Discoveries, ideas and people to watch
Astronomers now have a better understanding of how stars progress, thanks to NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope that has detected numerous pulsars by the gamma rays they emit.
Tagged: NASA, pulsar, space, On Campus, Humanities & Sciences
In a band 1,000 kilometers above Earth, a growing collection of
mechanical debris is accumulating. Old rocket boosters, retired
satellites, and even pieces of an intentionally exploded Chinese
satellite threaten to destroy millions of dollars worth of orbiting
surveillance, weather, and telecom satellites that we increasingly rely
on in our daily lives.
Tagged: space, Environment & Sustainability, Business
About three times a second, the rotating corpse of a 10,000-year-old
star sweeps a beam of gamma rays toward Earth. This object, known as a
pulsar, is the first one known to "blink" at Earth only in gamma rays,
and was discovered by an orbiting observatory launched in June with
significant involvement from researchers at Stanford and the SLAC
National Accelerator Laboratory.
Department's research has stretched from searching out long lost wreckage at the bottom of the ocean to investigating the rarefied heights of Einsteinian physics in orbit.
Tagged: aeronautics, astronautics, science, space, On Campus, Engineering
The next major space observatory, GLAST, is about to begin gathering new information about subatomic particles, black holes, and the birth and evolution of the universe.
The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope reached orbit Wednesday morning aboard a rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Tagged: space, Public Service, Humanities & Sciences