Spring 2006

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  Molecular Fingerprinting

  Science sleuths have a new and powerful method for identifying (and investigating) atoms and molecules, thanks to Graduate Student Mike Thorpe, Research Associate Kevin Moll, Senior Research Associate Jason Jones, Undergraduate Student Assistant Ben Safdi, and Fellow Jun Ye. The new method allows them to study molecular vibrations, rotations, and collisions as well as temperature changes and chemical reactions. [Continue Reading]

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  Flare Up!

  Gamma-ray bursts signal the birth of a new black hole, whether it's created during the collapse of a massive star or via a merger between two compact objects such as neutron stars. Astrophysicists have determined that long gamma-ray bursts are associated with collapsing stars and short bursts are associated with binary mergers. [Continue Reading]

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  Bubble Shock Trains

  Black holes are pretty strange, sucking in not only nearby matter but also the space around it. These cosmic vacuum cleaners are powered by thin, gaseous accretion disks in orbit around them. Something drives the orbiting gas to spiral in toward the black hole, where all trace of it disappears forever into the singularity. [Continue Reading]

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  Heme Motions

  Our lives depend on heme. As part of hemoglobin, it carries oxygen to our tissues. As part of cytochrome c, it helps transform the energy in food into the energy-rich molecule ATP (adenosine triphosphate) that powers biochemical reactions that keep us alive and moving. [Continue Reading]

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  As the Sun Turns

  Juri Toomre and his group concentrate their stellar research close to home - just 93 million miles away, to be precise. They want to answer the question: What dynamic processes occur deep within the Sun? [Continue Reading]

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  Charting the Fermi Sea

  JILA physicists are collaborating to explore the link between superconductivity and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of fermions at ultracold temperatures. Fermions have an odd number of total protons, neutrons, and electrons, giving them a half integer spin, which is either up or down. [Continue Reading]

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  Partnership in Time

  There's only one way to prove you've invented a better atomic clock: Come out on top of a comparison of your clock with one of the world's best atomic clocks: The NIST-F1 cesium fountain atomic clock, the nation's primary time and frequency standard. [Continue Reading]

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  Body of Evidence

  One fun thing theorists do is undertake creative projects that predict phenomena that haven't yet been observed experimentally. In fact, sometimes they even predict things no one has ever imagined before. [Continue Reading]

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  Bubbling Clusters of Galaxies

  Galaxy clusters contain enormous clouds of gas whose cooling should result in the formation of a multitude of new stars. But that's not what NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is detecting. [Continue Reading]