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06/28/2005

Researchers devise plasma experiment that shows how astrophysical jets are formed

Applied physicists at the California Institute of Technology have devised a plasma experiment that shows how huge long, thin jets of material shoot out from exotic astrophysical objects such as young stars, black holes, and galactic nuclei.

05/30/2005

Andromeda Galaxy Three Times Bigger in Diameter Than Previously Thought

Robert Tindol

Scott Chapman, from the California Institute of Technology, and Rodrigo Ibata, from the Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg in France, have led a team of astronomers in a project to map out the detailed motions of stars in the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy. Their recent observations with the Keck telescopes show that the tenuous sprinkle of stars extending outward from the galaxy are actually part of the main disk itself.

05/19/2005

Research on Sumatran Earthquakes Uncovers New Mysteries about Workings of Earth

Robert Tindol

The Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 26 was an unmitigated human disaster. But three new papers by an international group of experts show that the huge data return could help scientists better understand extremely large earthquakes and the disastrous tsunamis that can be associated with them.

03/27/2005

Caltech Physics Team Invents DeviceFor Weighing Individual Molecules

Robert Tindol

Physicists at the California Institute of Technology have created the first nanodevices capable of weighing individual biological molecules. This technology may lead to new forms of molecular identification that are cheaper and faster than existing methods, as well as revolutionary new instruments for proteomics.

02/19/2005

Revolutionary Grassroots Astrophysics Project "Einstein@Home" Goes Live

A new, grassroots computing project dubbed Einstein@Home, which will let anyone with a personal computer contribute to cutting-edge astrophysics research, is being officially announced today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). California Institute of Technology physics professor Barry Barish will make the announcement during a press briefing at 11 a.m.

02/17/2005

New light-emitting device could eliminate the bottleneck that slows down electrical circuits

Robert Tindol

Applied physicists at the California Institute of Technology have invented a light-emitting transistor that could potentially bypass a major bottleneck that slows down electronic circuitry. The new device could pave the way for on-chip optical interconnections that would enable the marriage of two great modern technologies--communications based on the transmission of photons, and computing with silicon-based devices that are driven by electric currents. A successful optical interconnection technology would allow information to move around inside a silicon chip at the speed of light while creating substantially less heat, leading to dramatically faster computers.

02/02/2005

Caltech Receives $2.5 Million to Further Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy

Deborah Williams-Hedges

The California Institute of Technology announces a $2.5 million award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA).

02/01/2005

Hard X-Ray telescope up for final NASA review; project will be led by Caltech's Fiona Harrison

If all goes well with a technical study approved by NASA for this year, an innovative telescope should be orbiting Earth by the end of the decade and taking the first focused high-energy X-ray pictures of matter falling into black holes and shooting out of exploding stars. Not only will the telescope be 1,000 times more capable of finding new black holes than anything previously launched into space, but it will also give us an unprecedented look at the origins of the heavy elements we're all made of.

01/21/2005

SPIDER Experiment Touches Down in Antarctica

Kimm Fesenmaier

After spending 16 days suspended from a giant helium balloon floating 115,000 feet above Antarctica, a scientific instrument dubbed SPIDER has landed in a remote region of the frozen continent.

SPIDER and its balloon in the distance; snow in the foreground

12/21/2004

More Stormy Weather on Titan

Jill Perry

Titan, it turns out, may be a very stormy place. In 2001, a group of astronomers led by Henry Roe, now a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, discovered methane clouds near the south pole of Saturn's largest moon, resolving a debate about whether such clouds exist amid the haze of its atmosphere.

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