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Intermittent Emissions of Water Vapor Discovered on Ceres Asteroid

An international team, including researchers from CNRS and the Paris Observatory at LESIA (Observatoire de Paris/CNRS/Université Pierre et Marie Curie/Université Paris-Diderot) and at IMCEE (Observatoire de Paris/CNRS/Université Pierre et Marie Curie/Université Lille 1), has discovered intermittent emissions of water vapor on Ceres, the largest of the asteroids, using the Herschel space telescope. These findings are published in the journal Nature dated 23 January 2014.

25 Jan 2014

NASA Science Instruments Prepare for Operations Aboard Rosetta Spacecraft

Three NASA science instruments are being prepared for check-out operations aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, which is set to become the first to orbit a comet and land a probe on its nucleus in November.

25 Jan 2014

NUFI Awards 6.7 Million DKK for Research at CERN

Research at CERN receives 6.685 million Danish kroner from NUFI, the National Committee for Research Infrastructure under the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation. The funds are granted for the operation and the development of the Danish experimental work at CERN in 2014.

25 Jan 2014

Reactivated NEOWISE Mission Detects 857 Minor Bodies in the Solar System

In its first 25 days of operations, the newly reactivated NEOWISE mission has detected 857 minor bodies in our solar system, including 22 near-Earth objects (NEOs) and four comets. Three of the NEOs are new discoveries; all three are hundreds of meters in diameter and dark as coal.

25 Jan 2014

Centrifuge Spectroscopy Enables Excitation of Oxygen Molecules from Ground Rotational State to Quantum States

UBC scientists have developed a new type of optical spectroscopy, dubbed “centrifuge spectroscopy”, capable of probing molecules in an unprecedented regime of ultrafast “super” rotation. An optical centrifuge is a laser pulse with rotating linear polarization. Due to the light-induced dipole moment, molecules line up along the polarization vector and faithfully follow its rotation, spinning up to ultra-high angular frequencies, which cannot be reached by any other means.

24 Jan 2014

Berkeley Researchers Tune Chemical Bonds of Buckyballs

If the chemical bonds that hold together the constituent atoms of a molecule could be tuned to become stronger or weaker, certain chemical properties of that molecule might be controlled to great advantage for applications in energy and catalysis. Berkeley Lab researchers at the Molecular Foundry, in collaboration with researchers from Rice University, were able to accomplish this feat by using an applied voltage and electric current to tune the strength of chemical bonds in fullerene or “buckyball” molecules.

24 Jan 2014

New Experiment Supports Existence of Luttinger Liquid State

How would electrons behave if confined to a wire so slender they could pass through it only in single-file?

24 Jan 2014

Professor Jairo Sinova Receives ERC Synergy Grant for Spintronics Research

Professor Jairo Sinova of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has been allocated a highly coveted ERC Synergy Grant to carry out spintronics research together with project partners from the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. The European Research Council (ERC) uses Synergy Grants to make it possible for outstanding scientists to work together on trailblazing projects.

23 Jan 2014

Feedback in Realistic Environments, or FIRE Simulates Galaxy Evolution from the Big Bang

For decades, astrophysicists have encountered a puzzling contradiction: although many galactic-wind models—simulations of how matter is distributed in our universe—predict that the majority of the "normal" matter exists in stars at the center of galaxies, in actuality these stars account for less than 10 percent of the matter in the universe.

23 Jan 2014

Researchers Report Basic Difference Between Cuprates and Pnictides Families of High-Temperature Semiconductors

An article in Nature Physics reveals a fundamental difference between the two most important families of so-called "high-temperature superconductors", those based on copper (the cuprates) and those based on iron (the pnictides).

23 Jan 2014

London Collider Exhibition to Showcase the VELO Detector

The “VELO” detector built by physicists at the University of Liverpool forms part of a major new exhibition about the pioneering work at CERN.

23 Jan 2014

Researchers Unveil Experimental Strontium Atomic Clock with Extraordinary Precision and Stability

Heralding a new age of terrific timekeeping, a research group led by a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicist has unveiled an experimental strontium atomic clock that has set new world records for both precision and stability-- key metrics for the performance of a clock.

23 Jan 2014