Engineers make tiny, low-cost, terahertz imager chip

(Phys.org)—A secret agent is racing against time. He knows a bomb is nearby. He rounds a corner, spots a pile of suspicious boxes in the alleyway, and pulls out his cell phone. As he scans it over the packages, their contents ...

New crime-fighting tools aim to deter and nab terrorists

Fingerprints, ballistics, DNA analysis and other mainstays of the forensic science toolkit may get a powerful new crime-solving companion as scientists strive to develop technology for "fingerprinting" and tracing the origins ...

Space mountain produces terrestrial meteorites

When NASA's Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around giant asteroid Vesta in July, scientists fully expected the probe to reveal some surprising sights. But no one expected a 13-mile high mountain, two and a half times higher ...

New class of stellar explosions discovered

They're bright and blue-and a bit strange. They're a new type of stellar explosion that was recently discovered by a team of astronomers led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Among the most luminous in ...

Super-Earth has an atmosphere, but is it steamy or gassy?

In December 2009, astronomers announced the discovery of a super-Earth known as GJ 1214b. At the time, they reported signs that the newfound world likely had a thick, gaseous atmosphere. Now, a team led by Jacob Bean (Harvard-Smithsonian ...

Supernova shrapnel found in meteorite

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have identified the microscopic shrapnel of a nearby star that exploded just before or during the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

VLT captures first direct spectrum of an exoplanet

(PhysOrg.com) -- By studying a triple planetary system that resembles a scaled-up version of our own Sun’s family of planets, astronomers have been able to obtain the first direct spectrum -- the “chemical fingerprint” ...

Electronic nose sniffs out toxins

Imagine a polka-dotted postage stamp-sized sensor that can sniff out some known poisonous gases and toxins and show the results simply by changing colors.

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