Bright Nova Missed by Astronomers Spotted by XMM-Newton
	Yet another exploding star was discovered in the Milky Way galaxy by Europe's X-ray space observatory, XMM-Newton, during a slew survey. It should have been spotted several days before the actual discovery by the thousands of astronomers throughout the world. According to estimations, the event should have been easily visible with the naked eye as it was one of the brightest nova events in the last decade. Somehow, nobody saw it. W ... [read more >>]
	19 July 2008, 04:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Weighing Supermassive Black Holes with Light
	The weight of supermassive black holes found in the center of galaxies is usually estimated by measuring the effects of the huge gravitational fields on the objects located in the vicinity of the black holes in question. Now, a new and precise weighing method developed at the University of California with the help of data provided by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, estimates the mass of supermassive black holes simply by measuring t ... [read more >>]
	17 July 2008, 11:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

X-ray Could Help Predict Lightning Strikes
	A new breakthrough in the dynamics of lightning has recently revealed the source of X-ray light emitted moments before the lightning strikes and could help in the near future advance the methods used to predict the moment and location where these phenomena occur. "From a practical point of view, if we are going to ever be able to predict when and where lightning will strike, we need to first understand how lightning moves from one ... [read more >>]
	17 July 2008, 07:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Study Shows Why Apples Rot Slower than Pears
	So what is really the cause of apples remaining healthier than pears for a much longer time after being picked up? Scientists argue that it all has to do with oxygen and the way it behaves in order to reach the center of the fruit. By using one of the most powerful light sources in the world, Pieter Verboven of the Catholic University of Leuven proved that pears as well as apples contain pores and channels that help carry oxygen inside the ... [read more >>]
	12 July 2008, 07:15GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Future Space Mission Could Study the Weird Space Surrounding Black Holes
	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 magnetic field generated by a magnetar. Imaging the gravitational or magnetic field of such objects is basically impossible, n ... [read more >>]
	02 July 2008, 05:28GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Forgotten Galaxy Found to Be Supernova Remnant in Milky Way
	When it was first discovered in the 1980s the deceptive shape of the object known as G350.1-0.3 indicated that it was most likely a background galaxy. Since nobody ever bothered to study it more closely, the object remained forgotten until recently when observations with ESA XMM-Newton X-ray Space Observatory revealed a shocking discovery. Not only that G350.1-0.3 is not a galaxy, but it is also one of the brightest and youngest supernova ... [read more >>]
	11 June 2008, 05:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New X-ray Nanomirror Developed at MIT
	Investigations in the X-ray spectrum are critical for astronomers, especially in studying extremely violent interactions produced by black holes, neutron stars and dark energy. The problem with X-ray light is that it’s hard to collect since most of the X-ray sources in the sky are very faint, not to mention that ground based observations in this spectrum are totally disabled by the fact that Earth's atmosphere is mostly opaque to X-ra ... [read more >>]
	10 June 2008, 06:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Egypt Wants DNA Test to Identify Pharaoh Mummy
	This is the second time Egypt conducts DNA tests in order to identify the mummy of an important pharaoh. Last year, the Egyptian authorities carried out a test involving the mummy of a female believed to be Queen Hatshepsut, but the results have never been disclosed. This time the 3,500 year old mummy of what experts believe to be the remains of one of the most important pharaohs in the history of Egypt, King Thutmose I, will be subjected ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2008, 04:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

SRON Team Finds Mysterious Magnetar
	The star was in fact known for a long time to be a magnetar, albeit SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research astronomers have only recently discovered that it emits a strange high energy X-ray beam, sweeping across the surrounding medium as the star revolves around its axis. "I was looking for new sources of high energy X-rays on a celestial chart, made using the space telescope INTEGRAL. To our surprise, at the edg ... [read more >>]
	22 May 2008, 11:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Supernova Explosion Captured Live
	On January 9, researchers from Princeton University pointed NASA's Swift satellite in the direction of the NGC 2770 galaxy, hopping to the see afterglow of a supernova explosion known as SN 2007uy, which had occurred only one month before. Instead, the team got a struck of luck and captured a five minute X-ray burst, emitted by a new supernova explosion taking place just before their eyes. "For years we have dreamed of seeing ... [read more >>]
	22 May 2008, 03:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Brightest Burst in the Universe Caused by a Humble Red Dwarf
