so far unexplained non-thermal radio filaments (NRFs) found near the center of our galaxy.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics scientists generate amplitude-squeezed light fields using single atoms trapped inside optical cavities.
(PhysOrg.com) -- John J. Chapman, a physicist working for NASA has presented an idea for a new type of fusion thruster for possible use by space traveling vehicles at the IEEE Symposium going on in Chicago this week. In the presentation, as explained on IEEE Spectrum, Chapman suggests that boron be used as an “aneutronic” fuel source, stating that doing so makes the energetic particles easier to deal with than traditional materials.
By swapping one superconducting material for another, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found a practical way to boost the efficiency of the world's fastest single-photon detector, while also extending light sensitivity to longer wavelengths. The new tungsten-silicon alloy could make the ultrafast detectors more practical for use in quantum communications and computing systems, experiments testing the nature of reality, and emerging applications such as remote sensing.
(PhysOrg.com) -- "Spatially entangled photons is a hot topic in quantum information science, and optical fibers are the cornerstone of our communication society," Wolfgang Loffler tells PhysOrg.com. "So far, though, no one that we know of has demonstrated that you can use a fiber to transport a photon entangled in its spatial degree of freedom."
(PhysOrg.com) -- Right now, many researchers around the world are working on ways to move away from electronics-dominated computing systems. There are a number of ideas about how this can be accomplished. "We are trying to demonstrate an all-optical switch that, at the first stage, could be used in ultrafast optical communication systems," Chaoyuan Jin tells PhysOrg.com. "It might also be useful for optical interconnection to replace present day electronic links which transfer tremendous data between computer chips, or perhaps useful for optical computing on-chip."
NM fire poised to become largest in state history
(AP) -- With firefighters bracing for another day of strong, erratic winds, a wildfire near the nation's premier nuclear weapons laboratory and a northern New Mexico community was poised Thursday to become the largest in state history.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the University and the Forestry Commission studied remnants of the ancient Caledonian pine forests in the Scottish Highlands.
Agroforestry, the deliberate placement of trees into crop and livestock operations, can help capture substantial amounts of carbon on agricultural lands while providing production and conservation benefits. However, we currently lack tools for accurately estimating current and projected carbon values in these systems.
(AP) -- California regulators on Wednesday said they would give power plants, refineries and other major polluters another year to comply with a new state program that provides financial incentives to emit fewer greenhouse gases.
To protect the environment and improve the health of four million people while making a profit is the goal of a Swiss-based company distributing water filters and aiming to sell carbon credits.
Higher temperatures could significantly impact California and other premium winegrowing regions of the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study led by Stanford University climate scientists.
(AP) -- Brown pelicans, long-necked egrets, flamingo-like roseate spoonbills and squawking seagulls fly lazily around a Texas Gulf Coast island. Nearby, a toddler-aged wetland seeded with marsh grass completes the ecosystem, its thousands of inhabitants unaware their home is a manmade creation dredged from the Houston Ship Channel.
The "Potsdam Gravity potato", as this representation of terrestrial gravity has become known, can for the first time display gravity variations that change with time. The seasonal fluctuations of the water balance of continents or melting or growing ice masses, i.e. climate-related variables, are now included in the modeling of the gravity field. "EIGEN-6C" is the name of this latest global gravity field model of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. It was recently calculated in Potsdam in cooperation with the Groupe de Recherche de Géodésie Spaciale from Toulouse. This new gravity field model is based on measurements of the satellites LAGEOS, GRACE and GOCE. These were combined with ground-based gravity measurements and data from the satellite altimetry. EIGEN-6C has a spatial resolution of about 12 kilometres. Compared to the last version of the Potsdam potato, this is a four-fold increase.
Ground-level ozone is an air pollutant that harms humans and plants. Both climate and weather play a major role in ozone damage to plants. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have now shown that climate change has the potential to significantly increase the risk of ozone damage to plants in northern and central Europe by the end of this century.
University of Alberta researchers have produced a map of Edmonton predicting the most likely locations where vehicles will collide with deer. These collisions can be fatal for drivers and their passengers. The hot spots for deer vs. vehicle collisions virtually encircle Edmonton along the city limit, border line.
Mirrors are a critical part of a telescope. The quality is crucial, so completion of mirror polishing represents a major milestone. All of the mirrors that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have been polished so the observatory can see objects as far away as the first galaxies in the universe.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A spacecraft control flap designed for the super-heated hypersonic fall through Earth’s atmosphere has come through testing in the world’s largest plasma wind tunnel to be ready for its first flight next year.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Meet Justin, an android who will soon be controlled remotely by the astronauts in ESA’s Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station. With this and other intriguing experiments like the Eurobot rover, ESA is paving the way for exploring the Moon and planets with tele-operated robots.
