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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All Posts published on »August 12th, 2011«
12 August 1930: Pluto: the new planet
Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 12 August 1930 It would seem all doubts as to the existence of the new planet announced from the Lowell Observatory in March last have been set at rest. Fifteen years ago the late Dr. Percival Lowell published his “Memoir on a Trans Neptunian Planet,” in which he […]
Time need not end in the multiverse
August 12, 2011
GAMBLERS already had enough to think about without factoring the end of time into their calculations. But a year after a group of cosmologists argued that they should, another team says time need not end after all. It all started with this thought experiment. In a back room in a Las Vegas casino, you are handed […]
UFO sighting files released in UK
August 12, 2011
UFO sighting files released in UK The latest batch of UFO files released today contain sightings of mysterious lights over the Glastonbury Festival, a “flying saucer” outside Retford town hall and the bizarre story of “Mork and Mindy’s” visit to East Dulwich. Defence experts were called in to examine a 2004 photo of a “flying […]
Cosmic Exclamation Point
August 12, 2011
VV 340, also known as Arp 302, provides a textbook example of colliding galaxies seen in the early stages of their interaction. The edge-on galaxy near the top of the image is VV 340 North and the face-on galaxy at the bottom of the image is VV 340 South. Millions of years later these two […]
Hubble Offers a Dazzling ‘Necklace’
August 12, 2011
A giant cosmic necklace glows brightly in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. The object, aptly named the Necklace Nebula, is a recently discovered planetary nebula, the glowing remains of an ordinary, Sun-like star. The nebula consists of a bright ring, measuring 12 trillion miles wide, dotted with dense, bright knots of gas that resemble […]
The blackest planet
August 12, 2011
Astronomers uncover alien world so ‘extraordinarily dark’ it makes coal look shiny Astronomers have discovered the darkest known planet. The exoplanet, known as TrES-2b, reflects less than 1 per cent of light, which makes it darker than any other planet or moon. The discovery, detailed in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, […]
Researchers Develop Technique for Dynamically Controlling Plasmonic Airy Beams
August 12, 2011
One of the earliest lessons in science that students learn is that a ray or beam of light travels in a straight line. Students also learn that light rays fan out or diffract as they travel. Recently it was discovered that light rays can travel without diffraction in a curved arc in free space. These […]
August 12, 2011
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