	On April 25, a red dwarf star in the EV Lacertae constellation, known as Lacerta, ejected a massive solar flare equivalent to about a thousand solar flares emitted by the Sun. It was the brightest burst of light created by a normal star ever seen in the universe. The emission was first detected by NASA's Wind satellite, followed two minutes later by the Swift X-ray Space Telescope. After the initial burst of light in the visible spect ... [read more >>]
	20 May 2008, 02:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Operation Code Name 'Vanished Star'
	The vast majority of stars end their lives through supernova explosions while others, more massive, are thought unable to produce such explosions simply because they implode and collapse under their own weight only to produce a black hole. Since these particular types of stellar death don't generate brilliant emissions in the electromagnetic spectrum, none has ever been witnessed. This is about to change with the initiation ... [read more >>]
	10 May 2008, 03:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

XMM-Newton Spots Massive Cosmic Filament
	From our understanding of the universe as we see it we can safely say that ordinary matter all things we know are made of can account for only 5 percent of the total mass of the universe. The rest of 95 percent is made of dark energy and dark matter, elusive forms of energy and matter that haven't been yet directly observed. Furthermore, of that 5 percent of ordinary matter more than half is unaccounted for, meaning it should be aroun ... [read more >>]
	06 May 2008, 09:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Oldest Objects in the Universe, Not So Old After All
	Globular star clusters are believed to be amongst the oldest objects in the universe, some with ages exceeding 13 billion years. They can be usually found in the company of other galaxies as satellites, containing several million stars packed into a very small volume of space. Because they contain some of the first stars in the universe, globular clusters are extremely important for cosmologists. The problem is that according to a recen ... [read more >>]
	29 April 2008, 03:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Astronomers Unveil the Workings of Supermassive Black Hole Particle Jets
	Supermassive black holes are mostly found in galactic nuclei, ejecting matter in the form of particle jets at relativistic speeds during the 'feeding' process. According to theory, these particle jets are accelerated to these speeds by tightly-twisted magnetic fields generated in the close proximity of the black hole. However, confirming this theory has proved rather problematic until now. National Ratio Astronomy Obser ... [read more >>]
	24 April 2008, 02:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Light Echo Helps Map Galactic Nucleus
	Light echoes are generated when interstellar or intergalactic gas is ionized by electromagnetic emissions originating several light years away, and responds accordingly by releasing the surplus energy by emitting light. By observing such light echoes, astronomers can witness events that occurred several hundred of thousand years into the past, like supernova explosions or even a black hole in a 'feeding' process. You might ha ... [read more >>]
	19 April 2008, 04:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Milky Way's Black Hole Awoke Three Centuries Ago
	With the help of observations made with NASA, JAXA and ESA's X-ray satellites, astronomers revealed that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, dubbed Sagittarius A*, suffered a massive outburst some three centuries ago. Sagittarius A* is about 4 million times more massive than the Sun, however the energy emitted while 'feeding' is several billion times weaker than the energy emitted by similar su ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2008, 02:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Rare Type of Quasi-Stellar Object Discovered
	Quasars are basically black holes surrounded by large accretion disks of matter spinning around them. As matter is being drawn to the central black hole, it heats up and starts emitting high amounts of radiation, while powerful magnetic fields eject part of the material back into the surrounding space before crossing the event horizon. Eventually, this material will flow into interstellar space, where it creates disturbances so powerfu ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 09:40GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

World's Brightest Laser Source: T-REX
	The Thomson-Radiate Extreme X-ray Source is an energetic light source emitting picosecond laser pulses and possibly one of the brightest laser light sources in the world at this moment. T-REX is a LLNL project developed in collaboration with the NIF & Photon Science Principle Directorate and the Physical Sciences Directorate, specially built to produce monochromatic, highly collimated, tunable X-rays and gamma-rays scattered from relat ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 04:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Bob Screens Apple's Air to Give TSA Workforce a Clue
	Remember the story about TSA guys struggling to figure out what the thing without a hard drive was? Here's the follow-up. As it turns out, TSA can't afford anymore such mistakes, and decided to X-ray the darn thing once and for all, take photos of its inner work ... [read more >>]
	25 March 2008, 18:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Revealing the Mysteries of Globular Lightning
	When saying lightning, only one thing comes immediately to our mind, namely the image of a roughly linear electrical discharge through the Earth's atmosphere. This doesn't mean however that this is the one and only definition of a lightning. There is evidence, for example, that lightning discharges can take a number of different shapes, amongst which that of a spherical ball of light moving freely through the air. Don't take ... [read more >>]
