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Newly Discovered Planet in Orbit Very Far from Parent Star

An international team of astronomers, led by a University of Arizona graduate student, has discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star. It is the first exoplanet – a planet outside of our solar system – discovered at the UA.

6 Dec 2013

Creation of Two Entangled Quarks Simultaneously Gives Rise to a Wormhole

Quantum entanglement is one of the more bizarre theories to come out of the study of quantum mechanics — so strange, in fact, that Albert Einstein famously referred to it as “spooky action at a distance.”

6 Dec 2013

New Spinning Method to Measure Electron's Roundness

JILA researchers have developed a method of spinning electric and magnetic fields around trapped molecular ions to measure whether the ions' tiny electrons are truly round—research with major implications for future scientific understanding of the universe.

6 Dec 2013

Scientists Observe Quantum Gimbal

Swirling, persistent vortices can be created in superfluid helium. Generally no atoms sit at the eye of these miniature hurricanes.

6 Dec 2013

Scientists Believe that Jupiter’s Moon Europa Could Sustain Life

In a finding of relevance to the search for life in our solar system, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research have shown that the subsurface ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa may have deep currents and circulation patterns with heat and energy transfers capable of sustaining biological life.

5 Dec 2013

Collision of Two Protons Yields Higgs Boson that Decays to Tau Leptons

At a CERN seminar November 26th, Aliaksandr (Sasha) Pranko of the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) presented key direct evidence that the “Higgs-like” particle discovered at CERN last year does what a Higgs is supposed to do: it couples not only to other bosons but to fermions as well. Pranko is a member of Berkeley Lab’s contingent of the ATLAS Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider.

5 Dec 2013

NASA’s Twin Spacecraft Unravel Mysteries of Earth's Radiation Belts

Just over a year since launch, NASA's Van Allen Probes mission continues to unravel longstanding mysteries of Earth's high-energy radiation belts that encircle our planet and pose hazards to orbiting satellites and astronauts.

5 Dec 2013

Astronomers Glimpse Magnetic Fields at the Heart of Gamma-ray Bursts

A new study using observations from a novel instrument provides the best look to date at magnetic fields at the heart of gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic explosions in the universe. An international team of astronomers from Britain, Slovenia and Italy has glimpsed the infrastructure of a burst's high-speed jet.

5 Dec 2013

UT Dallas to Host Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics

Sitting around a Dallas swimming pool in the summer of 1963, a handful of Texas scientists hatched a plan to hold a scientific conference that would highlight new research in the combined fields of relativity and astrophysics.

5 Dec 2013

Supernova Remnants Reveal Age of X-ray Binary System

Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed faint remnants of a supernova explosion and helped researchers determine Circinus X-1 -- an X-ray binary -- is the youngest of this class of astronomical objects found to date.

5 Dec 2013