Shiveluch volcano has had more than 40 violent eruptions over the last 10,000 years. The last gigantic blast occurred in 1964, creating a new crater and covering an area of nearly 100 square kilometers with pyroclastic flows. But Shiveluch is actually currently erupting, as it has been for over 20 […]
Manuel Grimm is a theoretical physicist at the Paul Scherrer Institute and works on the foundations for building future quantum computers. Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute/Markus Fischer Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have put forward a detailed plan of how faster and better defined quantum bits—qubits—can be created. The […]
On Sunday, January 17th, Virgin Orbit conducted the second launch test of its LauncherOne rocket, which the company will use to deploy small satellites to orbit in the coming years. The mission (Launch Demo 2) went smoothly and validated the company’s delivery system, which consists of the rocket air launching from a […]
ANIMATION Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity profoundly changed our thinking about fundamental concepts in physics, such as space and time. But it also left us with some deep mysteries. One was black holes, which were only unequivocally detected over the past few years. Another was “wormholes” – bridges connecting different points […]
Cleveland Volcano, Aleutian Islands eruption in 2006. Volcanism is one of the main carbon dioxide sources in the long-term carbon cycle balanced by weathering sinks, which, among others, represent important processes included in Komar and Zeebe’s model. Credit: NASA image courtesy Jeff Williams Predictions of future climate change require a […]
An image of the nearby Pleiades star cluster. CfA astronomer Guillermo Torres has completed a detailed eleven-year study of intermediate mass stars in this cluster using SAO’s Fred L. Whipple Observatory Tillinghast facility. Because these stars are rapidly rotating, previous spectroscopic measurements of their motions and properties had been unreliable. […]
A view of the Sun from the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope on ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. Credit: ESA/NASA ANIMATION A theory as to why the Sun’s outer atmosphere differs in its chemical make-up from its inner layers has been confirmed by direct observation for the first time […]
Among the report’s case studies: Africa’s Kariba Dam, the world’s largest man-made reservoir, impounding 181 km³ of water. Almost $300 million was loaned in 2014 to repair the dam, with completion expected by 2023. The report says “Dams like Kariba will likely continue to operate much longer with recurring investments […]
Stanford researcher Ryan Searcy collects water samples from a tide pool at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, in Moss Beach, California. Credit: Meghan Shea Using water samples and environmental data gathered over 48 hours or less, Stanford engineers develop a new predictive technique for forecasting coastal water quality, a critical step […]
An artist’s concept of the Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. Credit: NASA The spacecraft, which has been gathering data on the gas giant since July 2016, will become an explorer of the full Jovian system – Jupiter and its rings and moons. NASA has authorized a mission extension for its Juno spacecraft […]