open search form

News tagged with 'astronomy & physics' RSS Icon Subscribe via RSS

More Clues in the Hunt for the Higgs
12/14/2011

More Clues in the Hunt for the Higgs

Marcus Woo

Physicists have announced that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has produced yet more tantalizing hints for the existence of the Higgs boson. The European Center for Nuclear Research  in Geneva, the international team of thousands of scientists—including many from Caltech—unveiled for the first time all the data taken over the last year from the two main detectors at the LHC, the Compact Muon Solenoid and ATLAS. The results represent the largest amount of data ever presented for the Higgs search.

High-Energy Physicists Set Record for Network Data Transfer
12/13/2011

High-Energy Physicists Set Record for Network Data Transfer

Marcus Woo

Researchers have set a new world record for data transfer, helping to usher in the next generation of high-speed network technology. The international team was able to transfer data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a wide-area network circuit. The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks—each with a complete movie and all the extras—in a day.

Snowflake Science
12/06/2011

Snowflake Science

Kimm Fesenmaier

We've all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. Caltech professor of physics Kenneth Libbrecht will tell you that this has to do with the ever-changing conditions in the clouds where snow crystals form. Now Libbrecht, widely known as the snowflake guru, has shed some light on a grand puzzle in snowflake science: why the canonical, six-armed "stellar" snowflakes wind up so thin and flat.

Voyager I Surveys Outer Reaches of the Solar System
12/05/2011

Voyager I Surveys Outer Reaches of the Solar System

Katie Neith

The Voyager I spacecraft, which was built at JPL and launched in 1977, has reached a previously unexplored region between our solar system and interstellar space.  Data collected from this zone indicates very little solar wind, a strong magnetic field, and a possible leak of high-energy particles from our solar system into the interstellar space. The latest findings from the mission were announced today at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

Caltech-Led Team of Astronomers Finds 18 New Planets
12/02/2011

Caltech-Led Team of Astronomers Finds 18 New Planets

Marcus Woo

Discoveries of new planets just keep coming and coming. A team of astronomers led by scientists at Caltech have found 18 Jupiter-like planets in orbit around massive stars.

An Incredible Shrinking Material
11/04/2011

An Incredible Shrinking Material

Marcus Woo

They shrink when you heat 'em. Most materials expand when heated, but a few contract. Now engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have figured out how one of these curious materials, scandium trifluoride (ScF3), does the trick—a finding, they say, that will lead to a deeper understanding of all kinds of materials. 

 

Oceans of Water in a Planet-Forming Disk
10/20/2011

Oceans of Water in a Planet-Forming Disk

Marcus Woo

Astronomers have detected massive quantities of water in a planet-forming gas disk around a young star. The water—which is frozen in the icy outer regions of the disk—could fill Earth's oceans several thousand times over. The discovery could help explain how Earth got its oceans and suggests that our planet may not be the only watery world in the cosmos.

Caltech Awarded $12.6 Million for New Institute for Quantum Information and Matter
10/14/2011

Caltech Awarded $12.6 Million for New Institute for Quantum Information and Matter

Kimm Fesenmaier

Caltech has been awarded $12.6 million in funding over the next five years by the National Science Foundation to create a new Physics Frontiers Center. Dubbed the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM), the center will bring physicists and computer scientists together to push theoretical and experimental boundaries in the study of exotic quantum states.

Caltech Team Uses Laser Light to Cool Object to Quantum Ground State
10/05/2011

Caltech Team Uses Laser Light to Cool Object to Quantum Ground State

Kimm Fesenmaier

For the first time, researchers at Caltech, in collaboration with a team from the University of Vienna, have managed to cool a miniature mechanical object to its lowest possible energy state using laser light. The achievement paves the way for the development of exquisitely sensitive detectors as well as for quantum experiments that scientists have long dreamed of conducting.

Students Kick Off KISS Caltech Space Challenge
09/12/2011

Students Kick Off KISS Caltech Space Challenge

Katie Neith

Deadline can be a dirty word for students and faculty alike at Caltech, since innovative research rarely adheres to time constraints. But this week, an international group of 32 students are taking on a particularly ambitious project that will push the limits of both time and space. As participants in the Caltech Space Challenge, they are tasked with designing a human mission to an asteroid by Friday, giving them just five days to complete a project that typically takes years.