Physics and Astronomy

A Dartmouth researcher is building a case for a “dark energy” – dominated universe. Dark energy, the mysterious energy with unusual anti-gravitational properties, has been the subject of great debate among cosmologists.

Brian Chaboyer, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth, with his collaborator Lawrence Krauss, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, have reported their finding in the January 3, 2003, issue of Science. Combining their calc

Combining concepts from electromagnetic radiation research and fiber optics, researchers have created an extreme-ultraviolet, laser-like beam capable of producing tightly-focused light in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum not previously accessible to scientists. Between 10-100 times shorter than visible light waves, the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths will allow researchers to “see” tiny features and carve miniature patterns, with applications in such fields as microscopy, lithography an

Quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGN) are likely powered by matter accretion onto a super-massive black hole located at their center. Before being swallowed by the black hole, matter spirals towards the center, while forming an accretion disc. Unfortunately, such a disc is too small so that one can in general solve it with present day telescopes. But the technique of radio interferometry with very long base (VLBI, with base length of the size of the earth’s radius) make it possible somehow. I

Don’t worry – you are not the only one who thought this was a nice amateur photo of planet Saturn, Lord of the Rings in our Solar System!

But then the relative brightness and positions of the moons may appear somewhat unfamiliar… and the ring system does look unusually bright when compared to the planetary disk…??

Well, it is not Saturn, but Uranus, the next giant planet further out, located at a distance of about 3,000 million km, or 20 times the distance between the Sun and t

The science minister, Lord Sainsbury, will today open the highest resolution analytical microscope in the world at the CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire. The SuperSTEM (Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope) project is directed by Professor Peter Goodhew at Liverpool University and involves other scientists from the Universities of Liverpool, Cambridge, Glasgow and Leeds.

The microscope is housed in a new purpose-built low-vibration laboratory at the Daresbury Laboratory and will

ESA’s gamma-ray satellite, Integral, is fully operational. Today Integral’s first ground-breaking images of the high-energy Universe were presented in Paris, France. Astronomers call such initial observations ’first-light’ images.

The high-energy Universe is a violent place of exploding stars and their collapsed remnants such as the ultra-compressed neutron stars and, at the most extreme, all-consuming black holes. These celestial objects create X-rays and gamma rays tha