Researchers have made some of the most accurate clocks imaginable in recent years, but the trick is harnessing those clocks to electronics. Using lasers to tune microwaves bridges the gap.
It is a pretty spectacular achievement to not only rendezvous with an asteroid as it is whizzing around the Sun but also collect a sample. Here’s what the researchers learned.
The term ‘Big Bang’ might make you think of a massive explosion. Put the thought out of your head. Rather than an explosion, it was the start of everything in the universe.
Thirty years ago the Hubble Space Telescope began snapping photos of distant stars, providing a time machine that has taken astronomers back to when the universe was less than a billion years old.
Leap years were devised in Julius Caesar’s time, to fix the pesky problem that Earth’s year isn’t exactly 365 days. But 15 centuries later, our calendars were still slightly askew.
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation and Antonio Tarquinio, The Conversation
The Dish in Parkes is scanning the southern Milky Way, searching for alien signals
The Conversation50.7 MB(download)
Today we hear about the Parkes radio telescope's role in the search for alien life. Our guide is the irrepressible John Sarkissian, the scientist who's had his eye on The Dish since childhood.
NASA scientists have discovered a new planet orbiting around a nearby star that is in a habitable zone. But does this planet have liquid oceans that can support life?