Hitomi probes turbulence in galaxy cluster
With its very first observation, Japan’s Hitomi X-ray satellite has discovered that the gas in the Perseus cluster of galaxies is much less turbulent than expected. The unprecedented measurement...
ESO signs largest ever ground-based astronomy contract
The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be the largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world, boasting a primary mirror 39 m in diameter. Its aim is to measure the properties o...
Neutron-star mergers create heaviest elements
The origin of some of the heaviest chemical elements is due to rapid neutron capture, but the precise location where this cosmic alchemy takes place has been under debate for several decades. While co...
Protons accelerated to PeV energies
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) – an array of Cherenkov telescopes in Namibia – has detected gamma-ray emission from the central region of the Milky Way at energies never reache...
AugerPrime looks to the highest energies
Since the start of its operations in 2004, the Auger Observatory has illuminated many of the open questions in cosmic-ray science. For example, it confirmed with high precision the suppression ...
CALET sees events in millions
Just a few months after its launch (CERN Courier November 2015 p11) and the successful completion of the on-orbit commissioning phase aboard the International Space Station, the CALorimetric Electron ...
Fast radio bursts reveal unexpected properties
Two studies show that fast radio bursts (FRBs) have a richer phenomenology than initially thought and might originate in two different classes. While a group could, for the first time, pinpoint the lo...
Gamma-ray excess is not from dark matter
An excess of gamma rays at energies of a few GeV was found to be a good candidate for a dark-matter signal (CERN Courier April 2014 p13). Two years later, a pair of research articles refute this inter...
LIGO: a strong belief
Résumé LIGO : l’aboutissement d’un long chemin Vingt ans de travail acharné porté par la conviction que ces efforts conduiraient un jour à une découverte hist...
Neutrons in full flight at CERN’s n_TOF facility
Accurate knowledge of the interaction probability of neutrons with nuclei is a key parameter in many fields of research. At CERN, pulsed bunches from the Proton Synchrotron (PS) hit the spallat...
