Europe postpones launch of Herschel, Planck telescopes

The launch next month of two large European telescopes designed to probe the formation of galaxies and the "Big Bang" scientists say created the universe has been postponed by several weeks, it was announced here on Friday.

Shaping the dawn of the quantum age

Electrons that spin to the right and the left at the same time. Particles that change their states together, even though they are separated by enormous distances. Intriguing phenomena like these are completely commonplace ...

Protostars can siphon material from far away, says study

When stars are born, they do it inside a molecular cloud. Astronomers long assumed that the "crèche" supplied all the nutrients that protostars needed to form. However, it turns out they get help from outside the nest.

Improving measurements of the kilogram

Until 2018, the SI unit of mass, the kilogram, was defined as the mass of a real object: the International Prototype Kilogram, kept in a secure facility in the outskirts of Paris. On November 16, 2018, the kilogram was given ...

Placing cosmological constraints on quantum gravity phenomenology

A description of gravity compatible with the principles of quantum mechanics has long been a widely pursued goal in physics. Existing theories of this 'quantum gravity' often involve mathematical corrections to Heisenberg's ...

Spacetime—a creation of well-known actors?

Most physicists believe that the structure of spacetime is formed in an unknown way at the Planck scale, i.e., at a scale close to one trillionth of a trillionth of a metre. However, careful considerations undermine this ...

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