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Home / News / Tags / gravity
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Since the famed physicist Albert Einstein devised the General Theory of Relativity, the scientific community has been living a perpetual race to demonstrate it over and over again. Despite decades of confirmations, some experts still want to make sure that Einstein got it right, and that there aren't any excepti... |
13 November 2009
04:48 GMT |
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The standard cosmological model holds that there is a type of matter known as dark matter permeating the Universe, which accounts for the massive discrepancies that exist between how much matter the Universe has, and the amount it should have, according to predictions. Astronomers hypothesized that dark matter should... |
6 November 2009
02:40 GMT |
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The NASA Marshall Space Flight Center is currently taking on a new and difficult task, namely that of producing a lunar lander that is able to, well, land in a place where there is no air. Wings don't do too much good, and propellers are also useless. The only things that could help such a craft safely touch dow... |
16 October 2009
05:45 GMT |
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Since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) started changing the definitions of what planets, asteroids, and dwarf planets looked like, the faith of many large, cosmic objects in the solar system has remained undecided. One such example is the giant rock 2 Pallas, which is, in fact, a protoplanet – a Moon-... |
9 October 2009
06:36 GMT |
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The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite has finally begun transmitting high-quality data from its peculiar, low orbit around the planet. Its ultra-sensitive instruments analyze subtle variations in the Earth's gravitational pull over vario... |
1 October 2009
20:41 GMT |
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Since the European Space Agency (ESA) launched its Earth Explorer program, no results have been obtained. Now that the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite has finally begun its measurements, the first information will start being circulated. The observatory is designed specifica... |
23 September 2009
05:16 GMT |
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An international research effort, made up of scientists from the United Kingdom, Taiwan, and Spain, has recently taken a considerable step forward in furthering the field of photonics research, when it has developed a new, efficient light source for scientific experiments. Photonics is the science of manipulating pho... |
21 September 2009
04:58 GMT |
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Under the new International Astronomical Union (IAU) classification, Pluto and the other larger celestial bodies circling the Sun behind it are dwarf planets. Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake are all considered to be too small to fit the new planetary category. One of the most peculiar such objects is Haumea, a body... |
16 September 2009
02:51 GMT |
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Some 700 light-years away from our solar system, researchers identified two exoplanets, orbiting their parent star, and influencing each other in the process. The star, dubbed HAT-P-13, is orbited by the planets HAT-P-13b and HAT-P-13c, each of which exerts a gravitational pull on the other. Now, scientists plan to u... |
14 September 2009
16:21 GMT |
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According to scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, it may be that magnetic fields play a much more important and decisive role in stellar formation than first anticipated. The conclusion was drawn after the experts made a comparative analysis of turbulences versus magnetic fields. The two phe... |
10 September 2009
10:58 GMT |
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Scientists from the University of Missouri have recently announced that they've created the most precise measurements to date of the curvature of space caused by the Sun's gravity in our solar system. The research was conducted using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLB... |
2 September 2009
05:45 GMT |
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An asteroid impact would be so devastating to our planet, that the survival of life itself on it would be jeopardized. Although, as far as we know now, the threat of that happening in the short term is fairly small, British experts from the Stevenage space company EADS Atrium are currently working on a new spacecraft... |
31 August 2009
10:05 GMT |
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Understanding the delicately balanced “dance” of forces that make a solar system stick together in an orderly fashion has been a long-term goal in astronomy, but difficult to study. This is mostly because we are inside a solar system, therefore it is difficult for us to become outside observers. But a new... |
27 August 2009
01:42 GMT |
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When physicist Albert Einstein first developed his famous Theory of General Relativity (TGR), early in the 20th century, the physics world progressed considerably. The new-found knowledge eventually led to the creation of things such as the GPS network around the Earth, and helped astronomers explain space-time curva... |
25 August 2009
02:56 GMT |
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Scientists gained the ability to peer way back into the Universe's history some time ago, but some of the discoveries they made were not exactly in tune with some of the theories that were developed to explain astronomical phenomena today. In a recent such find, distant stars, estimated to be about 11 billion li... |
6 August 2009
01:03 GMT |
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A new scientific study shows that, during heavy storms, the smaller droplets of water falling from the sky are actually traveling faster than others, and also faster than they should be able to. The find, which scientists say is like discovering the meteorological equivalent of breaking the light-speed barrier, could... |
13 June 2009
03:33 GMT |
