Physics and Astronomy

At the Institute of Physics conference Photon 04 yesterday, Professor Jim Hough, one of the UK’s leading scientists, revealed that he thinks high street bookmakers are crazy to be offering odds of 100-1 on whether Gravitational Waves (wrinkles in relativity) will be discovered before 2010. He has placed a personal bet of £25 – the maximum Ladbrokes allowed him to stake. The available odds were quickly cut from an initial offering of 500-1.

Professor Jim Hough, from the Universi

Scientists have obtained their best measurement yet of the size and contents of a neutron star, an ultra-dense object containing the strangest and rarest matter in the universe.

The measurement may lead to a better understanding of nature’s building blocks — protons, neutrons and their constituent quarks — as they are compressed inside the neutron star to a density trillions of times greater than on Earth.

Tod Strohmayer of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,

The joint NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission is continuing to provide a fascinating insight into the Saturn system. The latest detection of one small body, possibly two, orbiting in the planet’s contorted F ring region and a ring of new material associated with Saturn’s moon Atlas, has been made by a team of UK scientists.

A small object was discovered moving near the outside edge of the F ring, interior to the orbit of Saturn’s moon Pandora. The object was first seen by Professor C

A ceremony to mark development phase completion of Cupola was held in Turin, Italy, on Monday 6 September. From inside Cupola, a dome-shaped structure fitted with seven specially developed windows, astronauts will have a panoramic view for observing and guiding operations on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS).

With a diameter of about 2 metres and height of 1.5 metres, the European-built Cupola provides a shirtsleeve working environment for two crewmembers. The erg

Scientists at Ohio State University have found that a special type of glass that is finding use in the electronics industry softens when exposed to very low-level laser light, and hardens back into its original condition when the light is switched off.

The discovery — made by accident as physicists were trying to study properties of the material — may one day enable new uses for the glass. Ratnasingham Sooryakumar said that he and former doctoral student Jared Gump thought they wer

A new way of taking pictures of the retina could give medics a powerful new tool in diagnosing and monitoring the most prevalent diseases of the eye — glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and age related macula degeneration. The technique was revealed today at the Institute of Physics conference Photon 04 in Glasgow.

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