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Scientists watch realtime ‘movie’ of neutron star explosion

Scientists in Canada and at NASA have captured unprecedented details of the swirling flow of gas hovering just a few miles from the surface of a neutron star, itself a sphere only about ten miles across. The researchers present this result in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The observation provides new insight into the flow of a neutron star’s (and perhaps a black hole’s) “accretion disk,” usually far too minute to resolve with even the most powerful telescopes.

Giant Black Hole Rips Apart Unlucky Star

Thanks to two orbiting X-ray observatories, astronomers have the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole ripping apart a star and consuming a portion of it. The event, captured by NASA’s Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray Observatories, had long been predicted by theory, but never confirmed. Astronomers believe a doomed star came too close to a giant black hole after being thrown off course by a close encounter with another star.

Hubble, Keck find farthest known galaxy in Universe

An international team of astronomers may have set a new record in discovering what is the most distant known galaxy in the Universe. Located an estimated 13 billion light-years away, the object is being viewed at a time only 750 million years after the big bang, when the Universe was barely 5 percent of its current age. The primeval galaxy was identified by combining the power of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and CARA’s W. M. Keck Telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These great observatories got a boost from the added magnification of a natural ‘cosmic gravitational lens’ in space that further amplifies the brightness of the distant object.

Nanoproperties in Selenium Produced By Bacteria

Working at the nexus of biology and nanotechnology, researchers have released findings that could lead to the tailoring of bacterial processes for a host of smaller, faster semiconductors and other electronic devices. The scientists reported that three different kinds of common bacteria grow the element selenium in the form of uniform nanospheres. The nanoscopic balls exhibit vastly different properties than selenium that is found as a trace mineral in topsoil.

European space lander seeks to unlock secrets of universe

With just 21 days until the launch of the European Space Agency’s ESA Rosetta comet mission, the spacecraft’s lander has been named “Philae” by a 15 year-old Italian girl. Rosetta will embark on a 10 year journey to Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Kourou, French Guiana on 26th February 2004. Philae is the island in the river Nile on which an obelisk was found that had a bilingual inscription including the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs. This provided the French historian Jean-Francois Champollion with the final clues that allowed him to translate the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone and unlock the secrets of the civilisation of ancient Egypt.

Planet Found to Have Oxygen, Carbon in Atmosphere

The well-known extrasolar planet HD 209458b, provisionally nicknamed ‘Osiris’, has surprised astronomers again. Oxygen and carbon have been found in its atmosphere, evaporating at such an immense rate that the existence of a new class of extrasolar planets ? ‘the chthonian planets’ or ‘dead’ cores of completely evaporated gas giants – has been proposed.

Astronomers unravel a mystery of the Dark Ages

Scientists believe they have discovered the cause of crop failures and summer frosts some 1,500 years ago ? a comet colliding with Earth. The team has been studying evidence from tree rings, which suggests that the Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter. The scientists believe this was caused by a comet hitting the earth and exploding in the upper atmosphere. The debris from this giant explosion was such that it enveloped the earth in soot and ash, blocking out the sunlight and causing the very cold weather.

Researchers create lung cancer ‘cluster bombs’

The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker may be more famous, but the pharmacist, the engineer, and the doctor may be onto something big. The latter group has combined resources and knowledge to create a novel way to deliver a new lung cancer treatment. The new system, which uses “nanoparticle cluster bombs,” has proven effective in treating cancerous lung cells in vitro (in a petri dish), it was reported today in the International Journal of Pharmaceuticals. The research team from the University of Alberta will conduct in vivo tests (in live specimens) early this year, with plans for clinical trials to follow.

NASA names Martian hills after fallen Apollo astronauts

NASA memorialized the Apollo 1 crew — Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee — by dedicating the hills surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit’s landing site to the astronauts. The crew of Apollo 1 perished in flash fire during a launch pad test of their Apollo spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., 37 years ago today. “Through recorded history explorers have had both the honor and responsibility of naming significant landmarks,” said NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe. “Gus, Ed and Roger’s contributions, as much as their sacrifice, helped make our giant leap for mankind possible.”