adjusting the length of the spaces between nanorods. his arrangement allowed us to narrow the output spectrum to one individual color instead of the typical muted shades that are produced usually by aluminum nanoparticlesshe adds.
and Peter Nordlander professor of physics and astronomy. lejandro created a detailed model of the far-field plasmonic interactions between the nanorodsolson says. hat proved very important
The researchers say this technology would be useful in places where sun and radio waves can t always penetrate such as inside walls
which degrade under exposure to sunlight and can also be difficult to align with imaging sensors. oday s color filtering mechanisms often involve materials that are not CMOS-compatible
or reflect it back into free space. The metallic nanostructures use surface plasmons waves of electrons that flow like a fluid across metal surfaces.
The researchers chose Srf for its structural simplicity it has effectively just one electron that orbits around the entire molecule. e thought it would be best to start applying this technique with a simple diatomic moleculedemille says.
The lead author of the paper is John Barry a former Yale graduate student now at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
and his team to absorb specific nonvisible wavelengths of sunlight. e can tune these materials to pick up just the ultraviolet
As levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continue to rise researchers are looking for ways to make use of it.
The goal is to find ways to produce some of the world s largest-volume chemicals from a sustainable carbon source that the Earth not only has in excess
and astronomy and researchers from Moscow State university contributed to the report. The National Science Foundation and the US Air force Research Laboratory provided funding.
#Star collision may explain the lonely supernova University of Warwick rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Frew-Warwick on August 11 2014 A massive collision between white dwarf
and neutron stars may explain the creation of transient supernovae explosions that tend to occur far away from host galaxies. ur paper examines so-called calcium-rich transientssays Joseph Lyman from the University of Warwick. hese are luminous explosions
This means that these curious events may actually be the dominant producers of calcium in our universe. ne of the weirdest aspects is that they seem to explode in unusual places.
For example if you look at a galaxy you expect any explosions to roughly be in line with the underlying light you see from that galaxy
since that is where the stars arelyman says. owever a large fraction of these are exploding at huge distances from their galaxies where the number of stellar systems is miniscule. hat we address in the paper is
For example there could be very faint dwarf galaxies there explaining the weird locations. We present observations going just about as faint as you can go to show there is in fact nothing at the location of these transients so the question becomes how did they get there?
alcium-rich transients observed to date can be seen tens of thousands of parsecs away from any potential host galaxy with a third of these events at least 65 thousand light years from a potential host galaxy.
For the new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society researchers used the Very Large telescope in Chile
and Hubble space telescope observations of the nearest examples of these calcium-rich transients to attempt to detect anything left behind or in the surrounding area of the explosion.
The deep observation allowed them to rule out the presence of faint dwarf galaxies or globular star clusters at the locations of these nearest examples.
although fainter is the collapse of a massive star in a binary system where material is stripped from the massive star undergoing collapse.
or other massive stars in the vicinity allowing them to reject massive stars as the progenitors of calcium rich transients. t was increasingly looking like hypervelocity massive stars could not explain the locations of these supernovaesays Andrew Levan of the physics department. hey must be lower-mass
longer-lived stars but still in some sort of binary systems as there is no known way that a single low-mass star can go supernova by itself
or create an event that would look like a supernova. he researchers then compared their data to
what is known about short-duration gamma ray bursts (SGRBS). These are seen also often to explode in remote locations with no coincident galaxy detected.
SGRBS are understood to occur when two neutron stars collide or when a neutron star merges with a black hole.
Although mergers between neutron stars and black holes would not explain these brighter calcium-rich transients the researchers considered that
if the collision was instead between a white dwarf star and neutron star it would fit their observations because:
hat we therefore propose is these are systems that have been ejected from their galaxy. A good candidate in this scenario is a white dwarf and a neutron star in a binary system.
The neutron star is formed when a massive star goes supernova. The mechanism of the supernova explosion causes the neutron star to be kicked to very high velocities (100s of km/s). This high velocity system can then escape its galaxy
and if the binary system survives the kick the white dwarf and neutron star will merge causing the explosive transient. he researchers who say such merging systems of white dwarfs
and neutron stars may produce high energy gamma-ray bursts will next look for any new examples of calcium-rich transients to confirm this.