	03 March 2008, 10:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Massive X-ray Emission Detected in Eta Carinae!
	It has been long predicted that solar wind interactions would be able to generate massive amounts of X-ray radiation, however until now astronomers haven't been able to detect such emissions. Now, they have revealed what seems to be a large X-ray emission coming from the Eta Carinae binary system, determined by the collision of solar winds created by the two massive stars in the respective system. The hypergiant binary was only disco ... [read more >>]
	03 March 2008, 08:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Weird Pulsar Becomes Even Stranger
	X-ray images of the Kes75 supernova remnant shows it to house what seems to be a rapidly spinning neutron star, commonly known as a pulsar, which could have been created in the outcome of the supernova explosion. Lying at a distance of about 20,000 light years away from Earth, Kes75's pulsar located close to the center of the supernova remnant experiences rapid rotation, complemented by the creation of a powerful magnetic fi ... [read more >>]
	01 March 2008, 04:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Astronomers Discover Special Supernova
	Supernova SN 2007on was discovered last year in the location of what previously was a binary system, composed of at least one white dwarf and another stellar companion, most likely a regular slightly more massive star or possibly a second white dwarf. It is now known that the supernova is a Type Ia, meaning it was determined by the explosion of a white dwarf star. However, astronomers are now trying to determine the exact process ... [read more >>]
	14 February 2008, 03:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Anyone can Build a Sandcastle!
	Add water, sand, a bit of imagination and hope it won't collapse too soon, the rest is a piece of cake, scientists say. Quite odd, however, is the fact that sand doesn't require a specific amount of water to maintain its mechanical properties, feature observed by scientists during laboratory experiments which revealed that sand containing only 3 percent of fluid is still capable to create a highly-complex internal struc ... [read more >>]
	12 February 2008, 06:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What is X-ray Radiation?
	Some of you might say: well, you have just answered your own question, X-ray is a form of radiation. However, nothing is always as simple as it seems. Any type of elementary particle emission is called radiation, while X-ray is a type of electromagnetic radiation, meaning photon emission, namely light. Optical light to which a typical human eye normally responds corresponds to the electromagnetic wavelengths located between 3 ... [read more >>]
	12 February 2008, 02:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Chandra Finds Neutron X-ray Emitting Star
	Previously, astronomers believed that only black holes are capable to emit powerful X-ray jets, but a new study conducted at the Penn State University shows that, in fact, any class of object may be able to some extent to form powerful X-ray jets. A newly discovered neutron star seems to present features relatively similar to that of a black hole, which lays base for the prediction that X-ray emissions are actually generated by p ... [read more >>]
	05 February 2008, 03:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

X-ray Imaging Boosted by Nanotube Technology
	X-ray imaging techniques are being widely used into hospitals all over the world to put in evidence the contrast between bone and soft tissue. X-ray light penetrates the soft tissue relatively easy, but it is partially absorbed into bone. The problem with X-ray imaging is that X-ray light is too powerful to be absorbed into the soft tissue, thus it passes right through it, disabling in the process the possibility of making a difference bet ... [read more >>]
	29 January 2008, 07:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Distant Galaxy Cluster Turns into Giant X-ray Source
	Astronomers were shocked to find that a known galaxy cluster has recently started emitting high amounts of X-ray and gamma ray light. Originally, they thought that such emissions could originate in the massive amounts of inert gas lying in intergalactic space, however ESA's Integral X-ray observatory has proven otherwise. Is looks like the bright X-ray light is being produced while the galaxy cluster accelerates elementary particles ... [read more >>]
	25 January 2008, 09:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Dark Field Images Sharper than X-Ray
	X-ray imaging has been serving our medical and industrial needs for more than a century, but it has a series of disadvantages that makes its use rather obsolete. For example, it can only produce a 2D image of the probed sample, cannot diagnose certain diseases, such as breast cancer or Alzheimer, nor metal fatigue associated with corrosion and microscopic fissures. On the other hand, the dark-field X-ray is much more efficient at ... [read more >>]
