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Radioactive Glow Links Short Gamma-Ray Burst with Neutron Star Collision

We value gold for many reasons: its beauty, its usefulness as jewelry, and its rarity. Gold is rare on Earth in part because it's also rare in the universe. Unlike elements like carbon or iron, it cannot be created within a star. Instead, it must be born in a more cataclysmic event - like one that occurred last month known as a short gamma-ray burst (GRB).

19 Jul 2013

Northrop Grumman Partners with McDonald Observatory to Sponsor StarDate Radio Program

Northrop Grumman, a leading global security company and NASA’s partner building the James Webb Space Telescope, will become official sponsor of the nationally syndicated “StarDate” radio program starting Sept. 1. “StarDate” is produced by The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory.

18 Jul 2013

CERN Scientists to Present at EPS-HEP 2013 and Strangeness in Quark Matter Conferences

Scientists working on CERN experiments are preparing to present their latest results at summer conferences. This year, two major conferences are coming up over the next couple of weeks: the European Physical Society’s High Energy Physics conference, EPS-HEP 2013, which is being held in Stockholm, Sweden, from 18-24 July, and Strangeness in Quark Matter, SQM 2013, held in Birmingham, UK, from 22-27 July.

18 Jul 2013

Radiation Output May Help Identify Exoplanets

There is only one planet we know of, so far, that is drenched with life. That planet is Earth, as you may have guessed, and it has all the right conditions for critters to thrive on its surface. Do other planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, also host life forms?

18 Jul 2013

Extreme Gravitational Field of Supermassive Black Hole Grossly Stretches Gas Cloud

New observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope show for the first time a gas cloud being ripped apart by the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. The cloud is now so stretched that its front part has passed the closest point and is travelling away from the black hole at more than 10 million km/h, whilst the tail is still falling towards it.

18 Jul 2013

Quantum Flash Fiction Competition Announced by CQT

After the runaway success of last year's short film competition, CQT is now looking for quantum "flash fiction". We are challenging people to take inspiration from quantum theory to come up with a short story that is no longer than 1000 words.

17 Jul 2013

APS Honors Penn State Woman Physicist for Research on Close Binary Stars

Mercedes Richards, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, is being honored as the July 2013 Woman Physicist of the Month by the American Physical Society. Richards studies close pairs of stars, called interacting binaries, which are pairs of stars that were formed at the same time, like twins, but in which each star matures at different rates and affects the evolution of its companion.

17 Jul 2013

Cosmic Photography of Earth from Between Saturn’s Rings

From 898 million miles away, NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft will snap a portrait of Earth July 19 from between Saturn’s rings as North America and the Atlantic Ocean repose on the sunny side of Earth.

16 Jul 2013

Researchers Pry out Innermost Secrets of Heavy Fermions

CeCoIn5 is an oxymoron. It’s a “heavy fermion” material, in which electrons act like their mass is 1,000 times what it should be, because moving electrons interact magnetically with its atoms and slow down. But it also can be a superconductor, in which an electric current flows without resistance, when its super heavy electrons join in “Cooper pairs” that are magnetically neutral and avoid magnetic interference.

16 Jul 2013

AAS Honors Manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office with 2013 Carl Sagan Medal

For his work making the solar system's nomads of the night sky -- near-Earth objects, asteroids and comets -- tangible and compelling for millions of people, Donald K. Yeomans, the manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, has received the 2013 Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society (AAS).

15 Jul 2013