Such merging systems will contribute significant sources of gravitational waves potentially detectable by upcoming experiments that will shed further light on the nature of these exotic systems.
Researchers from University of Leicester and the Lund University Observatory contributed to the work. Source:
University of Warwickyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license n
#We judge trustworthy faces in a snap New york University rightoriginal Studyposted by James Devitt-NYU on August 8 2014.
The study also suggests butterflies are the ancestral group to the tens of thousands of moth species on the planet
when bats spread across the planet as a means of escaping these and other nocturnal predators Kawahara says.
and in how small a space the light can be trapped. By coupling electromagnetic waves with surface plasmons the oscillating electrons found at the surface of metals researchers were able to squeeze light into nanosized spaces
but sustaining the confined energy was challenging because light tends to dissipate at a metal s surface.
#Spinach leaves vibrate to kick off photosynthesis Vibrations deep within spinach leaves enhance the efficiency of photosynthesishe energy conversion process that powers life on our planet.
Through photosynthesis, plants and some bacteria turn sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into food for themselves and into oxygen for animals to breathe.
Solar panels can only generate power when the sun shining, and wind turbines can only generate power when the wind blows.
#Solar cell spikes let in 99%of sunlight The more light absorbed by a solar panel active elements,
A new one-step process to etch nanoscale spikes into silicon lets the maximum amount of sunlight reach a solar cell,
Collecting sunlight using these tiny colloidal quantum dots depends on two types of semiconductors: n-type which are rich in electrons and p-type
For the average person this means more sophisticated weather satellites remote controllers satellite communication or pollution detectors. his is a material innovation that s the first part
#Material snags CO2 from natural gas Rice university rightoriginal Studyposted by Mike Williams-Rice on June 9 2014scientists have created an Earth-friendly way to separate carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas from natural gas right
. or example, wee able to capture a large percentage of the ammonia that would otherwise be lost in the atmosphere,
and particles says lead author Hrvoje Petek professor in the physics and astronomy department at the University of Pittsburgh.
or aerospace vehicle if you have to replace them every few years because they go dead. estover s wafers consist of electrodes made from silicon that have been treated chemically so they have nanoscale pores on their inner surfaces
and industrial processes are increasing the amount of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. he warming impact of methane
the team installed it on a mobile laboratory used during NASA DISCOVER-AQ campaign, which analyzed pollution on the ground and from the air last September.
#Exoplanet weather forecast calls for clouds University of Chicago rightoriginal Studyposted by Steve Koppes-Chicago on December 31 2013a team of scientists report they have characterized definitively the atmosphere of a super-Earth class
planet orbiting another star for the first time. Today s forecast: cloudy. Tomorrow: overcast. Extended outlook: more clouds.
The scrutinized planet which is known as GJ1214B is classified as a super-Earth type planet because its mass is intermediate between those of Earth and Neptune.
Recent searches for planets around other stars (xoplanets have shown that super-Earths like GJ 1214b are among the most common type of planets in the Milky way galaxy.
Because no such planets exist in our solar system the physical nature of super-Earths is largely unknown.
Previous studies of GJ 1214b yielded two possible interpretations of the planet s atmosphere. Its atmosphere could consist entirely of water vapor
or some other type of heavy molecule or it could contain high-altitude clouds that prevent the observation of what lies underneath.
But now a team of astronomers led by Laura Kreidberg and Jacob Bean of the University of Chicago has detected clear evidence of clouds in the atmosphere of GJ 1214b from data collected with the Hubble space telescope.
The Hubble observations used 96 hours of telescope time spread over 11 months. This was the largest Hubble program ever devoted to studying a single exoplanet.
An artist s rendering of extrasolar planet GJ 1214b. Credit: NASA ESA and G. Bacon (STSCL) via U. Chicago) The researchers describe their work as an important milestone on the road to identifying potentially habitable Earthlike planets beyond our Solar system.
The results appear in the January 2 issue of the journal Nature. e really pushed the limits of
what is possible with Hubble to make this measurementsays Kreidberg a third-year graduate student and first author of the new paper. his advance lays the foundation for characterizing other Earths with similar techniques.?
I think it s very exciting that we can use a telescope like Hubble that was designed never with this in mind do these kinds of observations with such exquisite precision
and really nail down some property of a small planet orbiting a distant starexplains Bean an assistant professor and the project s principal investigator.
