http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (Phys.org) —A multi-disciplinary team of international researchers has found evidence to suggest the moon's dynamo persisted until at least 3.6 billion years ago. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team says this pushes back the date for the dynamo approximately 160 million years. http://phys.org/news287138127.html Space & Earth Tue, 07 May 2013 09:35:45 EST news287138127 From encouraging the first steps of life migrating from the oceans to the land, to stabilising Earth's axial tilt against chaotic excursions, the moon is often put forth almost as a magical ingredient – a prerequisite for life. http://phys.org/news283764868.html Space & Earth Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:34:37 EST news283764868 (Phys.org) —A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken an important step closer to finding the birth certificate of a star that's been around for a very long time. http://phys.org/news281890625.html Space & Earth Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:57:15 EST news281890625 (Phys.org)—If a nuclear device were to unexpectedly detonate anywhere on Earth, the ensuing effort to find out who made the weapon probably would be led by aircraft rapidly collecting airborne radioactive particles for  analysis. http://phys.org/news277023401.html Technology Thu, 10 Jan 2013 07:10:01 EST news277023401 The nucleus at the heart of an atom is held together by a subtle balance between the nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons and the electric repulsion that tries to fling the positively charged protons apart. Understanding how the number of nucleons—the collective term for protons and neutrons—affects this balance is crucial for predicting nuclear processes such as radioactive decay. RIKEN researchers, working as part of an international team, have now shown that 'heavy' oxygen nuclei with 16 neutrons form into a solid ball, which makes them unexpectedly stable. http://phys.org/news274098122.html Physics Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:22:21 EST news274098122 (Phys.org)—The first direct detection of radioactive titanium associated with supernova remnant 1987A has been made by ESA's Integral space observatory. The radioactive decay has likely been powering the glowing remnant around the exploded star for the last 20 years. http://phys.org/news269713764.html Space & Earth Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:29:31 EST news269713764 The nucleus of an atom can have different shapes that co-exist. European scientists investigated nuclear shape change with advanced experimental techniques. http://phys.org/news269597873.html Physics Tue, 16 Oct 2012 09:18:04 EST news269597873 (Phys.org) -- Scientists using the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have made the first spectroscopic observations of the noble gas helium in the tenuous atmosphere surrounding the Moon. These remote-sensing observations complement in-situ measurements taken in 1972 by the Lunar Atmosphere Composition Experiment (LACE) deployed by Apollo 17. http://phys.org/news264261894.html Space & Earth Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:05:07 EST news264261894 In December 1972 the astronauts of Apollo 17-the last manned mission to the moon-deployed the Lunar Atmospheric Composition Experiment (LACE), a spectrometer designed to measure and characterize the thin lunar atmosphere. Forty years later, Stern et al. built upon those initial measurements, providing the first remotely-sensed measurement of the Moon's gaseous environment from lunar orbit. Using the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project's (LAMP's) far ultraviolet spectrograph aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the authors determined the atmospheric concentration of helium. http://phys.org/news261821842.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:40:01 EST news261821842 Scientists at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) have demonstrated for the first time that gamma rays, a highly energetic form of light produced by radioactive decay of atomic nuclei and amongst other used to kill cancer cells can be bent. In a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, the team used a version of the common classroom experiment with glass prisms, similar to the one employed by Newton in 1665, to find bending or ‘refraction’ at the highest energies ever recorded. http://phys.org/news255776018.html Physics Wed, 09 May 2012 09:54:57 EST news255776018 Scientists at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge have used light to help push electrons through a classically impenetrable barrier. While quantum tunnelling is at the heart of the peculiar wave nature of particles, this is the first time that it has been controlled by light. Their research is published today, 05 April, in the journal Science. http://phys.org/news252844791.html Physics Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:00:11 EST news252844791 (AP) -- Charles Simonyi may still be described as a space tourist even though the Microsoft billionaire has no plans to take a third vacation on the International Space Station and hasn't hung out in outer space for a few years. http://phys.org/news252644415.html Space & Earth Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:00:48 EST news252644415 Plants have long been known as the lungs of the earth, but a new finding has found they may also play a role in electrifying the atmosphere. http://phys.org/news251541002.html Space & Earth Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:30:36 EST news251541002 (PhysOrg.com) -- Our galaxy may be awash in homeless planets, wandering through space instead of orbiting a star. http://phys.org/news249228334.