Physicists discover new kind of radioactivity
Galindo-Uribarri and co-workers chose an isotope of neon with an energy structure that prevents it from emitting protons one at a time. This means that the two protons are certainly ejected simultaneo...
Radiation check for airlines
“We know that cosmic radiation at aircraft altitudes is several orders of magnitude more intense than that experienced at ground level because there is less protection from our atmosphere”...
New materials stretch the imagination
The Poisson’s ratio of a material is defined as nij = –ej/ ei, where ej is the lateral strain in the j direction that is caused when a strain ei is applied in the longitudinal i direction....
Read article: Cosmic rays: an in-flight hazard?
Cosmic rays: an in-flight hazard?
When Victor Hess discovered cosmic radiation almost 90 years ago, he did so in manned balloon flights that reached altitudes of up to 5 km in the Earth’s atmosphere. This was only a few years af...
Neutrino pioneers win Wolf prize
In 1967 Davis, then at the Brookhaven National Lab, built the first experiment to detect neutrinos produced by the Sun. Neutrinos only interact weakly with matter and are extremely difficult to detect...
Astronomy and physics dominate Science top ten
Confirmation that the universe is flat – expanding at just the right rate not to collapse – came from measurements of ripples in the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang...
Read article: Chandra delights astronomers
Chandra delights astronomers
The image of G21.5-0.9, a supernova remnant which is 16,000 light years from Earth, shows a bright central source (the neutron star) with bright nebula and surrounded by a much larger diffuse cloud. T...
Slow period upsets pulsar theories
Inside a pulsar the neutrons are thought to decay into protons and electrons, which are then accelerated by the pulsar’s powerful magnetic field. Since protons and electrons are charged particle...
Shuttle launches X-ray telescope
X-ray observations with Chandra will complement infrared images from the Hubble Space Telescope and higher-energy observations by the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Chandra will have a resolution that...
