Hanny van Arkel was poring over photos of galaxies on the Internet in August 2007 when she stumbled across a strange object in the night sky: a bright, gaseous mass with a gaping hole in its middle.
Imagine being able to convert water into a boundless source of cheap energy. That's what BlackLight Power, a 25-employee firm in Cranbury, N.J., says it can do. The only problem: Most scientists say that company's technology violates the basic laws of physics.
"Attracted by your gravity, your body's so compact / Pulling me inward, prepare for close contact," Boston University astronomer Alan Marscher sings in his song about a deep-space object known as a black hole.
Visiting a particle accelerator is like a religious experience, at least for Nima Arkani-Hamed.
A giant accelerator searches for a tiny and elusive particle that is key to understanding the origins of the universe
The father of a theoretical subatomic particle dubbed "the God particle" says he's almost sure it will be confirmed in the next year in a race between powerful research equipment in the United States and Europe
Queues ... the endless airport queues are the bane of any frequent flier's life. If they were not bad enough at check-in, security and the boarding gate, when you get to the plane there's more to come as passengers cram bags in lockers, maneuver kids or struggle into window seats.
If you know a secret the rest of the world doesn't, it can drive you nuts. From dealing with little white lies to exposing a sexual harasser, consider how, when -- and when not -- to let the cat out of the bag.
Admit it -- at one point or another we've all dreamed of being able to teleport. How much easier and less stressful life would be if, at the flick of a switch, we could whisk ourselves direct from home to work without the intervening two hours crushed onto public transport, face wedged into the armpit of a man with a sweat gland problem.
Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there.
Hanny van Arkel was poring over photos of galaxies on the Internet in August 2007 when she stumbled across a strange object in the night sky: a bright, gaseous mass with a gaping hole in its middle.
Imagine being able to convert water into a boundless source of cheap energy. That's what BlackLight Power, a 25-employee firm in Cranbury, N.J., says it can do. The only problem: Most scientists say that company's technology violates the basic laws of physics.
"Attracted by your gravity, your body's so compact / Pulling me inward, prepare for close contact," Boston University astronomer Alan Marscher sings in his song about a deep-space object known as a black hole.
Visiting a particle accelerator is like a religious experience, at least for Nima Arkani-Hamed.
A giant accelerator searches for a tiny and elusive particle that is key to understanding the origins of the universe
The father of a theoretical subatomic particle dubbed "the God particle" says he's almost sure it will be confirmed in the next year in a race between powerful research equipment in the United States and Europe
Queues ... the endless airport queues are the bane of any frequent flier's life. If they were not bad enough at check-in, security and the boarding gate, when you get to the plane there's more to come as passengers cram bags in lockers, maneuver kids or struggle into window seats.
If you know a secret the rest of the world doesn't, it can drive you nuts. From dealing with little white lies to exposing a sexual harasser, consider how, when -- and when not -- to let the cat out of the bag.
Admit it -- at one point or another we've all dreamed of being able to teleport. How much easier and less stressful life would be if, at the flick of a switch, we could whisk ourselves direct from home to work without the intervening two hours crushed onto public transport, face wedged into the armpit of a man with a sweat gland problem.
Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there.
1. Dumb as a limestone brick: Indiana's misguided bid for tourists
Last December, a colossal wave swept across the entire solar surface within minutes, bulldozing everything in its path. The rare tsunami-like shockwave formed on the heels of a major flare that erupted from an Earth-size sunspot 15 minutes earlier.
Scientists have just released images of the brightest stellar explosion recorded.
Bruce Willis did it, with the aid of a large plastic tube and a set of bellows, in "Twelve Monkeys;" Michael J. Fox did it -- three times -- in the "Back to the Future" series; the crew of the Starship Enterprise can't stop doing it (at least 14 times in television episodes alone); while as the "Terminator" Arnold Schwarzenegger also gave it a go, albeit stark naked.
Streams of glittering stellar gems on the outer edges of Andromeda are remnants of an ancient galactic collision that helped shape the spiral galaxy.
The discovery of three distant supermassive black holes in proximity to one another is giving astronomers a glimpse into the chaotic early years of the universe.
Space weather forecasters revised their predictions for storminess after a major flare erupted on the sun overnight threatening damage to communication systems and power grids while offering up the wonder of Northern Lights.
The European Union, along with six other nations have signed a €10 billion (US$12.8 billion) pact to build the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactor aimed at developing a cheaper, cleaner and safer energy source to replace fossil fuels. We tell you what you need to know about the deal.
In a cosmic-sized cavern 100 meters beneath the French-Swiss border, scientists from around the globe are making final preparations for the largest experiment the world has ever seen in an attempt to unearth the origins of the Universe.
"What use could this company make of an electrical toy?"
It's called a gantry, and it's downright eerie. An assemblage of steel and cables mounted some 16 feet above the floor of a concrete chamber, it's more than 30 feet in length and width, with ends bracketed by 17-foot steel wheels resting on double rollers. The gantry weighs 190 tons, about as much as a diesel locomotive, but when it begins to revolve there is neither creak nor hum. As it rolls counterclockwise a bit past the halfway point, stops, returns to center, and then rotates the other way, it could be a "Star Wars" battle cruiser maneuvering soundlessly in space.
