Press Releases - November 2006
Archive
30 November 2006 - ESO
Asymmetric Ashes
Astronomers are reporting remarkable new findings that shed light on a decade-long debate about one kind of supernovae, the explosions that mark a star's final demise: does the star die in a slow burn or with a fast bang? From their observations, the scientists find that the matter ejected by the explosion shows significant peripheral asymmetry but a nearly spherical interior, most likely implying that the explosion finally propagates at supersonic speed.
30 November 2006 - ESA
Successful Firing of Vega's First-Stage Motor in Kourou
The largest European mono-segment filament-wound case solid propellant motor ever developed came to life at 12:30 Kourou time today (16:30 Paris) time when it was ignited for its first static firing test at the Guiana Space Centre, Europe's Spaceport, in Kourou, French Guiana.
30 November 2006 - ESA
ESA's first Swedish astronaut to fly to the ISS
SA astronaut Christer Fuglesang is about to become the first Swedish and the first Nordic astronaut in space. During the night of 7/8 December, he will board NASA's Shuttle Discovery as Mission Specialist on flight STS-116. With his six crewmates, he will fly to the International Space Station on a mission to add a new section to its truss structure and to reroute electrical power supply and thermal control from its new set of solar arrays and radiators.
28 November 2006 - CERN
Last LHC Superconducting Main Magnet Completes the Suite at CERN
CERN took delivery of the last superconducting main magnet for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on 27 November. This completes the full set of 1624 main magnets required to build the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
27 November 2006 - EMBL
CiteXplore - integrating biomedical literature and data
Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute [EMBL-EBI] launches CiteXplore, a new freely accessible literature resource service.
24 November 2006 - ESRF
The ESRF reveals how Neanderthal teeth grew
Scientists from the United Kingdom, France and Italy have studied teeth from Neanderthals with X-rays from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). They found that the dental development of Neanderthals is very similar to modern humans. Their results are published in Nature this week.
23 November 2006 - ESO
The Topsy-Turvy Galaxy
The captivating appearance of this image of the starburst galaxy NGC 1313, taken with the FORS instrument at ESO's Very Large Telescope, belies its inner turmoil. The dense clustering of bright stars and gas in its arms, a sign of an ongoing boom of star births, shows a mere glimpse of the rough times it has seen. Probing ever deeper into the heart of the galaxy, astronomers have revealed many enigmas that continue to defy our understanding.
22 November 2006 - ESRF
Mind the gap
Researchers have found a gap between water and a water-repelling surface that can give new insight into the way water and oil separate. By using high-energy X-rays at the ESRF, an international team defined the size and characteristics of this gap. The knowledge of the structure of a hydrophobic interface is important because they are crucial in biological systems, and can give insight in protein folding and stability. The researchers publish their results this week in PNAS Early Online Edition.
20 November 2006 - CERN
World's largest superconducting magnet switches on
The largest superconducting magnet ever built has successfully been powered up to its nominal operating conditions at the first attempt. Called the Barrel Toroid because of its shape, this magnet provides a powerful magnetic field for ATLAS, one of the major particle detectors being prepared to take data at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator scheduled to turn on in November 2007.
12 November 2006 - ESO
Catch a Star!
ESO and the European Association for Astronomy Education are launching today the 2007 edition of 'Catch a Star!', their international astronomy competition for school students. Now in its fifth year, the competition offers students the chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime trip to ESO's flagship observatory in Chile, as well as many other prizes. Students are invited to 'become astronomers' and embark on a journey to explore the Universe.
7 November 2006 - ESRF
Bones at the nanoscale
Scientists from Max Planck Institute (Germany) and the ESRF have just discovered the way deformation at the nanoscale takes place in a bone by studying it with the synchrotron X-rays. This study explains the enormous stability and deformability of bones. The hierarchical structure of bones makes them able to sustain large strains without breaking, despite being made of essentially rigid units at the molecular level. The results are published this week in the PNAS online edition.
7 November 2006 - ESO
Cut from Different Cloth
A large survey, made with ESO's VLT, has shed light on our Galaxy's ancestry. After determining the chemical composition of over 2000 stars in four of the nearest dwarf galaxies to our own, astronomers have demonstrated fundamental differences in their make-up, casting doubt on the theory that these diminutive galaxies could ever have formed the building blocks of our Milky Way Galaxy.
3 November 2006 - CERN
Open Access publishing in physics gains momentum
The first meeting of European particle physics funding agencies took place today at CERN to establish a consortium for Open Access publishing in particle physics, SCOAP3 . This is the first time an entire scientific field is exploring the conversion of its reader-paid journals into an author-paid Open Access format.
2 November 2006 - EMBL
Helping muscle regenerate
Muscle wasting can occur at all ages as the result of genetic defects, heart failure, spinal injury or cancer. A therapy to cure the loss of muscle mass and strength, which has a severe impact on patients' lives, is desperately sought. Blocking a central signal molecule, researchers from the Mouse Biology Unit of the EMBL in Monterotondo, Italy, have now found a way to protect muscle from degenerating after injury and to improve muscle healing in mice.