News tagged with vacuum

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Ad Astra VASIMR

Plasma Rocket Could Travel to Mars in 39 Days

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Oct 06, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (120) | comments 72

(PhysOrg.com) -- Last Wednesday, the Ad Astra Rocket Company tested what is currently the most powerful plasma rocket in the world. As the Webster, Texas, company announced, the VASIMR VX-200 engine ran at ...


Tackling the big questions -- approaching a revolution in our understanding of gravity

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 05, 2008 | popularity 4 / 5 (46) | comments 13

(PhysOrg.com) -- The way galaxies move through the cosmos has recently begun to baffle scientists. Even when the gravitational theories of Newton and Einstein are taken into account, the universe is expanding and galaxies ...


Dyson's Bladeless Fan

Dyson Unveils His Bladeless Fan (w/ Videos)

Technology / Hi Tech

created Oct 14, 2009 | popularity 3.9 / 5 (38) | comments 25

(PhysOrg.com) -- James Dyson, inventor of the bag-less vacuum cleaners has taken his invention one step further with the unveiling of the bladeless fan. Using 'Air Multiplier' technology the bladeless fan ...


Lower-cost solar cells to be printed like newspaper, painted on rooftops

Lower-cost solar cells to be printed like newspaper, painted on rooftops

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Aug 24, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (32) | comments 12

Solar cells could soon be produced more cheaply using nanoparticle "inks" that allow them to be printed like newspaper or painted onto the sides of buildings or rooftops to absorb electricity-producing sunlight.


Space: The not-so-final frontier

Biology /

created Sep 08, 2008 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (24) | comments 1

Of all environments, space must be the most hostile: It is freezing cold, close to absolute zero, there is a vacuum, so no oxygen, and the amount of lethal radiation from stars is very high. This is why humans need to be ...


The day the universe froze

The day the universe froze: New dark energy model includes cosmological phase transition

Physics / General Physics

created May 08, 2009 | popularity 3.9 / 5 (23) | comments 16

Imagine a time when the entire universe froze. According to a new model for dark energy, that is essentially what happened about 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was a quarter of the size it is today.


The Ultimate Long Distance Communication

The Ultimate Long Distance Communication

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 19, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (19) | comments 11

Anyone who's vacationed in the mountains or lived on a farm knows that it's hard to get good internet access or a strong cell phone signal in a remote area. Communicating across great distances has always ...


Drinking water from air humidity

Drinking water from air humidity

Technology / Engineering

created Jun 05, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (16) | comments 12

Cracks permeate the dried-out desert ground, the landscape bears testimony to the lack of water. But even here, where there are no lakes, rivers or groundwater, considerable quantities of water are stored ...


Crashing the size barrier

Crashing the size barrier

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 18, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (15) | comments 6

Like surfers on monster waves, electrons can ride waves of plasma to very high energies in a very short distance. Scientists have proven that plasma acceleration works. Now they're developing it as a way to ...


refractive index

Measuring the Speed of Light in Composite Materials

Physics / General Physics

created Aug 02, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (14) | comments 7

(PhysOrg.com) -- Although the speed of light is constant in a vacuum, light slows down a small amount when traveling through other materials. While it's relatively easy to measure the speed of light in mediums ...


Atoms don't dance the 'Bose Nova'

Atoms don't dance the 'Bose Nova'

Physics / General Physics

created Sep 03, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (11) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Hanns-Christoph Naegerl's research group at the Institute for Experimental Physics, Austria, has investigated how ultracold quantum gases behave in lower spatial dimensions. They successfully ...


Nanosatellites expected to benefit from advanced propulsion technology

Nanosatellites expected to benefit from advanced propulsion technology

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Oct 19, 2009 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (12) | comments 3

A University of Michigan professor is developing an electric rocket thruster, NanoFET, that uses nanoparticle electric propulsion and enables spacecraft to travel faster and with less propellant than previous ...


Researchers could herald a new era in fundamental physics

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 03, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 8

Cardiff University researchers who are part of a British-German team searching the depths of space to study gravitational waves, may have stumbled on one of the most important discoveries in physics according to an American ...


Bringing solar power to the masses

Technology / Energy

created Aug 05, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (11) | comments 2

On a 104-degree Friday in July when sunlight bathed The University of Arizona campus, doctoral student Dio Placencia sat before a noisy vacuum chamber in the Chemical Sciences Building trying to advance the renewable energy ...


NASA's Next Moon Mission Begins Thermal Vacuum Test

NASA's Next Moon Mission Begins Thermal Vacuum Test

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Oct 23, 2008 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (11) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has begun environmental testing in a thermal vacuum that simulates the harsh rigors of space.