UK astronomers will lose access to two of the world's finest telescopes in February, as administrators look to plug an £80m hole in their finances.
Observation programmes on the 8.1m telescopes of the Gemini organisation will end abruptly because Britain is cancelling its subscription.
It means UK astronomers can no longer view the Northern Hemisphere sky with the largest class of telescope.
Science & Technology
Scientists are reporting evidence that intact, double-stranded DNA has the "amazing" ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. And then like friends with similar interests, the bits of genetic material hangout or congregate together. The recognition - of similar sequences in DNA's chemical subunits - occurs in a way once regarded as impossible, the researchers suggest in a study scheduled for the Jan. 31 issue of ACS' Journal of Physical Chemistry B.
Teams of researchers all over the world are working on the development of organic solar cells. Organic solar cells have good prospects for the future: They can be laid onto thin films, which makes them cheap to produce.
Established printing technologies should be employed for their production of the future. In order to achieve this goal of suitable solar cell architecture as well a coating materials and substrates have to be developed. "This method permits a high throughput, so the greatest cost is that of materials," says Michael Niggemann, a researcher at ISE.
Established printing technologies should be employed for their production of the future. In order to achieve this goal of suitable solar cell architecture as well a coating materials and substrates have to be developed. "This method permits a high throughput, so the greatest cost is that of materials," says Michael Niggemann, a researcher at ISE.
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| ©Fraunhofer ISE |
| The flexible solar module is as small as the page of a book. |
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image of the galaxy NGC 1132 which is, most likely, a cosmic fossil - the aftermath of an enormous multi-galactic pile-up, where the carnage of collision after collision has built up a brilliant but fuzzy giant elliptical galaxy far outshining typical galaxies.
The elliptical galaxy NGC 1132, seen in this latest image from Hubble, belongs to a category of galaxies called giant ellipticals. NGC 1132, together with the small dwarf galaxies surrounding it, are dubbed a "fossil group" as they are most likely the remains of a group of galaxies that merged together in the recent past.
The elliptical galaxy NGC 1132, seen in this latest image from Hubble, belongs to a category of galaxies called giant ellipticals. NGC 1132, together with the small dwarf galaxies surrounding it, are dubbed a "fossil group" as they are most likely the remains of a group of galaxies that merged together in the recent past.
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| ©NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritag (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgment: M. West (ESO, Chile) |
| The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image of the galaxy NGC 1132 which is, most likely, a cosmic fossil -- the aftermath of an enormous multi-galactic pile-up, where the carnage of collision after collision has built up a brilliant but fuzzy giant elliptical galaxy far outshining typical galaxies. |
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| ©Unknown |
Brains-on-a-chip, robotic rescue choppers, see-through displays -- those are just a few of the projects that the Pentagon's mad science division has hatched up for next year.
Earlier this week, DARPA, the Defense Department's way-out research arm, submitted its $3.29 billion budget for the 2009 fiscal year. In it are dozens of new programs -- one more far-reaching than the next.
The first time travellers from the future could materialise on Earth within a few weeks.
Physicists around the world are excitedly awaiting the start up of the £4.65 billion Large Hadron Collider, LHC - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - which is supposed to shed new light on the particles and forces at work in the cosmos and reproduce conditions that date to near the Big Bang of creation.
Physicists around the world are excitedly awaiting the start up of the £4.65 billion Large Hadron Collider, LHC - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - which is supposed to shed new light on the particles and forces at work in the cosmos and reproduce conditions that date to near the Big Bang of creation.
A smack from a small comet in the 1980s may be responsible for ripples in one of Saturn's rings, images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggest. The finding is another indication that the rings are not static and can change on human timescales.
Cassini observations have revealed bright and dark bands in Saturn's innermost ring, called the D ring. The bands are getting more closely spaced as time goes on - Hubble Space Telescope images reveal they were 60 kilometres apart in 1995 and Cassini shows they have been shrinking over the last few years and are just 30 km apart now.
Cassini observations have revealed bright and dark bands in Saturn's innermost ring, called the D ring. The bands are getting more closely spaced as time goes on - Hubble Space Telescope images reveal they were 60 kilometres apart in 1995 and Cassini shows they have been shrinking over the last few years and are just 30 km apart now.
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| ©NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| The edge of the D ring is seen at the centre of this image, showing a banded structure that has gradually became more finely spaced since it was first detected by Hubble in 1995 |
University of Arizona optical scientists have broken a technological barrier by making three-dimensional holographic displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.
The holographic displays -- which are viewed without special eyewear -- are the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory ever to be developed, making them ideal tools for medical, industrial and military applications that require "situational awareness."
The holographic displays -- which are viewed without special eyewear -- are the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory ever to be developed, making them ideal tools for medical, industrial and military applications that require "situational awareness."
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| ©University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences/Nitto Denko Technical Corp. |
| Views of an automobile (top) and of a human brain (bottom) from the updatable 3-D holographic display developed at The University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences in collaboration with Nitto Denko Technical Corp., Oceanside, Calif. The 3-D images were recorded on a 4-inch by 4-inch photorefractive polymer device. |
After 500 years, one of Renaissance Italy's most enduring murder mysteries has been solved by forensic scientists.
Ever since Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a mystical and mercurial philosopher at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, suddenly became sick and died in 1494, it has been rumoured that foul play was involved.
Ever since Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a mystical and mercurial philosopher at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, suddenly became sick and died in 1494, it has been rumoured that foul play was involved.
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| ©Unknown |
| Scientists display the bones of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. |
Dr Colin Eady of Crop & Food Research in New Zealand and his collaborators in Japan have been testing tearless onions in the laboratory and have presented their results so far to the 5th International Symposium on Edible Alliaceae, in The Netherlands.
Dr Eady describes "tearless" onions as being in the developmental stages but if the research progresses well, would like to see them become the household and industry norm within the next decade.
"We have been using a gene-silencing technology, called RNAi, developed by Dr Peter Waterhouse at CSIRO in Australia, that allows us to retarget the plant's own natural regulation system without expressing foreign proteins in the plant," Dr Eady says.
Dr Eady describes "tearless" onions as being in the developmental stages but if the research progresses well, would like to see them become the household and industry norm within the next decade.
"We have been using a gene-silencing technology, called RNAi, developed by Dr Peter Waterhouse at CSIRO in Australia, that allows us to retarget the plant's own natural regulation system without expressing foreign proteins in the plant," Dr Eady says.
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| ©iStockphoto/Angel Rodriguez |
| Researchers have developed a prototype "tearless" onion. |
