Monday, 26 September 2011 by Estelle Asmodelle Cosmos Online This image shows the two hemispheres of a spherical mapping of the cosmic microwave background. New research examining the velocities of Type Ia supernovae suggests faster expansion in the northern hemisphere of the universe, challenging the cosmological principle that the universe is expanding uniformly in all […]
Is the universe expanding asymmetrically? Read More »
Sep 13, 2011 Could the Sun test alternative theories of gravity? Alternatives to Einstein’s general theory of relativity can be investigated by studying the Sun. That is the claim of a group of physicists in Portugal who have found that a variation of a theory put forward nearly a century ago by Arthur Eddington is
Sun puts relativity to the test Read More »
Thursday, 15 September 2011 by Estelle Asmodelle Cosmos Online This image shows the CRESST experiment. The detectors are supercooled to a temperature only slightly above absolute zero. Credit: Credit: CRESST & The Max-Planck-Institut für Physik. GOSFORD: Physicists have detected signals that could be interpreted as dark matter, the elusive substance believed to comprise 80% of
Dark matter signals detected? Read More »
Aug 23, 2011 Who discovered that E = mc2? It’s not as easy a question as you might think. Scientists ranging from James Clerk Maxwell and Max von Laue to a string of now-obscure early 20th-century physicists have been proposed as the true discovers of the mass–energy equivalence now popularly credited to Einstein’s theory of
Did Einstein discover E = mc2? Read More »
Tuesday, 16 August 2011 by Estelle Asmodelle Cosmos Online Viewing image 1 of 2 In the diagram a light trajectory is shown. The light ray enters the device, completes a loop, bounces off the mirror twice and leaves the cloak with its original direction restored (A). Credit: Perczel et al & New J. Phys. Panel
Undergrad student overcomes invisibility hurdle Read More »
Monday, 18 July 2011 by Estelle Asmodelle Cosmos Online An image of a barred-spiral galaxy (NGC1300) where you can clearly see the bar structure in the thin disk of the galaxy (the line through the middle of the galaxy which the spiral arms start from). The Milky Way is thought to have a bar like
The Milky Way is a galactic cannibal Read More »
As NASA prepares to wrap up its shuttle program, leaving open questions about what comes next for U.S. human spaceflight, the next big thing in NASA’s astronomy program has been dealt a blow. The James Webb Space Telescope, a tennis court–size spacecraft that would take up a position in deep space to peer farther than
Threat of James Webb Space Telescope Cancellation Read More »
by Estelle Asmodelle Cosmos Online The colours in this image were modified to emphasize the planet’s atmospheric features. Neptune’s Great Dark Spot stands out as the most prominent feature on the left. The two key features Karkoschka used can also be seen: the fainter Dark Spot 2 and the South Polar Feature, which are locked
Neptune’s day measured to the second Read More »
NEW METHOD OF MAPPING THE UNIVERSE USING QUASARS -BOSS. The biggest 3-D map of the distant universe ever made, using light from 14,000 quasars – supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies billions of light years away – has been constructed by scientists with the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III). See the Phyorg
News items for April-May Read More »
Hi there, It was only a short while ago (Dec 14 2009) that WISE was launched to scna the sky in infrared but now it has run out of coolant! It’s a bit sad really… Feb. 17 – The WISE Spacecraft transmitter was turned off for the final time at 12:00 noon PST today (Feb
The end of WISE in the infrared Read More »