	21 January 2008, 02:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Photons Could Orbit Black Holes
	Black holes have such extreme gravitational fields that anything falling beyond the event horizon is ultimately destined to hit the point-like singularity, where it will probably remain forever. Believe it or not, but stable orbits around black holes are possible. Just because an object has extreme gravitational fields, it does not necessarily mean that matter in its close vicinity will fall towards it, thus approaching the black ... [read more >>]
	15 January 2008, 04:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Stellar System Interaction Generates Mysterious X-ray Source
	Though the respective area of sky – where the new X-ray source was discovered – had been surveyed back in 2003, data showed that it hadn't been there at the respective moment. In March of last year, the Chandra X-ray Space Telescope, scanning the general direction of the galaxy Centaurus A located about 14 billion light years away in the Centaurus constellation, detected a powerful X-ray emission, originating in the heart of the galax ... [read more >>]
	11 January 2008, 10:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Danger! Supernova Explosion in Sight
	Supernovae explosions are some of the most powerful releases of energy in the universe known to man. A possible explosion of the Sun, predicted to occur in about 5 billion years in the future, would most likely destroy all the life on Earth, and possibly the entire solar system. Luckily, until this event would take place, the human race would have evolved enough, so that the technology would enable us to move to a more friendly solar syst ... [read more >>]
	08 January 2008, 08:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Huge Radiation Protection Breakthrough: Demron!!
	Wired reports the Radiation Shield Technologies of Miami has just announced its latest invention, Demron, the new standard in personal radiation protection, which should be known as the world’s first nuclear radiation-blocking fabric. Just to get the idea of how huge this is, you should be aware of the horrific effects the radiation has on the human body, affecting everything from the hair to the blood system often leading to death. [A ... [read more >>]
	13 December 2007, 13:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Diamond Synchrotron Under High Pressure
	The new piece of equipment currently under development at the Diamond Light Source facility, in the UK, will have as a result the birth of the first synchrotron, which will operate under high pressures that could exceed 7,000 time that of the Earth's atmosphere, equivalent to over three times the pressure on the deepest parts of the ocean floor. Synchrotrons are a type of particle accelerators, which use magnetic fields c ... [read more >>]
	24 November 2007, 04:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Still Not Heavy Enough
	Not only the observable universe is not heavy enough to explain its current configuration, but calculations show that the previously thought mass is actually smaller by 10 to 20 percent, which brings even more questions into discussion. The subject involving the mass of the observable universe is one of the hottest topics among the astronomers for years, and still eludes current physics, in our understanding of the origin, th ... [read more >>]
	05 November 2007, 03:50GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Old is the Dark Matter?
	It is huge, that's for sure, but no one has seen it or knows what it is; it's invisible and light is not emitted or reflected by it. The enigma of the dark matter has been haunting the astronomers since it was first discovered in the 1970s. It possesses mass and measurable gravitation and an analysis of the galaxies offers a possibility to weigh them; this way, the scientists found that by far the largest matter mass ... [read more >>]
	02 October 2007, 04:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Limits of Sharpness: Nanoblades
	This is like a knife for the bacteria: a team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has made a razor-like material on the "cutting edge" of nanotechnology. The nanoblades are made of magnesium and result from a different nanostructure growth technique than the traditional one. But we won't cut bacteria with them; they are connected to energy storage and fuel cell technology. "The sharp nanometer-scale surface is vast ... [read more >>]
	26 September 2007, 04:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Could This Star Have a Mysterious Invisible Partner?
