Topic: Physics

'God particle' symphony: Physicists make music from cosmic collider

A planet with 4,500-m.p.h. winds? Now that's a superstorm.

Scientists have succeeded in clocking the winds in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star in the constellation Pegasus. Windiest planet in our solar system is Neptune, at 1,200 m.p.h.

'God particle' symphony: CERN scientists simulate sounds of Higgs boson

'God particle' audiophiles rejoice: The Higgs boson has been turned into a sonata. Scientists working at the CERN's Large Hadron Collider have converted data from their experiments into musical sounds.

Cosmic hit-and-run leaves massive trail of stars

A collision between two galaxies has left one of them with a tail of stars, as revealed by an ultraviolet snapshot from a NASA space observatory.

Jellyfish-like star spotted in the sky

The jellyfish-like object depicted is a sphere of stellar innards, blown out from a humongous star as it ages. The star is one of the most massive stellar residents of our Milky Way galaxy.

'Monster' black holes light up when galaxies collide

Monster black holes at the centers of galaxies tend to 'light up' – throwing out massive amounts of radiation – when galaxies merge.

World Cup soccer ball travels faster and farther at high altitudes

World Cup soccer balls will travel faster and straighter through Johannesburg's thin air, a NASA scientists has warned.

Theory of Everything: To come up with it, scientists drop an experiment down an elevator shaft

Theory of Everything: In an attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity, scientists dropped super-cold quantum gas down a five-story shaft.

'Large Binocular Telescope' delivers images three times sharper than Hubble

'Large Binocular Telescope' takes the sharpest pictures yet of deep space from Earth.

Houston native to launch into space

On Tuesday in Houston, flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Texas will watch as astronaut Shannon Walker becomes the first Houston native to launch into space.

Source of shimmering colors found in butterfly wings revealed

The butterfly wings contain tiny structures called gyroids that diffract sunlight like a crystal.

Scientists allege that dark matter and dark energy might not exist

A new look at the data from one of the telescopes used to establish the existence of dark matter and dark energy raises questions about whether they really exist at all.

Renewable energy pioneer wins prestigious technology prize

Swiss scientist Michael Graetzel won the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize for his work on inexpensive solar cells for renewable energy projects.

Science of bursting bubbles has its bubble burst

Scientists have found that a popped bubble actually creates a ring of smaller daughter bubbles in its wake.

NASA will launch your name and photo into outer space for free

NASA is collecting digital photos and names from the public to launch on the two final space shuttle missions.

Morgan Freeman to host new TV program on space exploration

Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman is going to host a Science Channel program that focuses on space exploration.

Inspirational physicist Stephen Hawking honored at big-time New York gala

British physicist Stephen Hawking was honored at a gala in New York on Wednesday evening.

NASA's next big-ticket telescope showcased in New York City

A mockup of the James Webb Space Telescope, billed as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, took center stage at New York's World Science Festival.

What's more powerful than a supermassive black hole? A supermassive black hole that spins backwards.

Supermassive black holes that have a retrograde spin might produce more ferocious jets of gas, a new theory suggests.

NASA's new jumbo-jet-mounted telescope takes its first snapshots

Peering out of a hole in the side of a jumbo jet, NASA's new Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) captured its first images of Jupiter and of the galaxy M82.

New image reveals that galaxies tend to clump together

A new image from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory shows that galaxies are not scattered randomly.

Scientists figure out why black holes 'light up' when galaxies collide

When galaxies merge, some black holes will suddenly emit 10 billion times the energy of the sun. Using data from NASA's Swift satellite, scientists now know why this happens.

Two giant black holes surprise scientists with unexpected behavior

Two new studies have turned up some surprising results and could help explain the evolution of galaxies.