Aerospace & Defence

  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.

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

As NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and other new giant telescopes come online they will need novel strategies to look for evidence of life on other planets. A University of Washington study has found a simple approach to look for life that might be more promising than just looking for oxygen. The paper, published in Science Advances, offers a recipe for providing evidence that a distant planet harbours life.

Researchers supported by FAPESP participated in three of the “Top Ten Breakthroughs in 2017” listed by the journal Physics World. The ten breakthroughs were chosen by Physics World editors from a shortlist based on popularity with the journal’s readers. Its Breakthrough of the Year Award went to the first-ever multimessenger observation of a merger of two neutron stars involving gravitational waves.

New model connects the origins of very high-energy neutrinos, ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, and high-energy gamma rays with black-hole jets embedded in their environments. One of the biggest mysteries in astroparticle physics has been the origins of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, very high-energy neutrinos, and high-energy gamma rays. Now, a new theoretical model reveals that they all could be shot out into space after cosmic rays are ac...