Physics and Astronomy

Ceramic materials with “split personalities” could lead to new high-temperature superconductors, according to physicists at Ohio State University and their colleagues.

Researchers here have learned that these ceramic materials, called cuprates (pronounced KOOP-rates), switch between two different kinds of superconductivity under certain circumstances.

The finding could settle a growing controversy among scientists and point the way to buckyball-like superconductivity in ceramics.

Surprise Discovery with World`s Leading Telescopes

Combining data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), a group of European and American astronomers have made an unexpected, major discovery.

They have identified a huge number of “young” stellar clusters, only a few billion years old , inside an “old” elliptical galaxy (NGC 4365), probably aged some 12 billion years. For the first time, it has been possible to identify several

Scientists from the University of Cambridge’s Astrophysics Group have today (21 June 2002) announced a collaboration with teams based in New Mexico, Puerto Rico and at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC to design, install and operate a novel type of astronomical telescope for ultra-high angular resolution observations of stars, galaxies and quasars.

The agreement between researchers based in the Astrophysics (AP) Group at the Cavendish Laboratory and the Magdalena Ridge Observato

Theoretical physicist Lennaert Huiszoon has described a new family of strings in research conducted at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics. He investigated so-called open strings which can describe elementary particles with a strong interaction.

With string theory, physicists are trying to construct a unifying theory for gravity and quantum mechanics. The theory describes extremely heavy and very small objects such as the universe shortly after the Big Bang or

Adaptive optics technology can remove the blurring effect of the Earth’s atmosphere that has long plagued astronomers, allowing ground-based telescopes to achieve a clarity of vision previously attainable only by space-based instruments. Current adaptive optics (AO) systems are able to make images that are superior to those of the Hubble Space Telescope in infrared light.

The technology still has limitations, however. For example, today’s adaptive optics systems on the largest tel

The Russian astrophysicists have theoretically modelled coronal loop oscillations and have shown that the plasma present in coronal loops is quite “normal”. So, the puzzle of the Sun`s atmosphere heating remains unresolved.

Coronal loops, immense magnetic arches more hot and dense than the coronal gas, are formed by magnetic fields. They are anchored in the Sun`s visible surface rising up to 100 – 200 thousand kilometres. In the active regions of the Sun these loops, which are 1000 –