Aerospace & Defence
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
In the real world, your past uniquely determines your future. If a physicist knows how the universe starts out, she can calculate its future for all time and all space. But a UC Berkeley mathematician has found some types of black holes in which this law breaks down. If someone were to venture into one of these relatively benign black holes, they could survive, but their past would be obliterated and they could have an infinite number of pos...
Enhancing radioresistance for space exploration and colonisation
An international team of researchers from NASA, Environmental and Radiation Health Sciences Directorate at Health Canada, Oxford University, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, Insilico Medicine, the Biogerontology Research Center, Boston University, Johns Hopkins University, Ghent University, among others, have published a roadmap toward enhancing human radioresistance for space exploration and colonisation in the jou...
Beaming with the light of millions of suns
In the 1980s, researchers began discovering extremely bright sources of X-rays in the outer portions of galaxies, away from the supermassive black holes that dominate their centers. At first, the researchers thought these cosmic objects—called ultraluminous X-ray sources, or ULXs—were hefty black holes with more than 10 times the mass of the sun.
A magnetic power struggle at the heart of solar eruptions
A dramatic magnetic power struggle at the Sun’s surface lies at the heart of solar eruptions, new research using NASA data shows. The work highlights the role of the Sun’s magnetic landscape, or topology, in the development of solar eruptions that can trigger space weather events around Earth.
Shielded surface mount inductors with established reliability
Gowanda’s ER5025S series complements MIL-PRF-39010 QPL axial-leaded (thru-hole) products and enables their conversion to SMT circuitry via this new MIL-PRF-39010 qualified SMT series. ER5025S meets QPL’s ER requirements to failure rate level M (for /17 and /18). The performance ranges provided by this series include inductance from 0.10 to 10,000 µH, Q min from 40 to 60, SRF MHz min from 1.0 to 450, DCR Ohms max from 0.025 ...
DTU leads discovery of almost 100 exoplanets
An international team of scientists lead by a PhD student at DTU Space have just confirmed finding nearly 100 new exoplanets. Based on data from NASA’s K2 mission an international team of scientists have just confirmed nearly 100 new exoplanets, planets located outside our solar system. This brings the total number of new exoplanets found with the K2 mission up to almost 300. The new results are to be published in the Astronomical...
Dance of auroras: first direct observation of electron frolic
The Northern Lights have been directly observed for the first time by an international team of scientists. While the cause of these colourful auroras has long been hypothesised, researchers had never directly observed the underlying mechanism until now. The scientists published their results in Nature. The spectacle of these subatomic showers is legendary. Green, red, and purple waltz across the night sky, blending into one another...
Black hole simulation predicts light signals at collision
A simulation of supermassive black holes uses a realistic scenario to predict the light signals emitted in the surrounding gas before the masses collide, said Rochester Institute of Technology researchers. The study represents the first step toward predicting the approaching merger of supermassive black holes using the two channels of information now available to scientists—the electromagnetic and the gravitational wave spectra—k...
Alien ocean helps test NASA outer space submarine
Engineers know how to design submarines on Earth, but building one gets a lot trickier when the temperature drops to -300ºF and the ocean is made of methane and ethane. Washington State University researchers are working with NASA to determine how a submarine might work on Titan, the largest of Saturn’s many moons and the second largest in the solar system. The space agency plans to launch a real submarine into Titan seas in the n...
Zero gravity graphene could prove useful in space
In a series of experiments, Cambridge researchers experienced weightlessness testing graphene’s application in space. Working as part of a collaboration between the Graphene Flagship and the European Space Agency, researchers from the Cambridge Graphene Centre tested graphene in microgravity conditions for the first time while aboard a parabolic flight – often referred to as the ‘vomit comet’. The experiments they con...