Physics News Archive: February 2004

Large diamonds made from gas are the hardest yet
Source: CarnegieInstitution   Posted: 2/25/2004
Producing a material that is harder than natural diamond has been a goal of materials science for decades. Now a group* headed by scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, D.C., has produced gem-sized diamonds that are harder than any other crystals.
Full story...
Microbial fuel cell cleans water, generates electricity
Source: PSU   Posted: 2/24/2004
Penn State environmental engineers have shown, for the first time, that a microbial fuel cell (MFC) can generate electricity while simultaneously cleaning the wastewater that you flush down the drain or toilet.
Full story...
Scientists watch 'movie' of neutron star explosion in real-time
Source: NASA/GSFC   Posted: 2/24/2004
Scientists at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) and NASA have captured unprecedented details of the swirling flow of gas hovering just a few miles from the surface of a neutron star, itself a sphere only about ten miles (16 km) across.
Full story...
Hubble and Keck find farthest known galaxy in the Universe
Source: ESA   Posted: 2/16/2004
An international team of astronomers may have set a new record in discovering what is the most distant known galaxy in the Universe. Located an estimated 13 billion light-years away, the object is being viewed at a time only 750 million years after the big bang, when the Universe was barely 5 percent of its current age.
Full story...
Healthy Spirit Cleans a Mars Rock; Opportunity Rolls
Source: NASA/JPL   Posted: 2/9/2004
NASA's Spirit has returned to full health and resumed doing things never attempted on Mars before. 'Our patient is healed, and we're very excited about that,' said Jennifer Trosper of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., mission manager for Spirit.
Full story...
Nanoruler a promising line of work
Source: MIT   Posted: 2/3/2004
An MIT device that makes the world’s most precise rulers—with "ticks" only a few hundred billionths of a meter apart—could impact fields from the manufacture of computer chips to space physics.
Full story...
Oxygen and carbon discovered in exoplanet atmosphere ‘blow-off’
Source: NASA/ESA   Posted: 2/3/2004
Oxygen and carbon have been found in an extrasolal planet's atmosphere, evaporating at such an immense rate that the existence of a new class of extrasolar planets – ‘the chthonian planets’ or ‘dead’ cores of completely evaporated gas giants - has been proposed.
Full story...
Dazzling new light source opens at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory
Source: Stanford   Posted: 2/3/2004
SPEAR3 (Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Ring) was formally opened at a dedication ceremony at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) on Jan. 29.
Full story...
New Tool for Reading a Molecule's Blueprints
Source: Caltech   Posted: 2/3/2004
A new observatory, to be built at Stanford, will be a kind of ultrapowerful X-ray machine that will enable scientists to
Full story...

Search

Loading



Sponsors

USC University of Southern California Dornsife College Physics and Astronomy Department McMaster University Physics and Astronomy Department

Science Quote

'The strength and weakness of physicists is that we believe in what we can measure. And if we can't measure it, then we say it probably doesn't exist. And that closes us off to an enormous amount of phenomena that we may not be able to measure because they only happened once. For example, the Big Bang. ... That's one reason why they scoffed at higher dimensions for so many years. Now we realize that there's no alternative... '

Michio Kaku
(1947-)

Deal of the Day

Image of Black Hawk Wolf RC Helicopter. Click on this image for more info. Black Hawk Wolf RC Helicopter
Regular Price: $39.99
Today's Price: $14.00
Easy to fly 3 channel mini remote-controlled helicopter. Buy it now! Deal ends at midnight!

Top Selling

Here are our physics & astronomy bestsellers:
Mini Plasma Ball
Slide Making Kit
Top Secret - Spinning Top
Wood Grain Newtons Cradle
Deluxe 3D Mirascope
Solar Radiometer
Periscope
Solar Science 4M Kit
Ultimate Chemistry Set CHEM C3000
3D Magnetic Field Tube