GJ 1214b is located just 40 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus.
Because of its proximity to our solar system and the small size of its host star GJ 1214b is the most easily observed super-Earth.
It transits or passes in front of its parent star every 38 hours which gives scientists an opportunity to study its atmosphere as starlight filters through it.
Kreidberg Bean and their colleagues used Hubble to precisely measure the spectrum of GJ 1214b in near-infrared light finding what they consider definitive evidence of high clouds blanketing the planet.
These clouds hide any information about the composition and behavior of the lower atmosphere and surface.
The planet was discovered in 2009 by the MEARTH Project which monitors two thousand red dwarf stars for transiting planets.
The planet was targeted next for follow-up observations to characterize its atmosphere. The first spectra which Bean obtained in 2010 using a ground-based telescope suggested that the planet s atmosphere either was predominantly water vapor
or hydrogen-dominated with high-altitude clouds. More precise Hubble observations made in 2012 and 2013 allowed the team to distinguish between these two scenarios.
The news is about what they didn t find. The Hubble spectra revealed no chemical fingerprints whatsoever in the planet s atmosphere.
This allowed the astronomers to rule out cloud-free atmospheres made of water vapor methane nitrogen carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide.
The best explanation for the new data is that there are high-altitude clouds in the atmosphere of the planet
though their composition is unknown. Models of super-Earth atmospheres predict clouds could be made out of potassium chloride
or zinc sulfide at the scorching temperatures of 450 degrees Fahrenheit found on GJ 1214b. ou would expect very different kinds of clouds to form than you would expect say on Earthkreidberg says.
The launch of NASA s next major space telescope the 6. 5m James webb space telescope (JWST) later this decade should reveal more about such worlds Kreidberg says. ooking forward JWST will be transformativeshe says. he new capabilities
of this telescope will allow us to peer through the clouds on planets like GJ 1214b.
But more than that it may open the door to studies of Earthlike planets around nearby stars. he NASA the National Science Foundation the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
and the European Research Council supported the research. Source: University of Chicagoyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license e
#This gene helps some of us never forget a face Emory University rightoriginal Studyposted by Lisa Newbern-Emory on December 24 2013the oxytocin receptor a gene known to influence mother-infant bonding also plays a role in the ability to remember faces.
The finding has important implications for disorders in which social information processing is disruptedâ##like autism spectrum disorderâ
##and may lead to new strategies for improving social cognition in several psychiatric disorders. According to study author Larry Young of the department of psychiatry at Emory University this is the first study to demonstrate that variation in the oxytocin receptor gene influences face recognition skills.
and medical devices to structural components for the automotive civil and aerospace industries. he cellulose nanocrystals represent a potential green alternative to carbon nanotubes for reinforcing materials such as polymers and concrete.
which they were extractedsays Robert J. Moon a researcher from the US Forest Service s Forest Products Laboratory
hat hath God wrought. reating a market for printed electronic devices Lipson says could be like introducing color printers after only black and white had existed. t opens up a whole new space that makes the old look primitive. ource:
#Big bang swirls hint at universe s birth Mcgill University University of Chicago rightoriginal Studyposted by Steve Koppes-Chicago on December 17 2013a subtle distortion in the oldest
light in the universe may help reveal secrets about the earliest moments in its formation.
Using the South pole Telescope scientists observed twisting patterns in the polarization of the cosmic microwave backgroundâ##light that last interacted with matter very early in the history of the universe less than 400000 years after the big bang. These patterns
For the study published in Physical Review Letters researchers used the first data from SPTPOL a polarization-sensitive camera installed on the telescope in January 2012. he detection of B-mode polarization by South pole Telescope
is a major milestone a technical achievement that indicates exciting physics to comesays John Carlstrom distinguished service professor in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
The cosmic microwave background is a sea of photons (light particles) left over from the big bang that pervades all of space at a temperature of minus 270 degrees Celsiusâ##a mere 3 degrees above absolute zero.
Measurements of this ancient light have given already physicists a wealth of knowledge about the properties of the universe.
Light from the cosmic microwave background is polarized mainly due to the scattering of photons off of electrons in the early universe through the same process by
Gravitational lensing it has long been predicted can twist E modes into B modes as photons pass by galaxies and other massive objects on their way toward earth.
