Space Science Content

The winds of Titan

IET WebDev — December 08, 2014 - 12:00am

As sand dunes march across the Sahara, vast dunes cross the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. New research from a refurbished NASA wind tunnel reveals the physics of how particles move in Titan's methane-laden winds and could help to explain why Titan's dunes form in the way they do. The work is published online Dec. 8 in the journal Nature.

Funds awarded to begin construction of Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

IET WebDev — August 04, 2014 - 3:15pm

The National Science Foundation has agreed to support the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy to manage the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope construction project, with a budget of up to $473 million. The announcement caps more than 10 years of developing, planning and reviewing of the LSST concept.

Does probability come from quantum physics?

IET WebDev — February 05, 2013 - 11:40am

Ever since Austrian scientist Erwin Schrodinger put his unfortunate cat in a box, his fellow physicists have been using something called quantum theory to explain and understand the nature of waves and particles.

But a new paper by physics professor Andreas Albrecht and graduate student Dan Phillips at the ��Ƶ, Davis, makes the case that these quantum fluctuations actually are responsible for the probability of all actions, with far-reaching implications for theories of the universe.