According to the 1981-2010 normals to be released by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) on July 1, temperatures across the United States were on average, approximately 0.5 degree F warmer than the 1971-2000 time period.
(PhysOrg.com) -- On June 10, 2011, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft angled its orbit 65° to the west, allowing the LRO Camera NACs to capture a dramatic sunrise view of Tycho crater.
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Tropical Storm Arlene made landfall early today and is making its way through northeastern Mexico today as the GOES-13 satellite continues to track its movement. A movie from today's GOES satellite data shows Arlene making that landfall and moving inland.
Each year, tornadoes tear across the United States, causing numerous deaths and physical damage to the environment and infrastructure.
Research at the University of Melbourne and the Bureau of Meteorology has overturned conventional ideas of ocean circulation.
The first scientific results from an ambitious voyage led by a group of graduate students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego offer a stark view of human pollution and its infiltration of an area of the ocean that has been labeled as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch."
Scientists know what the universe looked like when it was a baby. They know what it looks like today. What they don't know is how it looked in its youth. Thanks to technological advances, however, scientists hope to complete the photo album and provide a picture of how the cosmos developed into the kind of place that could support life like that found on Earth.
(AP) -- The four astronauts assigned to NASA's last space shuttle flight can't seem to escape all the fuss and hubbub.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers are puzzled by the announcement that the masses of the largest objects in the Universe appear to depend on which method is used to weigh them. The new work was presented at a specialist discussion meeting on 'Scaling Relations of Galaxy Clusters' organised by the Astrophysics Research Institute (ARI) at Liverpool John Moores University and supported by the Royal Astronomical Society.
Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 335 Superfast Spreading Rate Crust 4 recently completed operations in Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Hole 1256D, a deep scientific borehole that extends more than 1500 meters below the seafloor into the Pacific Ocean's igneous crust – rocks that formed through the cooling and crystallization of magma, and form the basement of the ocean floor.
"Zombie" stars that explode like bombs as they die, only to revive by sucking matter out of other stars. According to an astrophysicist at UC Santa Barbara, this isn't the plot for the latest 3D blockbuster movie. Instead, it's something that happens every day in the universe -- something that can be used to measure dark energy.
The discovery that a bacterial species in the Australian Tammar wallaby gut is responsible for keeping the animal's methane emissions relatively low suggests a potential new strategy may exist to try to reduce methane emissions from livestock, according to a new study.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Looking like a pair of eyeglasses only a rock star would wear, this nebula brings into focus a murky region of star formation. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope exposes the depths of this dusty nebula with its infrared vision, showing stellar infants that are lost behind dark clouds when viewed in visible light.
Any sulfurous molecules that astronomers spot on alien worlds might be a way to reveal whether or not those distant planets host life, researchers suggest.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Galaxies once thought of as voracious tigers are more like grazing cows, according to a new study using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
(PhysOrg.com) -- By tracking atmospheric features on Neptune, a UA planetary scientist has accurately determined the planet's rotation, a feat that had not been previously achieved for any of the gas planets in our solar system except Jupiter.
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has provided results that will dramatically affect the search for physics beyond Einstein. It has shown that any underlying quantum 'graininess' of space must be at much smaller scales than previously predicted.
Researchers have found that areas near commercial airports sometimes experience a small but measurable increase in rain and snow when aircraft take off and land under certain atmospheric conditions.
New surface nonlinear spectroscopy capability: Picosecond-femtosecond broadband sum frequency generation system
In Dr. Hongfei Wang's spectroscopy laboratory at the end of EMSL's main hallway, the lights are always off. Because the instrumental capability his team has built uses lasers as its main weapon, light interference would hinder scientific results. So Wang, postdoctoral researcher Dr. Luis Velarde, and visiting scientist Dr. Xianyi Zhang constantly wear headlamps in the lab, giving them the appearance of old-time coal miners. But instead of coal, they are using the new surface nonlinear spectroscopy capability to dig up never-before-seen data on molecular interactions at interfaces. Early in 2011, they struck a vein that could lead scientists in many fields to research gold.
In order to realize the full potential of advanced biofuels that are derived from non-food sources of lignocellulosic biomass—e.g., agricultural, forestry, and municipal waste, and crops such as poplar, switchgrass and miscanthus—new technologies that can efficiently and cost-effectively break down this biomass into simple sugars are required. Existing biomass pretreatment technologies are typically derived from the pulp and paper industry and rely on dilute acids and bases to break down the biomass. The treated biomass product is then exposed to biological catalysts, or enzymes, to liberate the sugars.
If new technology under development proves out, horseshoe crabs will have to undergo fewer blood donations.
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