	Neutron stars are one of the few ways a star ends its life. They are formed from the remains of a massive star after it had already exploded into a supernova that condenses into an extremely dense core. They usually have masses 1.35 to about 2.1 times greater than that of our Sun, while being 30,000 to 70,000 times smaller than the Sun. Observations of such a neutron star, called RCW103, seemed to contradict all astronomers ... [read more >>]
	23 July 2007, 08:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Smallest Refrigerator in the Nanoworld
	Everybody knows refrigerators are indispensable household appliances that transfer heat from inside it to the external environment, cooling the contents to a temperature below ambient. But while commercial refrigerators get bigger to fit more food and drinks, a group of scientists worked on developing the smallest one in the world. It won't be used to chill beer or champagne, but it could do that for tiny x-ray sensors ... [read more >>]
	11 July 2007, 04:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New NASA Office Will Study Strange Cosmic Phenomena
	NASA created a new office, the Einstein Probes Office, in Greenbelt, Maryland, hosted by the Goddard Space Flight Center, which will study some of the strange phenomena of the Universe, ranging from black holes and cosmic microwave background radiation to the elusive dark energy. It will host many science missions trying to understand some of the cosmic mysteries and to further explore recently discovered events and phenomen ... [read more >>]
	09 July 2007, 05:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

World's First Free Electron Laser That Produces X-rays
	The free electron laser has almost the same properties as the optical type, meaning the coherent beam of electron radiation, but uses different operating principles to create the beam. Unlike gas, liquid, or solid-state laser applications, such as diode lasers, which rely on bound atomic or molecular states, Free electron lasers use a relativistic electron beam as the lasing medium, hence the term free electron. The first fre ... [read more >>]
	26 June 2007, 04:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Molecules Can Perform Pirouettes
	Scientists demonstrated that ten thousand molecules can perform aligning pirouettes through a process known as ultrafast intramolecular electronic charge separation, appearing during photo-chemical reactions. A study performed at the Max-Born-Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Ultrafast Spectroscopy and at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich proved that molecules can align their respective dipole axes along photoinduc ... [read more >>]
	20 June 2007, 04:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Make Transparent X-rays
	What is electromagnetically induced transparency? It's a coherent optical nonlinearity which renders a medium transparent over a narrow spectral range within an absorption line. Extreme dispersion is also created within this transparency "window" which leads to "slow light." Now, a team of scientists, made up of Christian Buth, Robin Santra and Linda Young at Argonne National Lab, discovered a new method of ach ... [read more >>]
	07 June 2007, 05:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Playing Tennis with X-ray Laser Pulses
	What happens when you throw a golf ball at a locomotive speeding toward you? The ball will bounce off it and come flying back at you with tremendous energy, just before you get run over. This is what scientists are trying to study with a new generation of x-ray lasers. Scientists developed a new method of producing intense pulses of x-rays by whacking ordinary laser light with a wave of plasma. It's also similar to tennis, where t ... [read more >>]
	06 June 2007, 02:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Hand Held X-Ray Devices Tell the Fat and Sugar Content of Your Food
	It's easy to see on a product pack its nutritional content, but can you know this when it's about meat? And especially the fat content? Now, New Zealand food industry use a breakthrough x-ray based technology to ensure that beef exported to make American beefburgers obeys the US fat content regulations. These regulations stipulate that in the final product the fat content must not represent more than 22.5 %. The I ... [read more >>]
	04 June 2007, 03:35GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Star Birth Mechanism Defies Astronomers' Expectations
	Recent observations made by XMM-Newton reveal a strange formation process in baby star, defying astronomers' expectations. They show how streams of matter fall onto the young stars' magnetic atmospheres and radiate X-rays. So far, the generally accepted process of star formation involved dense parts of molecular clouds collapsing into a ball of plasma to form a star. But after looking at nearly two hundred stars under formati ... [read more >>]
	01 June 2007, 03:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Cosmic Suburbs Are Full of Action
	For the first time, astronomers have mapped a mega-structure in the distant universe and showed the cosmic suburbs are full of action. Large galaxy clusters, considered to be the metropolises of the universe, are connected by space filaments that look like highways, to younger, more active galaxies, the cosmic suburbs of the universe. Lori Lubin of the University of California, Davis, and Roy Gal of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, l ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2007, 08:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Digital Color X-rays Are Decreasing the Irradiation
	X-rays have many uses in some very sensitive areas of technology. They are primarily used for diagnostic radiography and crystallography, but also in astronomy, microscopic analysis and fluorescence. Digital color x-rays are an advancement of this technology and it's used in nuclear physics to search for elementary particles. The main advantage of building a color x-ray camera is the fact that it would be able to shrink the large- ... [read more >>]
	24 May 2007, 05:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

X-ray Holograms reveal Secret Magnetism
	Antiferromagnetism is a different manifestation of magnetism, where the spins of electrons align in a regular pattern with neighboring spins pointing in opposite directions. The antiferromagnetic materials are relatively uncommon and their properties are still not fully understood. Unlike ferromagnets, which have been studied since Greek antiquity, antiferromagnets remained a mystery because their internal structure was too ... [read more >>]
	07 May 2007, 09:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia