Month: January 2013
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4,096 miniature antennas on a chip send shaped light
Phased arrays consist of multiple antennas, all driven from a single source. By combining the output from all those antennas, you can make the light very directional, or give it a particular shape. Typically, phased arrays use radio light: big radar installations use them, as does the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes. A…
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Maybe you could be the one to discover the next Earth
The orbiting Kepler observatory has been a remarkably successful project since its inception. By watching one small patch of the sky continuously, Kepler has enabled astronomers to discover upward of 2300 possible exoplanets—planets orbiting other stars. While many of those candidates likely are not actually planets, follow-up observations have confirmed 854 exoplanets as of December…
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Bad news for some planets in binary star systems?
How quickly things can change in science: just a few years ago, we were barely able to talk about the diversity of planetary systems. Now, we are able to distinguish between planets orbiting in tight binary systems from those in wide binaries. Additionally, exoplanets in tight binaries can orbit either both stars together (circumbinary, or Tatooine-like…
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Why do half of Andromeda’s satellite galaxies orbit in a plane?
Our local group of galaxies—known imaginatively as the Local Group—has two huge galaxies: the Milky Way and M31, also known as the Andromeda Galaxy. Both of these galaxies are large enough to have a number of satellites, including the substantial Magellanic Clouds and M33 (Triangulum Galaxy). However, most satellites are dwarf galaxies, very faint and…
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Quantum entanglement between La Palma and Tenerife
Quantum entanglement is a weird concept in a theory full of weird concepts. A typical experiment goes as follows: you prepare a pair of photons such that their polarizations are complementary. A subsequent measurement on one photon will reveal the outcome of a related measurement on the other photon—no matter how widely they are separated.…
Bowler Hat Science 