Aerospace & Defence

  A recent study in Science cast doubt on one formerly favoured explanation for why an abundance of positrons – the antimatter counterparts of electrons – has been found near Earth. Two nearby collapsed stars, it turns out, aren’t likely to blame because their positrons couldn’t have traveled as far as the Earth.

Famously, neutrinos can zip through a million miles of lead without skipping a beat. Now, in a critical measurement that may one day help predict physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, an international team of researchers with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has shown how energised neutrinos can be stopped cold as they pass through the Earth.

In the outer atmosphere of the Sun a form of turbulence has been discovered that has always been considered impossible: the turbulence is not caused by colliding waves, but by waves moving into the same direction. With the discovery of this phenomenon – called ‘uniturbulence’ – a number of KU Leuven mathematicians have earned their place in the physics handbooks for future generations.

  EIS Electronics designs, manufactures and delivers precise, high tech electrical harnesses qualified for use in Aerospace and Defense applications. From major Airbus programmes and Ariane 5 launch vehicles to various satellites, military armoured vehicles, submarines and radar systems.

A strange visitor, either asteroid or comet, zipping through our solar system at a high rate of speed is giving astronomers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to examine up close an object from somewhere else in our galaxy. “It’s a really rare object,” explains Ralf Kotulla, a University of Wisconsin–Madison astronomer who, with colleagues from UCLA and the NOAO, used the 3.5 meter WIYN Telescope on Kitt Peak, Ar...

A NASA Mars rover mission set to launch in 2020 will rely on a special parachute to slow the spacecraft down as it enters the Martian atmosphere at over 12,000 mph (5.4 kilometers per second). Preparations for this mission have provided, for the first time, dramatic video of the parachute opening at supersonic speed. The Mars 2020 mission will seek signs of ancient Martian life by investigating evidence in place and by caching drilled sample...

  An international team of astronomers, including a University of Southampton expert, has discovered a type of explosion in a distant galaxy. The explosion, called PS1-10adi, seems to prefer active galaxies that house supermassive black holes consuming the gas and material around them.

To enhance milling performance on ISO S materials, cutting tool and tooling system specialist, Sandvik Coromant is introducing a series of end mills featuring geometries and grades. The CoroMill Plura HFS (High-Feed Side milling) ISO S cutters deliver reliable and productive results on workpieces made from titanium and nickel-based alloys, bringing benefits to both aerospace engine and frame applications.

Stanford scientists will lead a national cooperative effort, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Center for Coatings Research, to improve detection of gravitational waves at the twin LIGO facilities. LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, has a problem of scale: galaxy-shaking events like the recent collision of two neutron stars happened so far away that the echoes took 130 million years to travel to our planet. A coll...

Equipped with Newton’s law of universal gravitation (published in Principia 330 years ago) and powerful computational resources (used to apply the law to more than 10,000 interacting bodies), a young Brazilian researcher and his former postdoctoral supervisor have just proposed a new physical model to explain the origin of water on Earth and the other Earth-like objects in the Solar System.