Instead of being perfectly round like a globe, the universe might be a bit stretched in shape like a pill.
The Disruptor: NanoLife Sciences
New observations of a great big cosmic collision provide the best evidence yet that invisible and mysterious dark matter really does exist.
When the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, opens next year near Geneva, the focal point of the high-energy physics world will shift from U.S. soil for the first time in half a century. But America's brightest are busy devising a rescue plan.
She awakes early on the morning of April 10, 2030, in the capable hands of her suburban Chicago apartment. All night, microscopic sensors in her bedside tables have monitored her breathing, heart r...
She awakes early on the morning of April 10, 2030, in the capable hands of her suburban Chicago apartment. All night, microscopic sensors in her bedside tables have monitored her breathing, heart rate, and brain activity.
In February, a faint star a few thousand light-years away flared suddenly, beaming so brightly that for a few days it was visible to the naked eye.
Until recently, black holes have remained hidden beneath invisibility cloaks. Whereas a lot has been known about the existence and properties of black holes from Einstein's theory of general relativity, tangible evidence has been a recent phenomenon.
A new study finds that supermassive black holes, located at the heart of some galaxies, are the most fuel efficient engines in the universe.
Two supermassive black holes have been found to be spiraling toward a merger, astronomers said today.
The Hubble Space Telescope has caught the most detailed view of the Crab Nebula, revealing the intricate epitaph of a long-dead star.
Had he followed in his mother's footsteps, Dr. Herman D. Suit might today be breaking horses. But long ago, he traded the wide open, dusty plains of west Texas for the narrow brick canyons of Boston's West End and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
It is a century since Albert Einstein laid the foundations of modern physics, and 50 years since the death of the man considered by many to have possessed the greatest mind in science.
New research suggests evidence of dark energy in our cosmic backyard, but theorists are still divided on explanations for the ever-increasing speed with which the universe is expanding.
Astronomers have discovered an invisible galaxy that could be the first of many that will help unravel one of the universe's greatest mysteries.
A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.
If a magnetar flew past Earth within 100,000 miles, the intense magnetic field of the exotic object would destroy the data on every credit card on the planet.
If you're light, it's fairly easy to travel at your own speed -- that is to say 186,282 miles per second or 299,800 kilometers per second.
The largest explosion ever seen in space reveals black holes to be more influential than expected, perhaps sometimes stifling star formation in a galaxy while gobbling up trillions upon trillions of tons of gas.
A pocket of near-Earth space tucked between radiation belts gets flooded with charged particles during massive solar storms, shattering the illusion it was a safe place for satellites.
Incredibly massive black holes had fully matured just a billion years after the birth of the universe, according to two separate studies.
Earth's spin warps space around the planet, according to a new study that confirms a key prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
There has been a tremendous amount of interest lately in Albert Einstein, on the event of the 100th anniversary of the publication of his important paper on Brownian motion, which proves the existe...
Astronomers have found what they are calling the perfect cosmic storm, a galaxy cluster pile-up so powerful its energy output is second only to the Big Bang.
While the exploration of the moon and other planets in our solar system is exciting, the first task for astronauts and robots alike is to actually get to those destinations.
The most powerful modern computers are no match for Mother Nature. Those silicon weaklings can hardly predict the weather, let alone mimic the workings of the human brain. Give them a task as simpl...
One summer day in 1985, not that long before he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for a device he had invented five years earlier for seeing atoms, known as a scanning tunneling microscope, IBM sci...
Startled astronomers peered through an apparent crack in the expanding bubble from an exploded star to glimpse what may be the youngest black hole ever detected.
Astronomers have found what appears to be a black hole 25 to 40 times the mass of our sun, a weight class not previously known to exist.
Ah, the legendary romance of winemaking. Apple-cheeked peasant girls treading grapes under a harvest moon. Intimate tastings. And, of course, multispectral imaging and neutron probes. Huh?
European researchers have found 30 previously hidden supermassive black holes anchoring faraway galaxies, which suggests there at least twice as many of the colossal gravity wells as thought.
As galaxies go, Andromeda IX is a mighty dim bulb.
The Chandra Space Telescope has gathered further evidence the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, scientists at NASA and Britain's Institute of Astronomy announced Tuesday. The finding sheds new light on a force known as "dark energy."
Nanotechnology is often mentioned as the tool that will dramatically alter the future.
For more than a quarter century, researcher Jill Tarter has sought to solve a mystery that has long intrigued scientists and science-fiction buffs: Are we alone in the universe?
Fantastic collisions between two massive stars huddled in a cluster could fuel a series of mergers creating a black hole known as a middleweight.
A new survey of stars near the sun reveals a wild and crazy past in which wanderers arrived from all directions under the gravitational influences of black holes, clouds of gas and invading galaxies.
Using a new technique astronomers have found 10 apparent black holes near the center of the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large spiral galaxy to our own.
Black holes may not be the smooth, featureless gravitational gluttons long thought to completely devour any matter or information that strays too close.
