ESA's Planetary Defence team The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has approved the naming of ten asteroids – and one comet – after people and places linked to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) efforts to protect…
Sensing harmful molecules with light
Ultra-sensitive devices are being developed to detect biological and chemical compounds. [caption id="attachment_11787" align="alignnone" width="1121"] Light waves that travel on insulating or dielectric materials such as glass can increase the sensitivity of optical sensors and…
Yellow fever killing thousands of monkeys in Brazil
[caption id="attachment_11783" align="alignnone" width="631"] Muriqui monkeys in a federally-protected reserve in southeastern Brazil, called RPPN Feliciano Miguel Abdala. UW–Madison Professor Karen Strier has studied the critically-endangered muriqui monkeys in this patch of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest…
Hand-held X-ray sources
Electronic oscillations in graphene could make a tabletop—or even handheld— source of X-rays a reality. [caption id="attachment_11779" align="alignright" width="212"] A free electron ‘wiggled’ by graphene plasmons emits an X-ray pulse. Credit : A*STAR Singapore Institute…
Dissection of the 2015 Bonin deep earthquake
Researchers at Tohoku University's Department of Geophysics, have been studying the deep earthquake which occurred on May 30, 2015, to the west of Japan's Bonin Islands. [caption id="attachment_11771" align="alignnone" width="637"] Figure 1. (a, b) The…