Physics and Astronomy

To mark the 50th anniversary of CERN ’s creation, local Swiss and French authorities have clubbed together to offer the Organization a spectacular illumination of the 27-kilometre ring of the Large Hadron Collider accelerator. At 20:00 sharp on 29 September, Micheline Spoerri, Head of Geneva’s Department of Justice, Police and Security, will throw the switch for 24 powerful ‘skytracer’ floodlights to light up the night sky of the Geneva – Pays de Gex region.

This illumination forms

A new vision for radio astronomy is bringing together all 20 of Europe’s leading radioastronomy institutes. They plan to build on existing collaboration and significantly enhance the quality and quantity of science currently produced by European astronomers.

RadioNet will create an integrated radio astronomy network providing European scientists with access to world-class facilities along with a research and development plan aimed at supporting and enhancing these facilities. This

Too much heat can destroy a sturdy automobile engine or a miniature microchip. As scientists and engineers strive to make ever-smaller nanoscale devices, from molecular motors and switches to single-molecule transistors, the control of heat is becoming a burning issue. The shapes of molecules really matter, say scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Scranton who timed the flow of vibrational heat energy through a water-surfactant-organic s

A mystery lurking at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy – an object radiating high-energy gamma rays – has been detected by an international team of astronomers. Their research, published today (September 22nd) in the Journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, was carried out using the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), an array of four telescopes, in Namibia, South-West Africa.

The Galactic Centre harbours a number of potential gamma-ray sources, including a supermassive bla

Fogged up glasses, windscreens and bathroom mirrors may be a thing of the past.

Researchers have invented a new, permanent, multi-purpose coating technology that will prevent your spectacles, car windscreen or bathroom mirror fogging up ever again. The coating, called XeroCoat, also cuts out unwanted reflections from glass, letting more light through. Making it ideal for spectacles and improving the performance of solar cells and glasshouses.

University of Queensland phys

For the first time, an international team of astronomers led by Guy Perrin from the Paris Observatory/LESIA, (Meudon, France) and Stephen Ridgway from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (Tucson, Arizona, USA) has observed the close environment of five so-called red giant Mira stars, using astronomical interferometric techniques. They found that the observed Mira stars are embedded in a shell of water vapor and possibly of carbon monoxide that extends to twice the stellar radius. Studying the