To tease out the B modes in their data the scientists used a previously measured map of the distribution of mass in the universe to determine where the gravitational lensing should occur.
The careful study of such B modes will help physicists better understand the universe. The patterns can be used to map out the distribution of mass thereby more accurately defining cosmologically important properties like the masses of neutrinos tiny elementary particles prevalent throughout the cosmos.
Similar more elusive B modes would provide dramatic evidence of inflation the theorized turbulent period in the moments after the big bang
when the universe expanded extremely rapidly. Inflation is regarded a well theory among cosmologists because its predictions agree with observations
but thus far there is not a definitive confirmation of the theory. Measuring B modes generated by inflation is a possible way to alleviate lingering doubt. he detection of a primordial B-mode polarization signal in the microwave background would amount to finding the first tremors of the big bangsays
lead author Duncan Hanson a postdoctoral scientist at Mcgill University. B modes from inflation are caused by gravitational waves.
and squeezing the fabric of the universe would give rise to the telltale twisted polarization patterns of B modes.
and hopefully measure the inflationary B modes underneathhanson says. he lensing signal itself can also be used by itself to learn about the distribution of mass in the universe. ource:
#Noble gas molecule found in remains of exploded star Astronomers have discovered a molecule in space that contains a noble gas.
The find was made using an instrument aboard Europe s Herschel Space observatory. The molecule argon hydride was seen in the crab nebula the remains of a star that exploded 1000 years agothe noble gases
which include helium argon radon and krypton usually do not react easily with other chemical elements
Such chemical compounds have only ever been studied in laboratories On earth leading astronomers to assume the right conditions simply do not occur in space. he crab nebula was formed only 1000 years ago
when a massive star explodedsays Haley Gomez of Cardiff University s School of Physics and Astronomy. ot only is it very young in astronomical terms
but also relatively close at just 6500 light years away providing an excellent way to study what happens in these stellar explosions. ast year we used the European space agency s Herschel Space observatory to study the intricate network of gas filaments to show how exploding stars are creating huge amounts of space dust. urther measurements
of the crab nebula were made using Herschel s SPIRE instrument. Its development and operation was led by Professor Matt Griffin from the School of Physics and Astronomy.
As molecules spin in space they emit light of very specific wavelengths or colors called mission lines. he precise wavelength is dictated by the composition and structure of the molecule.
Studying the emission lines observed by the SPIRE instrument allows astronomers to study the chemistry of outer space.
The team led by Professor Mike Barlow from University college London did not set out to make the discovery
but stumbled upon it almost by accident. e were really concentrating on studying the dust in the filaments with SPIRE
With hot gas still expanding at high speeds after the explosion a supernova remnant is a harsh hot and hostile environment
and one of the places where we least expected to find a noble-gas based molecule. t now seems the crab nebula provides exactly the right conditions to form such molecules.
(or isotope) of argon we discovered in the crab nebulasays Gomez. e now know that it is different from argon we see in rocks on the Earth.
#Craters within crater hint at moonâ#diversity Brown University right Original Studyposted by Kevin Stacey-Brown on December 9 2013 Small craters on the moon that are within one of the largest
craters in the solar system may offer clues as to how the moon formed. A massive impact on the moon about 4 billion years ago left the 2500-mile crater.
Comparing the spectra of light reflected from the peaks of those later craters may yield clues to the composition of the Moon'#lower crust
Data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper that flew aboard India'#Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter shows a diverse mineralogy in the subsurface of the giant South pole Aitken basin.
If that'#true then the South pole Aitken (SPA) basin could hold important information about the Moon'#interior and the evolution of its crust and mantle.
At 2500 kilometers across the SPA is the largest impact basin on the Moon and perhaps the largest in the solar system.
Planets the study looked at smaller craters within the larger SPA basin made by impacts that happened millions of years after the giant impact that formed the basin.
Using Moon Mineralogy Mapper data the researchers looked at the light reflected from each of the four central peaks.
and found significant compositional differences between these central peaks The Moon Mineralogy Mapper has very high spatial and spectral resolution.
We haven'##t really been able to look at the moon in this kind of detail before. he next step is figuring out where that diversity comes from.
