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PhysOrg.com
First images of solar system's invisible frontier NASA's sun-focused STEREO spacecraft unexpectedly detected particles from the edge of the solar system last year, allowing University of California, Berkeley, scientists to map for the first time the energized particles in the region where the hot solar wind slams into the cold interstellar medium. Catch a new planet Is there anybody out there? Could the Universe contain lots of other planets like ours? Are there new worlds yet to be discovered? Physicists create millimeter-sized 'Bohr atom' Nearly a century after Danish physicist Niels Bohr offered his planet-like model of the hydrogen atom, a Rice University-led team of physicists has created giant, millimeter-sized atoms that resemble it more closely than any other experimental realization yet achieved. A bright future for plastics -- robot 'skin,' flexible laptops and electric posters WITH market analysts predicting a ten fold increase in the value of the organic light emitting display industry, from £1.5 billion to £15.5 billion, by 2014, it is no wonder that scientists and governments alike are keen to advance research into "plastic electronics". Oxygen Ions for Fuel Cells Get Loose at Low Temperatures Seeking to understand a new fuel cell material, a research team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with the University of Liverpool, has uncovered a novel structure that moves oxygen ions through the cell at substantially lower temperatures than previously thought possible. The finding announced this month in Nature Materials may be key to solving fuel cell reliability issues and lead to reduced operating costs in high-performance stationary fuel cells. Discovery by UC Riverside physicists could enable development of faster computers Roland Kawakami's lab proposes a simple technique for controlling electron spin and current flow Physicists at UC Riverside have made an accidental discovery in the lab that has potential to change how information in computers can be transported or stored. Dependent on the "spin" of electrons, a property electrons possess that makes them behave like tiny magnets, the discovery could help in the development of spin-based semiconductor technology such as ultrahigh-speed computers. Radio telescopes reveal unseen galactic cannibalism Mystery of black hole 'feeding' resolved Radio-telescope images have revealed previously-unseen galactic cannibalism -- a triggering event that leads to feeding frenzies by gigantic black holes at the cores of galaxies. Astronomers have long suspected that the extra-bright cores of spiral galaxies called Seyfert galaxies are powered by supermassive black holes consuming material. However, they could not see how the material is started on its journey toward the black hole. Newly born identical twin stars show surprising differences The analysis of the youngest pair of identical twin stars yet discovered has revealed surprising differences in brightness, surface temperature and possibly even the size of the two. A Slimmer Milky Way Revealed by New Measurements The Milky Way Galaxy has lost weight. A lot of weight. About a trillion Suns' worth, according to an international team of scientists from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II), whose discovery has broad implications for our understanding of the Milky Way. Scientists Find New Type of Comet Dust Mineral NASA researchers and scientists from the United States, Germany and Japan have found a new mineral in material that likely came from a comet. ... |