Read article 'Astronomers discover Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone'
A rocky planet only five times the mass of the Earth was discovered around the nearby low-mass star Gliese 581. This is the most Earth-like planet known to date and furthermore its orbit is at th...
Read article 'THEMIS spacecraft take thin-contact silicon into orbit'
Particle detectors developed for high-energy and nuclear physics often find uses in many other fields. Now silicon detectors with thin entrance contacts have been launched into space aboard the five s...
Read article 'GRB afterglow challenges theory'
An extremely bright and long afterglow of a rather common gamma-ray burst (GRB) was observed during four months by the X-ray telescope of NASA’s Swift satellite. Such a long-lasting X-ray emissi...
Read article 'Galaxy centre may harbour super accelerator'
Although the super-massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy seems very quiet compared with those seen as quasars in remote galaxies, it might be a giant proton accelerator more powerful than CER...
Read article 'RF antennas help unravel cosmic rays'
The first results from the CODALEMA experiment are introducing a new approach for studying very high-energy cosmic rays.
Read article 'Gravitational waves could probe inflation'
“In the beginning was the Word,” opens the gospel of John, and this finds some resonance in the possibility of detecting gravitational waves from the Big Bang itself at frequencies typical...
Read article '3D map reveals distribution of dark matter'
Making a map of something that cannot be seen directly seems almost impossible, but it has been achieved by a wide international collaboration analysing a huge set of observations gathered by the Hubb...
Read article 'SN1987A heralds the start of neutrino astronomy'
In 1987, detectors recorded a neutrino pulse emitted by SN1987A. Masayuki Nakahata, who found the signal in Kamiokande, looks at the ongoing legacy of this historic event.
Read article 'Finding the speed limit for galactic positrons'
A new analysis of diffuse galactic gamma-ray data sets constraints on the initial energy of positrons produced in the centre of our galaxy. This limitation to at most a few mega-electron-volts severel...
Read article 'An Invitation to Astrophysics'
This book describes several aspects of astrophysics and cosmology in a way that a physicist or beginner in astrophysics can understand. It emphasizes current research and exciting new frontiers, and i...
