Space

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Space

    Twisted roots for solar jets

    Researchers have constructed the first 3-D image of a jet of gas zooming out of the sun's outer atmosphere, revealing the role that twisted magnetic fields play in generating such outbursts.

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  2. Astronomy

    Galaxy’s youngest supernova

    Astronomers have found the youngest Milky Way supernova remnant ever recorded from Earth.

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  3. Space

    A shifty moon

    Astronomers have found evidence that the icy shell of Jupiter's large moon Europa has rotated nearly a quarter-turn, which supports the notion that the moon has a subterranean ocean.

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  4. Materials Science

    Like the Nobel, Only Norwegian

    Two weeks from now, an astrophysicist, neuroscientist, and nanoscience researcher will each be named to receive $1 million Kavli Prizes.

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  5. Space

    Neutron tie-dye

    Neutrons can produce 3-D scans of a magnetic field, even inside a solid.

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  6. Space

    BOOK LIST | Newton: Ackroyd’s Brief Lives

    The book promises a personal history of Isaac Newton. Ackroyd also wrote Shakespeare: The Biography and London: The Biography. Nan A. Talese, 2008 176 p. $21.95 NEWTON: ACKROYD’S BRIEF LIVES

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  7. Physics

    John Wheeler (1911-2008)

    SN Editor in Chief Tom Siegfried remembers the late physicist John Wheeler, who coined the term "black hole" in 1967, with excerpts from conversations the two had engaged in over the past two decades.

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  8. Space

    A special place

    Two proposed studies might determine whether dark energy is real or humans live in a special place in the cosmos

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  9. Space

    A new look at the gamma-ray sky

    Explosions pouring out as much energy in seconds as the sun does in its entire lifetime. Invisible beams of radiation sweeping across the sky like giant searchlights. Supermassive black holes emitting powerful and highly variable jets of radiation. GAMMA GLOW Simulation of the high-energy sky that will be seen by GLAST. Sonoma State, NASA The […]

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  10. Space

    Flooring the cosmic accelerator

    If cosmologist Will Percival of the University of Portsmouth in England is right, the universe will end about 60 billion years from now, when every molecule and atom will be torn asunder by a mysterious entity that opposes gravity’s pull and turns it into a cosmic push.

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  11. Astronomy

    Honing the Hubble

    Astronomers are sharpening measurements of a familiar cosmic parameter to shed new light on dark energy, the mysterious entity that’s accelerating the universe’s rate of expansion.

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  12. Astronomy

    A Phoenix on Mars

    A new robotic lander will search the north polar region of Mars for habitability.

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