The UW’s current fusion experiment, HIT-SI3. It is about one-tenth the size of the power-producing dynomak concept. (Credit: U of Washington)
via washington.edu
Gas column density 5 Myr after stars begin forming in the “real” Clouds (left panels) and corresponding Spheres (right panels). The Spheres begin forming stars 5-6 Myr after t=0, so the figure shows simulations at a similar stage of star formation. Clouds show more widespread star formation, and alignment of their major gas filaments along the larger-scale structures present in the galaxy. (Credit: Rey-Raposo, Dobbs & Duarte-Cabral 2014)
via astrobites
Larger galaxies are unable to create new stars at a rapid enough pace so they start to “eat” stars in neighboring galaxies. (Photo By Nasa/Getty Images)
via cbs
The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is hunting for radio signals from hypothetical intelligent alien life in our galaxy. (Credit: SETI) Institute
via aninews
NASA has a new project underway called GEDI. The sole purpose of GEDI is to point a laser-based device at Earth from the International Space Station in order to map out forests in 3D, eventually determining the amount of carbon in Earth’s forests. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space)
via industrytap
A look through the open hatch of SpaceX’s Dragon V2 capsule, one of two designs chosen for NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability program. Both Boeing and SpaceX have been told to halt production of their space taxi designs until a protest filed by the Sierra Nevada Corporation has been resolved. (Credit: NASA)
via popsci
German winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry Stefan Hell gestures at a small party with his colleagues in Goettingen, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Hell shares the prize with Americans Eric Betzig and William E. Moerner for developing ways to dramatically improve the resolution of optical microscopes. Hell developed the underlying technology for R&D 100 Awards-winning super-resolution microscopes from Leica. (Credit AP/dpa, Swen Pfoertner)
via rdmag
The Einstein Papers Project, a group of scholars devoted to collecting and transcribing Einstein’s works and publishing The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein both online and in printed format, have collected thousands of Einstein’s letters, both those from him and to him. But this exchange is new. (Credit: The Telegraph)
via inquisitr
Dust map of the Universe. The region studied by BICEP2 is indicated by the rectangle in the right circle. (Credit: Planck Collaboration)
via universetoday
n this illustration, the artificial atom on the right side of the image sends out sound waves that are picked up by the microphone on the left. (Credit: Philip Krantz)
via livescience
A serious challenge to the discovery of gravity waves by the BICEP2 2014 results has appeared: the researchers had underestimated the amount of interstellar dust that could be contaminating their data. (Credit: MacRobert, Andrei Linde)
via skyandtelescope
Scientists have found definitive traces of water on a relatively small exoplanet. HAT-P-11b is the size of Neptune and four times the size of Earth. The exoplanet has copious amounts of both water vapor and hydrogen in its atmosphere. (Credit: NASA)
via bbc
Our current model of the early inflationary period predicts that the universe should be flat, and so far that has held up. If the universe actually is curved, then the inflationary period must have been more complex than we have thought. (Credit: Koberlien)
via phys.org
When space probes, such as Rosetta and Cassini, fly over certain planets and moons, in order to gain momentum and travel long distances, their speed changes slightly for an unknown reason. A researcher has now analyzed whether or not a hypothetical gravitomagnetic field could have an influence. However, other factors such as solar radiation, tides, or even relativistic effects or dark matter could be behind this mystery. An artist’s rendition of Rosetta probe during a flyby. (Credit: ESA/C.Carreau)
via sciencedaily
The starboard truss of the International Space Station while Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the station. The newly installed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) is visible at center left. (Credit: NASA)
via mit
The dome of the Blanco Telescope, which houses DECam, the 570-megapixel CCD camera used for the Dark Energy Survey, at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. (Credit: Reidar Hahn)
via simonsfoundation
Mosaic of southern hemisphere of Miranda, the innermost regular satellite of Uranus, with radius of 236 km. Projection is orthographic, centered on the south pole. Visible from left to right are Elsinore, Inverness, and Arden coronae. (Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Ted Stryk)
via science2.0
An international team of physicists has shown that the mass ratio between protons and electrons is the same in weak and in very strong gravitational fields. Pictured above is the laser system with which the hydrogen molecules were investigated on earth. (Credit: LaserLaB VU University Amsterdam/Wim Ubachs)
via phys.org
The MIT BioSuit, a skintight spacesuit that offers improved mobility and reduced mass compared to modern gas-pressurized spacesuits. (Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT)
via mit
The X-ray image from the Swift X-ray Telescope of the gamma-ray burst GRB 130925. The white object in the center is the gamma-ray burst. The large diffuse region to the right is a cluster of galaxies. The other objects are X-ray-emitting celestial objects, most likely supermassive black holes at the centers of distant galaxies. The full image is approximately the size of the full moon. (Credit: Phil Evans/ University of Leicester)
via psu
The Borexino collaboration, which announced the detection of an elusive solar neutrino in August, involved several scientific contributions from Princeton over its 25-year history. The detector consists of two massive transparent nylon balloons filled with a petroleum-based liquid called “scintillator,” which emits a flash of light when it detects a neutrino. These flashes are picked up by an array of sensors embedded in a stainless steel sphere that surrounds the balloons. (Credit: Borexino collaboration)
via princeton
The experiment effectively measures the shift in the laser frequencies relative to what these transition frequencies are for ions at rest. The combination of two frequency shifts eliminates uncertain parameters and allows the team to validate the time dilation prediction to a few parts per billion, improving on previous limits. The result complements other Lorentz violation tests that use higher precision atomic clocks but much slower relative velocities. (Credit: Botermann, et al., Schirber)
via aps.org
The image above is a comparison of the radial density profiles of the galaxies which the researchers have created by displaying the soliton in the centre of each galaxy with a halo surrounding it. The solitons are broader but have less mass in the smaller galaxies. (Credit: /kipac.stanford.edu/kipac/media)
via dailygalaxy
The sky facing south at nightfall in late September from a dark, light-pollution-free site with stars visible to magnitude 6.5, the naked eye limit. (Credit: Stellarium)
via skyandtelescope
Artistic rendering of the generation of an entangled pair of photons by spontaneous parametric down-conversion as a laser beam passes through a nonlinear crystal. Inspired by an image in Dance of the Photons. (Credit: A. Zeilinger)
via newswise
The Tevatron, the particle accelerator used to find the oscillating Bs meson, has huge detectors surrounded by a cylindrical ‘tracking chamber’, shown here. (Credit: Fermilab)
via cornell
On Mercury a solar day is about 176 Earth days long. During its first Mercury solar day in orbit the MESSENGER spacecraft imaged nearly the entire surface of Mercury to generate a global monochrome map at 250 meters per pixel resolution and a 1 kilometer per pixel resolution color map. (Credit: NASA/JHU APL/CIW)
via phys.org
The researchers observed for the first time coherent oscillations between two spin states: |e↑,g↓〉⇔|e↓,g↑〉. From the oscillation frequency, they determine the spin-exchange interaction strength. (Credit: APS/Ana Maria Rey)
via physics.aps
NASA has found about 95 per cent of the largest and potentially most destructive asteroids, those measuring about one kilometre or larger in diameter, but only 10 per cent of those 140 metres or larger in diameter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Canadian Press)
via cbslocal
Rendering of the near–perfect crystal structure of the yttrium–iron–aluminum compound used in the study. The two–dimensional layers of the material allowed the scientists to isolate the magnetic ordering that emerged near absolute zero. (Credit:Brookhaven National Laboratory)
via azoquantum
Diamond anvils malformed during synthesis of ultrahard fullerite. Note the dent in the center. (Credit: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology)
via nextbigfuture