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:05:47 EST news249228334 New research by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) will improve the accuracy of estimates of the time of geological events. The work centres on the calibration of one of the world's slowest clocks, known as the 'argon-argon clock'. http://phys.org/news244980516.html Physics Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:08:44 EST news244980516 By combining three layers of detection into one new device, a team of researchers from Japan has proposed a new way to monitor radiation levels at power plant accident sites. The device would be more economical that using different devices to measure different types of radiation, and could limit the exposure times of clean-up workers by taking three measurements simultaneously. Radioactive decay produces three flavors of emissions: alpha, beta, and gamma. http://phys.org/news239997480.html Physics Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:00:01 EST news239997480 Nearly half of the Earth's heat comes from the radioactive decay of materials inside, according to a large international research collaboration that includes a Kansas State University physicist. http://phys.org/news231506652.html Space & Earth Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:00:44 EST news231506652 What spreads the sea floors and moves the continents? What melts iron in the outer core and enables the Earth's magnetic field? Heat. Geologists have used temperature measurements from more than 20,000 boreholes around the world to estimate that some 44 terawatts (44 trillion watts) of heat continually flow from Earth's interior into space. Where does it come from? http://phys.org/news230119974.html Physics Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:00:01 EST news230119974 (PhysOrg.com) -- Supernovae are the explosive deaths of massive stars, cataclysms that disburse into space the chemical elements produced by nuclear reactions inside the progenitor stars. Understanding chemical enrichment is reason enough to make supernovae objects of intense study. Astronomers have another reason too: supernovae are probes of the early universe because they are so bright they can be seen at very large distances. http://phys.org/news228126604.html Space & Earth Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:30:32 EST news228126604 (PhysOrg.com) -- It is not the same as it used to be, the element finding business. We have discovered and named all the elements from hydrogen (element 1) up to element 112 (copernicium)[1], and last week IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry - it does to elements what the International Astronomical Union did to Pluto), the world governing body for chemistry, has announced the confirmation of a couple more. After bismuth (element 83) the elements are no longer regarded as 'stable' and so the atoms tend not to hang around. Admittedly the definition of stable means that the half-life (the time it takes for half a sample to disappear by radioactive decay) must be more than 10 billion years, so we can still find elements like uranium (element 92) on the Earth. http://phys.org/news227345202.html Physics Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:27:51 EST news227345202 (PhysOrg.com) -- In 1987, light from an exploding star in a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, reached Earth. Named Supernova 1987A, it was the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years, allowing astronomers to study it in unprecedented detail as it evolves. http://phys.org/news226765900.html Space & Earth Wed, 08 Jun 2011 15:32:13 EST news226765900 Physicists at Rice University and their collaborators have detected the antimatter partner of the helium nucleus, antihelium-4. This newly observed particle is the heaviest antimatter particle ever detected. http://phys.org/news222945267.html Physics Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:14:46 EST news222945267 (PhysOrg.com) -- Members of the international STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider -- a particle accelerator used to recreate and study conditions of the early universe at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory -- have detected the antimatter partner of the helium nucleus: antihelium-4. This new particle, also known as the anti-alpha, is the heaviest antinucleus ever detected, topping a discovery announced by the same collaboration just last year. http://phys.org/news222871096.html Physics Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:52:55 EST news222871096 As part of a global physics project, a team of Kansas State University physics researchers is starting small. http://phys.org/news217167270.html Physics Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:14:56 EST news217167270 (PhysOrg.com) -- A University of California, Berkeley, geophysicist has made the first-ever measurement of the strength of the magnetic field inside Earth's core, 1,800 miles underground. http://phys.org/news211731742.html Space & Earth Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:10:01 EST news211731742 Radioactive decay rates, thought to be unique physical constants and counted on in such fields as medicine and anthropology, may be more variable than once thought. http://phys.org/news202456660.html Physics Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:58:03 EST news202456660 (PhysOrg.com) -- When researchers found an unusual linkage between solar flares and the inner life of radioactive elements on Earth, it touched off a scientific detective investigation that could end up protecting the lives of space-walking astronauts and maybe rewriting some of the assumptions of physics. http://phys.org/news201795438.html Physics Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:19:46 EST news201795438 Tiny variations in the isotopic composition of silver in meteorites and Earth rocks are helping scientists put together a timetable of how our planet was assembled beginning 4.568 billion years ago. The new study, published in the journal Science, indicates that water and other key volatiles may have been present in at least some of Earth's original building blocks, rather than acquired later from comets, as some scientists have suggested. http://phys.org/news192977317.html Space & Earth Thu, 13 May 2010 14:00:14 EST news192977317 The "exceptionally simple theory of everything," proposed by a surfing physicist in 2007, does not hold water, says Emory University mathematician Skip Garibaldi. http://phys.org/news188827214.html Physics Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:00:32 EST news188827214 Besides the 92 elements that occur naturally, scientists were able to create 20 additional chemical elements, six of which were discovered at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt. http://phys.org/news185114498.html Physics Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:43:34 EST news185114498