Updated: 2012-07-18 05:00:00
With approval from the National Science Board, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Director will advance the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to the final design stage. This action permits the NSF Director to include funds for LSST construction in a future budget request. To be located in Chile, the LSST is a proposed 8-meter wide-field survey telescope that will survey the entire sky approximately twice per week, delivering a large and comprehensive data set that will transform astronomical research.
Updated: 2012-07-18 05:00:00
Scientists from the XENON collaboration announced a new result from their search for dark matter. The analysis of data taken with the XENON100 detector during 13 months of operation at the Gran Sasso Laboratory (Italy) provided no evidence for the existence of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), the leading dark matter candidates. Two events being observed are statistically consistent with one expected event from background radiation. Compared to their previous 2011 result the world-leading sensitivity has again been improved by a factor of 3.5. This constrains models of new physics with WIMP candidates even further and it helps to target future WIMP searches. A paper with the results is going to be submitted to Physical Review Letters and on the arXiv.
Updated: 2012-07-17 15:00:01
(Phys.org) -- By converting sunlight into chemical energy, artificial photosynthesis systems could potentially produce renewable, nonpolluting fuels and chemicals for a wide variety of uses. But developing an efficient solar-to-fuel conversion process has turned out to be extremely challenging. Although researchers have demonstrated the feasibility of artificial photosynthesis, achieving a high efficiency has proven to be more difficult.
Updated: 2012-07-16 15:00:01
(Phys.org) -- Although pointing high-energy lasers at the sky to cause pouring rain is currently a high-tech dream, the motivation behind controlling the weather has existed since the days of our ancient ancestors. Throughout human history, many civilizations developed magical or religious methods in an attempt to increase or decrease precipitation. In light of this history, current techniques that shoot laser beams or launch chemicals into the sky for the same purpose seem to be just the latest manifestation of this goal.
Updated: 2012-07-11 15:20:01
(Phys.org) -- Fuel cells, which generate electricity from the chemical energy of a fuel such as hydrogen, are not intrinsically capable of storing energy. When a fuel cell’s hydrogen supply runs out or is temporarily interrupted, the cell’s power output quickly decreases to zero. If an application requires energy storage, then the fuel cell must be coupled to an external charge storage device, such as a battery, which increases the weight and volume of the system. But now researchers have designed a hydrogen fuel cell with a new anode that can supply electricity up to 14 times longer than conventional fuel cells, which could be particularly useful for mobile energy applications.
