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Pulsed-Laser Deposition Employed to Produce High-Field Iron-Based Superconductors

The road to a sustainably powered future may be paved with superconductors. When chilled to frigid temperatures hundreds of degrees Celsius below zero, these remarkable materials are singularly capable of perfectly conducting electric current. To meet growing global energy demands, the entire energy infrastructure would benefit tremendously from incorporating new electricity generation, storage, and delivery technologies that use superconducting wires. But strict limits on temperature, high manufacturing costs, and the dampening effects of high-magnetic fields currently impede widespread adoption.

11 Jan 2013

Mass Used to Measure Time

Ever since he was a kid growing up in Germany, Holger Müller has been asking himself a fundamental question: What is time?

11 Jan 2013

New Camera on Hubble Space Telescope Identifies Distant Supernova

What if you had a "Wayback Television Set" and could watch an entire month of ancient prehistory unfold before your eyes in real time? David Rubin of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) presented just such a scenario to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Long Beach, CA, when he announced the discovery of a striking astronomical object: a Type Ia supernova with a redshift of 1.71 that dates back 10 billion years in time. Labeled SN SCP-0401, the supernova is exceptional for its detailed spectrum and precision color measurement, unprecedented in a supernova so distant.

10 Jan 2013

Scientists Discover Regions of Massive Star Formation in the Milky Way Galaxy

Astronomers have discovered hundreds of previously-unknown sites of massive star formation in the Milky Way, including the most distant such objects yet found in our home Galaxy. Ongoing studies of these objects promise to give crucial clues about the structure and history of the Milky Way.

10 Jan 2013

Accelerating Expansion of Galaxies Does Not Conform to Dark Energy Theory

Research by University of Arizona astronomy professor Rodger Thompson finds that a popular alternative to Albert Einstein’s theory for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe does not fit newly obtained data on a fundamental constant, the proton to electron mass ratio.

10 Jan 2013

Quantum Eraser Concept Realized Using Causally Separated Choice

Whether a quantum object behaves like a wave or like a particle depends (according to the Copenhagen interpretation) on the choice of measurement apparatus used for observing the system, and therefore on the type of measurement performed.

10 Jan 2013

E=mc2 May Not Hold up in Certain Circumstances

With the first explosions of atomic bombs, the world became witness to one of the most important and consequential principles in physics: Energy and mass, fundamentally speaking, are the same thing and can, in fact, be converted into each other.

9 Jan 2013

Complex Computer Code for 3D Simulations of Supernovae

Two University of Texas at Arlington researchers want to bridge the gap between what is known about exploding stars and the remnants left behind thousands of years later. So they're trying something new – using SNSPH, a complex computer code developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

9 Jan 2013

Astronomers Identify New ‘Bone’ Structure in the Milky Way

Our Milky Way is a spiral galaxy - a pinwheel-shaped collection of stars, gas and dust. It has a central bar and two major spiral arms that wrap around its disk. Since we view the Milky Way from the inside, its exact structure is difficult to determine.

9 Jan 2013

Wind-Driven, Planet-Sized Clouds Enshroud Brown Dwarfs

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have probed the stormy atmosphere of a brown dwarf, creating the most detailed "weather map" yet for this class of cool, star-like orbs. The forecast shows wind-driven, planet-sized clouds enshrouding these strange worlds.

9 Jan 2013