Category Astronomy/Space

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles present research on a curious cosmic phenomenon known as “whistlers” — very low frequency packets of radio waves that race along magnetic field lines. Appearing in the Physics of Plasmas, the study provides new insights into the nature of whistlers and space plasmas and could one day aid in the development of practical plasma technologies with magnetic fields, including spacecraft thrusters that use charged particles as fuel. This image shows the growth of a whistler mode with circular phase front and cross-field propagation.

A new study sheds light on how ultralow frequency radio waves and plasmas interact...

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...