Space Science Content

The winds of Titan

IET WebDev — December 08, 2014 - 12:00am

As sand dunes march across the Sahara, vast dunes cross the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. New research from a refurbished NASA wind tunnel reveals the physics of how particles move in Titan's methane-laden winds and could help to explain why Titan's dunes form in the way they do. The work is published online Dec. 8 in the journal Nature.

Funds awarded to begin construction of Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

IET WebDev — August 04, 2014 - 3:15pm

The National Science Foundation has agreed to support the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy to manage the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope construction project, with a budget of up to $473 million. The announcement caps more than 10 years of developing, planning and reviewing of the LSST concept.

Does probability come from quantum physics?

IET WebDev — February 05, 2013 - 11:40am

Ever since Austrian scientist Erwin Schrodinger put his unfortunate cat in a box, his fellow physicists have been using something called quantum theory to explain and understand the nature of waves and particles.

But a new paper by physics professor Andreas Albrecht and graduate student Dan Phillips at the University of California, Davis, makes the case that these quantum fluctuations actually are responsible for the probability of all actions, with far-reaching implications for theories of the universe.