Physics and Astronomy

The use of toxic chemicals to sterilise medical instruments may soon be a thing of the past, according to researchers at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and the University of California in San Diego. Their work, released on 30 April 2003 in New Journal of Physics, published jointly by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society, tests a new way of killing bacteria using a plasma at room temperature and pressure, which could have applications in decontamination of biological

Jefferson Lab physicists will soon begin their own version of reuse — not with run-of-the-mill materials, but with radiofrequency energy and the high-energy electrons that they energize.

Newspaper, glass and aluminum recycling has become commonplace for most households and businesses. Jefferson Lab physicists will soon begin their own version of reuse — not with run-of-the-mill materials, but with radiofrequency energy and the high-energy electrons that they energize.

In an

Like the fury of a raging sea, this anniversary image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur gas in the extremely massive and luminous molecular nebula Messier 17.

This Hubble photograph captures a small region within Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation. The release of this image commemorates the thirte

VLT Spectra Indicate Shortest-Known-Period Planet Orbiting OGLE-TR-3

More than 100 exoplanets in orbit around stars other than the Sun have been found so far. But while their orbital periods and distances from their central stars are well known, their true masses cannot be determined with certainty, only lower limits.

This fundamental limitation is inherent in the common observational method to discover exoplanets – the measurements of small and regular changes in the centra

Academy Professor Matti Krusius and Antti Finne, M.Sc. (Eng.), were invited to a recent science breakfast, hosted by the Academy of Finland, to talk about their ongoing work to produce a first-ever laboratory simulation of a black hole. A black hole is created as a result of the most extreme concentration of matter.

Scientists have been arguing about the possible existence of black holes for an entire century. Today the existence of black holes is supported by various astrophysical phenomena

A team of theoretical physicists working at CERN and the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel has developed a theory to account for the mysterious gamma ray bursts that come from the depths of the Universe. According to their ideas, gamma ray bursts are linked to supernovae, the cataclysmic explosions of massive stars at the end of their lives. When a new gamma ray burst (GRB 030329) was seen on March 29 2003, the CERN-Technion team immediately predicted that light from a supernova would first