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Category: space – Page 775

Artificial solid fog material creates pleasant laser light

With a porosity of 99.99 %, it consists practically only of air, making it one of the lightest materials in the world: Aerobornitride is the name of the material developed by an international research team led by Kiel University. The scientists assume that they have thereby created a central basis for bringing laser light into a broad application range. Based on a boron-nitrogen compound, they developed a special three-dimensional nanostructure that scatters light very strongly and hardly absorbs it. Irradiated with a laser, the material emits uniform lighting, which, depending on the type of laser, is much more efficient and powerful than LED light. Thus, lamps for car headlights, projectors or room lighting with laser light could become smaller and brighter in the future. The research team presents their results in the current issue of the renowned journal Nature Communications, which was published today.

More light in the smallest space

In research and industry, has long been considered the “next generation” of light sources that could even exceed the efficiency of LEDs (light-emitting diode). “For very bright or a lot of light, you need a large number of LEDs and thus space. But the same amount of light could also be obtained with a single diode that is one-thousandth smaller,” Dr. Fabian Schütt emphasizes the potential. The materials scientist from the working group “Functional Nanomaterials” at Kiel University is the first author of the study, which involves other researchers from Germany, England, Italy, Denmark and South Korea.

What quarantine is like for an astronaut

People around the world are currently isolating themselves or in a formal quarantine to prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. But for decades, astronauts have been quarantined to ensure that they were virus-free and ready to fly (or, in the case of Apollo, to make sure they didn’t bring home any “moon bugs.”)

This quarantine period “ensures that they aren’t sick or incubating an illness when they get to the space station,” NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean told Space.com.

Astronomers determine chemical composition of a nearby stellar stream

Stellar streams are long, thin filaments of orbiting galaxies, produced by the stretching action of tidal forces. For astronomers, observation of these structures could be crucial to test various galaxy formation models.

Located most likely some 420 light-years away in the Milky Way’s disk, Pisces–Eridanus (or Psc–Eri for short) is a cylindrically shaped stream of almost 1,400 identified stars distributed across about 2,300 light-years. Due to its relative proximity and , it is perceived as an excellent laboratory to study and test theories of chemical and dynamical evolution of stellar systems.

An Earth-sized exoplanet found with a star that zooms *way* up and down in the Milky Way

I frankly think this of exotic species unknown but it has exotic movement.

With over 4,000 exoplanets found so far, it takes a particularly interesting one to stand out.

LHS 1815b literally does that. While most planet-bearing stars we find orbit the Milky Way in the plane of its disk, this planet’s host star’s orbit takes it well out of that plane, flying way up over the galaxy and way down below it over time, giving it a pretty interesting view of our galaxy.

First, the planet: It was found in TESS data, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. This mission is surveying the entire sky, looking for planets around brighter stars. These tend to be closer to us, so TESS is finding planets that are in our neighborhood, galactically speaking.

The golden age of neutron-star physics has arrived

Astronomers know that much about how neutron stars are born. Yet exactly what happens afterwards, inside these ultra-dense cores, remains a mystery. Some researchers theorize that neutrons might dominate all the way down to the centre. Others hypothesize that the incredible pressure compacts the material into more exotic particles or states that squish and deform in unusual ways.

Now, after decades of speculation, researchers are getting closer to solving the enigma, in part thanks to an instrument on the International Space Station called the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER).

These stellar remnants are some of the Universe’s most enigmatic objects — and they are finally starting to give up their secrets.