Physics and Astronomy

As her PhD defended at the Public University of Navarre, telecommunications engineer Ixone Arroabarren has analysed the vibrato, one of the most important tools of classical singers.

The study applies both to the teaching of singing in music as well as to the medical treatment of voice pathologies. It has put forward a mathematical model for the production of the voice that can be used both in the medical study/detection of pathologies of the vocal chords and speech as well as the

VLT Observations of Beryllium in Two Old Stars Clock the Beginnings

Observations by an international team of astronomers with the UVES spectrometer on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory (Chile) have thrown new light on the earliest epoch of the Milky Way galaxy.

The first-ever measurement of the Beryllium content in two stars in a globular cluster (NGC 6397) – pushing current astronomical technology towards the limit – has made it possible to study the ea

Two new moons orbiting between Mimas and Enceladus, discovered by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, may be the smallest bodies so far seen around the ringed planet.

The moons are approximately three kilometres and four kilometres across. Located 194 000 kilometres and 211 000 kilometres from the planet’s centre, the moons are between the orbits of two other Saturnian moons, Mimas and Enceladus. They are provisionally named S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2, bringing the current

The first spacecraft intended to orbit Mercury was launched on Aug. 3, 2004, carrying an instrument for mapping the composition of the planet’s crust that was calibrated with a novel procedure at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The procedure, using NIST-produced, high-energy gamma rays, enabled the device to be prepared for the same intense radiation levels typically produced in outer space.

Mercury is a rocky planet like the Earth but smaller, denser and

A NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory image has revealed a complex of several intergalactic hot gas clouds in the process of merging. The superb Chandra spatial resolution made it possible to distinguish individual galaxies from the massive clouds of hot gas. One of the clouds, which envelopes hundreds of galaxies, has an extraordinarily low concentration of iron atoms, indicating that it is in the very early stages of cluster evolution.

“We may be seeing hot intergalactic gas in a

Network could operate 100 times faster

Canadian researchers have shown that nanotechnology can be used to pave the way to a supercharged Internet based entirely on light. The discovery could lead to a network 100 times faster than today’s.

In a study published today in Nano Letters, Professor Ted Sargent and colleagues advance the use of one laser beam to direct another with unprecedented control, a featured needed inside future fibre-optic networks. “This finding showc