If indeed the diversity reflects preexisting material the SPA could hold important clues about the composition of the Moon'#lower crust
and it doesn'##t contain olivine that would have substantial implications for models of how the Moon was formed Moriarty says.
NASA'#Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research (LASER) program and the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) supported the research.
The system can also alter the signature of a cloaked object making it appear bigger smaller or even shifting it in space.
and processing radio-frequency signals are much harder to miniaturizesays project co-leader Kenneth Shepard an electrical engineering professor. hese off-chip components take up a lot of space and electrical power.
#Russian meteor was a wake-up call University of California Davis rightoriginal Studyposted by Andy Fell-UC Davis on November 18 2013consumer video cameras
and advanced laboratory techniques gave scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk Russia in February. f humanity does not want to go the way of the dinosaurs we need to study an event like this in detailsays Qing-zhu Yin professor
in the department of earth and planetary sciences at University of California Davis. Saying it was a ake-up callyin says the Chelyabinsk meteorite the largest strike
since the Tunguska event of 1908 belongs to the most common type of meteorite an rdinary chondrite. f a catastrophic meteorite strike were to occur in the future it would most likely be
an object of this type. ur goal was to understand all circumstances that resulted in the damaging shock wave that sent over 1200 people to hospitals in the Chelyabinsk Oblast area that daysays Peter Jenniskens meteor astronomer at SETI Institute.
Their findings are published in the journal Science. The explosion was equivalent to about 600 thousand tons of TNT 150 times bigger than the 2012 Sutter s Mill meteorite in California.
Based on viewing angles from videos of the fireball researchers calculated that the meteoroid entered Earth s atmosphere at just over 19 kilometers per second slightly faster than had previously been reported. ur meteoroid entry modeling showed that the impact was caused by a 20-meter sized
single chunk of rock that efficiently fragmented at 30 km altitudesays Olga Popova of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
A meteoroid is the original object; a meteor is the hooting starin the sky; and a meteorite is the object that reaches the ground.
The meteor s brightness peaked at an altitude of 29.7 km (18.5 miles) as the object exploded.
For nearby observers it briefly appeared brighter than the sun and caused some severe sunburns.
The team estimated that about three-quarters of the meteoroid evaporated at that point. Most of the rest converted to dust
and only a small fraction (4000 to 6000 kilograms or less than 0. 05 percent) fell to the ground as meteorites.
The dust cloud was so hot it glowed orange. The largest single piece weighing about 650 kilograms was recovered from the bed of Lake Chebarkul in October by a team from Ural Federal University led by Professor Viktor Grokhovsky.
Shockwaves from the airburst broke windows rattled buildings and even knocked people from their feet.
Popova and Jenniskens visited over 50 villages in the area and found that the shockwave caused damage about 90 kilometers (50 miles) on either side of the trajectory.
The object broke up 30 kilometers up under the enormous stress of entering the atmosphere at high speed.
These veins would have weakened the original meteoroid. Yin s laboratory carried out chemical and isotopic analysis of the meteorites and Ken Verosub professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences measured the magnetic properties of metallic grains in the meteorite.
Doug Rowland project scientist in the Center for Molecular and Genomic Imaging in the department of biomedical engineering contributed X-ray computed tomography scanning of the rock.
and that it last went through a significant shock event about 115 million years after the formation of the solar system 4567 million years ago.
Jenniskens calculates the object may have come from the Flora asteroid family in the asteroid belt but the chunk that hit the Chelyabinsk area was broken apparently not up in the asteroid belt itself.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Waseda University in Japan found that the rock had been exposed to cosmic rays for only about 1. 2 million years unusually short for rocks originating in the Flora family.
Chelyabinsk belonged to a bigger ubble pileasteroid that broke apart 1. 2 million years ago possibly in an earlier close encounter with Earth Jenniskens speculates.
The rest of that rubble could still be around as part of the near-earth asteroid population.
Major meteorite strikes like Tunguska or Chelyabinsk occur more frequently than we tend to think Yin says.
For example four tons of material were recovered from a meteor shower in Jilin China in 1976. helyabinsk serves as unique calibration point for high energy meteorite impact events for our future studies. he work was supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences the Office
of the Governor of Chelyabinsk Oblast NASA and the Academy of Finland. Source: University of California Davisyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license i
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