Physics Today: A space shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope was given the go ahead on Friday, in a desperate attempt to keep NASA’s flagship space-based instrument up and running. An official announcement by NASA administrator Michael Griffin is expected later today.
Azom.com: Plasma physicists at the Universities of Texas and Michigan have photographed speedy plasma waves, known as Langmuir waves, for the first time, using a specially designed holographic-strobe camera. The waves are the fastest matter waves ever photographed, clocking in at about 99.997% of the speed of light. The waves are generated in the wake of an ultra-intense laser pulse, and give rise to enormous electric fields, reaching voltages higher than 100 billion electron volts/meter (GeV/m). The waves’ electric fields can be used to accelerate electrons so strongly that they may lead to ultra-compact, tabletop versions of a high-energy particle accelerators that could be a thousand times smaller that devices which currently exists only in large-scale facilities, which are typically miles long.
Financial Times: Large companies are pouring money into research and development at an unprecedented rate, in response to growing global competition. The international R&D Scoreboard, published on Monday, shows a 7 per cent increase in spending by the world’s top 1,250 companies.
The Independent: Climate change has been made the world’s biggest priority, with the publication of a stark report showing that the planet faces catastrophe unless urgent measures are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The New York Times: Though experts agree the world faces a daunting challenge in finding nonpolluting energy sources, research into new technology has declined.
China.org: A training center for nuclear fusion research has been established at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, capital city of east China’s Zhejiang Province, to boost expertise in the nuclear fusion field.
ScienceNow: Researchers looking for better ways to make and store hydrogen have accidentally discovered an entirely new kind of ice. Made of molecular oxygen and hydrogen, the highly energetic and as-yet-unnamed compound currently exists only under rarefied laboratory conditions. It is different from the 17 known forms of ice, but researchers think its discovery could advance understanding of the nature of water under extreme conditions, such as in the interior of planets and even inside nuclear reactors. It also might help to spawn new rocket fuels.
The Independent: The world’s target for stopping global warming should be based on the point at which the melting of the great Greenland ice sheet becomes irreversible, says the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King.
The Register:
Intel is to close its UK research centre in Cambridge, The Register understands, just three and a half years after it was first opened. The move is part of the streamlining of the company outlined by CEO Paul Otellini earlier this year.
Science: Cassini team members at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, held here from 8 to 13 October, reported the first detection of a change on the surface of Titan since Cassini’s arrival, and it appears to be powered from within.