Category Astronomy/Space

Qingkun Liu, a postdoctoral research associate at CU Boulder, holds up samples of a new gel that could improve the energy efficiency of windows across the United States.
Credit: CU Boulder

A new, super-insulating gel developed by researchers at CU Boulder could dramatically increase the energy efficiency of skyscrapers and other buildings, and might one day help scientists build greenhouse-like habitats for colonists on Mars. The “aerogel,” which looks like a flattened plastic contact lens, is so resistant to heat that you could put a strip of it on your hand and a fire on top without feeling a thing. But unlike similar products on the market, the material is mostly transparent.

“Transparency is an enabling feature because you can use this gel in windows, and you could use it in extraterres...

The United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket is seen in this long exposure photograph as it launches NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to touch the Sun, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2018 from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Parker Solar Probe is humanity’s first-ever mission into the corona to explore solar processes key to forecasting space weather events that can impact life on Earth.
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Hours before the rise of the very star it will study, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched from Florida Sunday to begin its journey to the Sun, where it will undertake a landmark mission. The spacecraft will transmit its first science observations in December, beginning a revolution in our understanding of the star that makes life on Earth possible.

Roughly the size ...

The artistic representation illustrates a measurement of a beam in a particle accelerator, demonstrating the beam’s structural complexity increases when measured in progressively higher dimensions. Each increase in dimension reveals information that was previously hidden.
Credit: ORNL/Jill Hemman

The first full characterization measurement of an accelerator beam in six dimensions will advance the understanding and performance of current and planned accelerators around the world. A team of researchers led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville conducted the measurement in a beam test facility at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory using a replica of the Spallation Neutron Source’s linear accelerator, or linac...

This deep image of the area of sky around the elliptical galaxy NGC 5018 offers a spectacular view of its tenuous streams of stars and gas. These delicate features are hallmarks of galactic interactions, and provide vital clues to the structure and dynamics of early-type galaxies.
Credit: ESO/Spavone et al.

A glittering host of galaxies populate this rich image taken with ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope, a state-of-the-art 2.6-m telescope designed for surveying the sky in visible light. The features of the multitude of galaxies strewn across the image allow astronomers to uncover the most delicate details of galactic structure.

Whereas ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) can observe very faint astronomical objects in great detail, when astronomers want to understand how the huge variety of galaxies...