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While investigating the skies in search of colliding galaxies, astronomers working with the Subaru telescope, on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, have discovered what amounts to the skid marks left behind by cars before crashing. Debris ejected by two galaxies while approaching each other and during their collision form a path ... |
10 June 2009
16:41 GMT |
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Hollywood movies have always had the talent of inspiring panic where there was usually nothing to fear, and the latest productions are no different, what with the threat of the Vatican being destroyed by antimatter generated at the Large Hadron Collider and all that. Needless to say, the script is pure fantasy, but p... |
29 May 2009
05:52 GMT |
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The GOCE satellite, the first instrument to observe Earth's gravity in its smallest variations, has recently proven that it can fly drag-free in the upper atmosphere. Situated in a free-fall orbit of about 250 kilometers, which is very close to the surface, yet high enough to ensure that no air molecules slow it... |
28 May 2009
15:21 GMT |
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In 2011, the world will see the launching of the new Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) observatory, which is destined to become the first gravity-analysis machine on the Moon. Naturally, experts at NASA already know the force with which the satellite acts on incoming or orbiting spacecraft, and even on... |
8 May 2009
03:08 GMT |
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Over the last 20 years or so, astronomers have been continuously looking for the mysterious dark matter, the force that some believe is the engine of the Universe. The vast majority of astrophysicists consider that the stuff is what drives galaxies into clusters and what keeps them in place, providing a scaffolding o... |
6 May 2009
05:09 GMT |
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The idea that apples might fall from trees differently in the summer and in the winter may seem preposterous, but Indiana University in Bloomington (IUB) Physicist Alan Kostelecky and graduate student Jay Tasson think that the idea may not be so far-fetched. They argue that violations in Newton's law may have ea... |
16 April 2009
19:01 GMT |
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Originally scheduled to be launched on March 16th, the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite was, instead, boosted to orbit on Tuesday, in a launch sequence that culminated in a successful lift-off at 10:21 am EDT (1421 GMT). GOCE's purpose ... |
18 March 2009
02:33 GMT |
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Dubbed “the most beautiful satellite ever built,” the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite is going to launch today, at 1421 GMT, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, in northwestern Russia. The goal of the mission, which has been continuou... |
16 March 2009
05:36 GMT |
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It seems that Canadian mobile phone users will be able to see more devices come to Rogers Wireless' lineup in the near future, besides the LG Secret and Globus, which have already been announced to be heading to the carrier. This time around, we learn that the phone operator in Canada will soon add to its offer... |
23 February 2009
06:59 GMT |
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A team of experts from nine research institutes are going to try to find the “first light” of the Universe over the next 10 years, its starting point, or at least the closest one they can link to it. In truth, they will be looking for very, very faint traces of gravitational waves, which Einstein's t... |
17 February 2009
15:01 GMT |
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For decades, physicists have been hypothesizing about the existence of a fourth dimension, or even a fifth, seventh and a tenth one. But figuring out how each of them works and what holds them together has been no easy task, as proven by the fact that the brightest minds in the field today, which are still working on... |
4 February 2009
02:38 GMT |
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Astronomers managed to establish just recently that the Q0957+561 quasar, also called the twin quasar, doesn't owe its intermittent brightness to possible attractions from celestial bodies around. Instead, the unusual glow comes from the region itself, located approximately 9 billion light-years away from Earth,... |
30 January 2009
13:31 GMT |
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For a long time, astronomers studying the formation of massive stars have been puzzled at how the giant celestial bodies, some 120 times larger than our Sun, can expand without “chasing away” the dust and gas clouds that feed their growth. According to a new theory, this relative stability can be explaine... |
16 January 2009
03:32 GMT |
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Following the latest research results, astronomers concluded, during the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 50 percent heavier than previously thought, and that the speed with which it spins is also much greater than first calculated. The scientists came to th... |
6 January 2009
05:30 GMT |
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Astronaut Greg Chamitoff called the International Space Station (ISS) home for the last 183 days, as he spent an insane amount of time installing Japan's Kibo Laboratory and conducting other tasks, necessary for the crucial operations that go around in Earth's orbit. During this time, he celebrated NASA... |
22 December 2008
08:22 GMT |
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The prevalent concept has it that every 100 million years or so, stars come close enough to our solar system for them to crash on the multitude of objects in the Oort cloud and place them on a course towards our planetary system. But a team of Swedish researchers argued that the rate of the star-created comets is not... |
12 December 2008
10:11 GMT |
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Many experts have voiced their concerns related to the fact that we might know more about the Moon than about the Earth's oceans. Of course, by extrapolation, Earth is less familiar to us than it should be, and perhaps this has perpetuated lately neglectfulness as the source of so much trouble. Here are just a c... |
25 November 2008
18:01 GMT |
