After more than two years and 362 posts, the space blog is moving home. We’re merging with Short Sharp Science, a blog for everything New Scientist covers in the world of science, technology and ideas.
You can view that new, super-blog here, and see only the space posts at this link.
For those of you viewing in [...]
After more than two years and 362 posts, the space blog is moving home. We’re merging with Short Sharp Science, a blog for everything New Scientist covers in the world of science, technology and ideas.
You can view that new, super-blog here, and see only the space posts at this link.
For those of you viewing in [...]
When I saw protons make the first complete circuit of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, I jumped out of my seat and applauded along with 260 other journalists and countless cheering and beaming physicists.
I’ve made no secret of my love of big physics. So I am thrilled to be here at the CERN laboratory [...]
Continue reading about Watching the world’s biggest machine come to life
Fermilab, a US physics laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, hosted an overnight pajama party to watch and celebrate the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland today. Fermilab has a remote operations center for the LHC, which allows physicists to monitor the LHC and operate one of its detectors, called CMS, from the US. The [...]
Continue reading about US physicists celebrate LHC with pajama party
SpaceX has now announced what caused the failure of its Falcon 1 rocket last weekend: a new engine on its first stage.
As I wrote in my previous post, the new engine’s walls were cooled by the incoming fuel rather than just having a thick layer of expendable insulation.
That left more fuel inside the [...]
Continue reading about SpaceX rocket failure due to new engine
Last week, the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) announced it has awarded .7 million in grants to 33 researchers to study basic questions in physics and cosmology.
Among the grant winners was surfer/theoretical physicist A. Garrett Lisi (pictured), who made the news last year with an unpublished paper entitled ‘An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything.’ Lisi will [...]
Continue reading about Surfer physicist gets grant to study theory of everything
The latest international news, of course, is that the Russians are throwing their weight around in Georgia and most everyone else, including the US, doesn’t approve. This might all quiet down and blow over; that’s happened before. Or it might not, in which case relations between the US and Russia might be less friendly for [...]
I love big physics. What captivates me is the contrasting scales: to explore the quantum realm - to really get to the bottom of what made the universe tick shortly after the big bang - you need gargantuan machines and giant detectors.
I can tell you exactly when this love affair began. It was June 1990 [...]
Continue reading about ‘Virtual reality’ photos bring the LHC to life
As the US election heats up, aspiring presidential candidates have turned their attention to Florida, where the shuttles are launched, and are pressing to clarify their positions on space exploration.
Democratic hopeful Barack Obama released a seven-page position statement (pdf) on Sunday, outlining his commitment to Constellation, NASA’s shuttle replacement programme, and to sending humans to [...]
If you took a stab at renaming NASA’s gamma-ray telescope earlier this year, now’s your chance to see whether the agency took your suggestion seriously. After asking the public to suggest a new name for GLAST, NASA is set to announce the winner at a press conference next Tuesday.
GLAST, or the Gamma-ray Large Area Space [...]
