Instruments designed by a UT Dallas professor to measure atmospheric components on the surface of Mars have uncovered important clues about the planet’s atmosphere and climate history.
The findings, published in a recent issue of the journal Scien…
The universe had a period of “Dark Ages,” starting approximately half-a-million years after the Big Bang, and NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has revealed the end of the Dark Ages. “We detected the end of the Dark Ages about 200 million years after the Big Bang,” said Edward L. Wright, professor of astronomy at UCLA, who helped develop key data analysis techniques for WMAP. “There were enough bright stars and quasars at that time to fill the universe with ultraviolet light and a haze of cosmic electrons. This is nearly 700 million years earlier than any of these objects has been seen before. WMAP measurements have enabled us to detect the era when the first stars formed.”
In an effort to help create spacecraft that can think, NASA and a group of six colleges led by Purdue University today are meeting in West Lafayette, Ind., to officially launch the NASA Institute for Nanoelectronics and Computing. Institute scientists and engineers will collaborate to work on methods to make electronics measured in nanometers — much smaller than today’s components. A nanometer is roughly 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Purdue scientists will work with researchers at Northwestern, Cornell and Yale universities, the University of Florida and the University of California at San Diego.