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Since 1973, special airplanes dubbed “Vomit comets” (easy to figure out why) or, more nicely and officially, “Weightless wonders” help science by providing zero gravitation environments identical to those inside spacecraft. This is achieved via a special flight cycle comprised of abrupt 45°... |
12 November 2008
06:26 GMT |
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Black holes are definitely the most fascinating aspect in the vastness of space, even if we don't know an awful lot about them. Actually, we don't even know whether they really exist or not yet, but theory says they should exist; otherwise, some things that are known to happen would be even weirder. But out... |
1 November 2008
06:31 GMT |
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Recent studies show that the human brain has very sophisticated mechanisms in place to control our movements. In order to minimize the amounts of energy a regular downwards arm movements would need, the brain becomes aware of gravity and, instead of tightening the muscles, it rather lets the whole arm fall down, with... |
24 October 2008
11:08 GMT |
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The two objects in the Kuiper Belt (the icy ring at the edge of our solar system, 6 billion km away from Earth) share a common name, 2001 QW322. They orbit each other in what appears to be the faintest reciprocal influence of two celestial bodies in our system, and they have been doing so for billions of years, whic... |
21 October 2008
07:47 GMT |
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Mars has 2 small natural satellites in its orbit – Phobos (“fear”), the smaller, innermost, faster-orbiting one, and Deimos (“dread”), the larger, slower one, found on a less proximal orbit. Recent observations of the former indicate that it does not present the features of a compact sp... |
21 October 2008
05:19 GMT |
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A recent study indicates that the top speed stars in our own galaxy may have been assimilated after being ejected from a dwarf one that merged with the Milky Way. This kind of stars are dubbed “hypervelocity” stars, and were mostly believed to be originating from our galaxy's core, from where th... |
15 October 2008
03:31 GMT |
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Barred galaxies, having two arms trailing each other on either side of the galactic center, might have evolved in this particular shape with the passing of time, say astronomers who discovered that, compared to the first half of the universe's past, currently there are three times more galaxies that have bars. M... |
30 July 2008
02:52 GMT |
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If an asteroid were to be discovered tomorrow and proven that it would impact the Earth in less than a week, we wouldn't be able to do much to prevent this from happening. All we can do so far is hope that such events do not occur any time soon. Deflecting asteroids from a possible Earth-threatening trajectory m... |
29 July 2008
09:40 GMT |
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There are numerous comets orbiting through the inner solar system, but where this huge amount of objects comes from is largely unknown. Now astronomers have suggested that many short orbit comets could in fact be fragments of much larger objects that break up into multiple pieces as they enter the inner solar system ... |
28 July 2008
06:05 GMT |
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The worst place where a star could grow is in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, as powerful gravitational fields exerted by the latter prevent the clouds of gas to condense into objects such as our Sun. However, astronomers have recently discovered that young stars do form near the center of our galaxy, insi... |
24 July 2008
04:15 GMT |
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It's not often that astronomers find asteroids made out of a single massive piece, but rather containing two or more objects loosely bound together or orbiting each other, tumbling through the immensity of space. The cause to this particularity remained a subject of debate for a long time, although now a new stu... |
10 July 2008
05:41 GMT |
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By making observations on a binary system of pulsars a team of researchers from the McGill University in Montreal measured for the first time the spin precession of a celestial body located outside the solar system. Pulsars are a type of neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, emitting electromagnetic radiation th... |
4 July 2008
04:01 GMT |
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Black holes produce gravitational fields so powerful that they are able to shape space-time around them. However, what shape that particular volume of space surrounding the black hole might take under the influence of such an extreme gravitational field is unknown, as are the effects that might produce the powerful m... |
2 July 2008
05:28 GMT |
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The exact opposite of matter, antimatter, has been known to exist for decades now, although how it behaves in the presence of a gravitational field remains mostly unknown even though countless experiments have been conducted over the years. Each particle described in the Standard Model has its own antiparticle counte... |
12 June 2008
06:52 GMT |
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Space sickness, or the Space Adaptation Syndrome, is experienced by astronauts while transitioning from a gravitational field to another, such as during space travel. Although it only lasts for the first few days of the space trip, space sickness can also affect experienced astronauts even after a long period of time... |
23 May 2008
04:37 GMT |
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In the 1970s Stephen Hawking showed that singularities, and therefore black holes, can exist in our space-time continuum. He also revealed that although black holes radiate mass and energy in the surrounding medium through the event horizon, information falling into a black hole would be lost forever, meaning that ma... |
15 May 2008
04:38 GMT |
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Lunar dust is now probably one of the biggest issues considered in the event of a future manned mission to the surface of the Moon. It is a highly abrasive fine powder covering the whole surface of the Moon, it can easily get stuck to equipment and spacesuits and it can even get into tight spaces, such as joints, and... |
14 May 2008
04:44 GMT |
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