Physics and Astronomy

Cassini-Huygens, the joint NASA/ESA/ASI space mission has successfully made a close encounter with Saturn’s moon, Titan. This was confirmed in the early hours of this morning as the first information and pictures were beamed back via NASA’s Deep Space Network tracking station in Madrid, Spain. As anticipated, the spacecraft came within 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) of Titan’s surface.

At the time, Cassini was about 1.3 billion kilometres (826 million miles) from Earth. Numerous ima

Today the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft makes a fly-by of Saturn’s largest moon Titan – the closest ever performed.

At the time of the closest approach, which is scheduled for 18:44 CEST, the spacecraft will be travelling only 1200 kilometres above the surface of the moon, almost grazing the outer atmosphere, at a speed of six kilometres per second (21 800 kilometres per hour)!

Confirmation that the fly-by was successful and that all the data were receive

Researchers at The University of Manchester and Chernogolovka, Russia have discovered the world’s first single-atom-thick fabric, which reveals the existence of a new class of materials and may lead to computers made from a single molecule. The research is to be published in Science on 22 October.

The team led by Professor Andre Geim at The University of Manchester has succeeded in extracting individual planes of carbon atoms from graphite crystals, which has resulted in the prod

UK scientists and industrialists involved in the NASA, ESA, ASI Cassini-Huygens space mission are eagerly awaiting the data to be received when the spacecraft makes its closest fly-by of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, on 26th October.

At the time of the closest approach, which is scheduled to be at 5.44 pm BST (9.44 am PDT), the spacecraft will travel a mere 1200km (745 miles) above the surface of the moon at a speed of 6.1 km per second. Confirmation that the flyby has been suc

Converting quantum bits

A team of physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology has taken a significant step toward the development of quantum communications systems by successfully transferring quantum information from two different groups of atoms onto a single photon.

The work, to be published in the October 22 issue of the journal Science, represents a “building block” that could lead to development of large-scale quantum networks. Sponsored by the Research Corpor

This turbulent boundary between two latitudinal bands in Saturn’s atmosphere curls repeatedly along its edge in this NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens image.

This pattern is an example of a ’Kelvin-Helmholtz instability’, which occurs when two fluids of different density flow past each other at different speeds. This type of phenomenon should be fairly common on the gas-giant planets given their alternating jets and the different temperatures in their belts and zones.

The i