Scientists have obtained a rare glimpse of the chaotic environment just miles from the surface of an explosive corpse of a star that is slowly consuming its companion.
Black holes will eat just about anything, and now astronomers have confirmed that stars are on their menus.
Science-fiction fans may feel they already know about "holographic storage," having witnessed Princess Leia's desperate, recorded plea to Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. Alas, that's not quite the use...
One day last August a U.S. Customs inspector in Miami studying an X-ray image of a cargo container just in from the Middle East saw something that gave him pause. The image, made as part of a routi...
It starts as a glass cylinder of unimaginable purity, formed by heating an exotic blend of silica and germania to temperatures exceeding 1,200 degrees centigrade. This mother lode--shaped like a gi...
Bell Labs gave birth to the transistor. And the laser. And motion pictures. And long-range TV broadcasts. And real-time language translation. And on and on, so that over time this venerable institu...
So you want to play in the scorching-hot optical networking space? Here's a suggestion from Merrill Lynch's crew: "Tighten up your seat belts, keep a paper bag handy and hang on for the ride." That...
Never has industry had a greater stake in the process of inventing and producing materials that are the flesh of new technology. Stuff like semiconductors, optical fibers, metallic alloys, and poly...
Back in September, amid great fanfare, Qwest Communications finished laying the last of its 18,500-mile fiber-optic network crisscrossing the continental U.S. Five years ago, when Qwest started the...
Hey! Guess what those wild and crazy Microsoft geeks in Redmond,Wash., are working on now? Statistical physics! Pretty cool, huh?
No one likes to think about a stock market correction. And maybe no one has to for now; after all, the law of inertia, a.k.a. Newton's first law of motion, says objects in motion tend to stay in mo...
In a dimly lit operating room at the Thompson Cancer Survival Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, a surgeon uses an endoscope to guide an optical fiber down the throat of a patient afflicted with cance...
Want to know where General Sullivan, the Army's top man, gets the ideas that will drive today's fighting force into the future? Consider broccoli. Examine this often reviled vegetable closely and d...
THE BOTTOM LINE of all the hullabaloo over whether cellular phones cause brain cancer: Nobody knows. Why not? Because -- as with electromagnetic radiation from other sources like video display term...
Remember B. Stanley Pons, a former professor at the University of Utah, and his British collaborator, Martin Fleischmann? In 1989 they claimed to have produced cold fusion in a jar, potentially ope...
SOMETIMES THE U.S. underestimates its own strength. In this age of increasing global competition, American science still sets the pace. According to the National Science Foundation, Americans inves...
We all think we know about the computer revolution. But not many of us understand how it happened -- that it resulted from discoveries about the very essence of matter, profound revelations that mo...
WHY IS this scientist smiling? Because he may have won a small prize in the cold fusion lottery. No, not those $25 boxes of pennies -- the pennies are there to shield his instruments from any gamma...
Just when the fever over superconductivity had begun to cool, an acrimonious dispute has broken out that has the circuits sizzling. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is grappling with the questi...
WHAT you're seeing in the photograph at right is a practical embodiment of one of man's most brilliant intellectual achievements. The tiny semiconductor laser in the palm of the scientist's hand is...
SCIENCE HAS CREATED few things with as many potential uses as the laser. This eerie beam of light, needle-thin and purer than anything found in nature, can be made to glow hotter than the surface o...
RARELY DO conventional people produce innovation in business or technology. Almost invariably, innovators have a wild gleam in their eye, metaphorically if not literally -- and they can be a real h...
SCIENCE BESPEAKS power, both military and economic. The U.S. has long had the most productive scientific establishment in the world: Since the explosion of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico d...
WHEN AT&T was broken up on January 1, 1984, admirers of Ma Bell's deep commitment to research wondered about the fate of AT&T Bell Laboratories -- the great American invention factory. Bell Labs ha...
TWO PHYSICISTS, working in a modest Swiss hilltop laboratory in 1986, made a breakthrough that may change the world. They discovered how to give certain substances properties that could make possib...
AFTER MONTHS of rising excitement, the big breakthrough came in May at IBM's sleekly sinuous Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. Scientists had been making astoundingly ...
LEVINE. Boesky. Siegel. Wall Street's gallery of rogues keeps growing, with every indication of more to come. But while the financial community waits nervously for the next insider trading scandal ...
A superconductor developed by physicists at the University of Houston and the University of Alabama in Huntsville promises eventually to reshape the electric utility, railroad, and medical diagnost...
IN THE AGE of large-scale science, when research goals become national priorities and individual laboratory budgets can surpass the billion-dollar mark, the lone scientist still plays a central rol...
IN THE HEADLONG RUSH of high technology, the driving force has been the computer and everything connected with it -- semiconductor chips, robots, telecommunications. By the year 2000 the electronic...
WHERE ARE SCIENCE and technology heading between now and the dawn of the 21st century? All indications are that the biggest advances over the next 15 years or so will come in two fields -- physics ...
ONCE IN A WHILE, a material comes along that's made to order to meet the needs of a new generation of technology. Silicon, an excellent conductor of electrons when properly processed, has powered t...
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