In a laboratory in Nottingham, scientists are now creating the uniquely harsh conditions encountered in interstellar space. In an environment where the pressure is only one ten billion billionth (one part in 10 to the power 13) of atmospheric pressure, and the temperature a mere 10 degrees above absolute zero, Dr Martin McCoustra and his colleagues are able to mimic the surfaces of the ice-coated dust grains in interstellar clouds and to study the complex chemical and physical processes that take pla

By using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) as a `time machine`, astronomers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford in the UK and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore in the USA have been able to trace back the history of massive elliptical galaxies. They have found that galaxies of this kind, which still exist today, were already luminous families of stars about 10 billion years ago when the universe was only one third its present age. Their latest observations suggest tha

Astronomers at the University of Southampton have uncovered a remarkable connection between the monstrous black holes residing at the hearts of distant galaxies and their comparatively tiny cousins which inhabit star systems in our own Milky Way: they are playing the same tunes. Dr Phil Uttley presents these findings in a talk called `The music of black holes` at the National Astronomy Meeting in Bristol on Tuesday 9 April.

Massive black holes, a million to a billion times heavier than the S

Research aimed at finding new diagnostic tests for BSE is gathering momentum at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER), where scientists have won a major research contract worth over £500,000 from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

`The new contract will help us expand our search for biochemical markers associated with BSE and scrapie,` said Professor Mike Theodorou, one of the leaders of the four-year programme. His colleague, Dr Gordon All

New technology is leading to a vaccine against Group B Streptococci (GBS), a common cause of meningitis as well as a frequent cause of pneumonia in newborns. Key proteins have been found that can kick-start the immune system to fight these bacteria, scientists heard today (Tuesday 09 April 2002) at the spring meeting of the Society for General Microbiology at the University of Warwick.

“We have developed a method to rapidly screen for cell surface proteins in GBS, which can cause pneumonia a

One of the most fascinating areas of astronomical research in recent years has been the search for other `Earths` circling Sun-like stars far beyond our Solar System.

In recent years nearly 100 planets have been discovered in orbits around other stars, but none of these `exoplanets` remotely resembles the Earth. However, according to the latest computer simulations by Barrie Jones and Nick Sleep (The Open University), millions of Earthlike worlds could be scattered throughout the Galaxy, ju