http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20051101-065347-9389r
MELBOURNE, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- A Florida Institute of Technology study has discovered laboratory-generated sparks can make X-rays.
Joseph
Dwyer, an associate professor of physics and space sciences, is noted
for previous discoveries related to X-ray emission from natural and
triggered lightning.
"We know that X-rays are made in
outer space -- in exotic places like the center of the sun and
supernovae -- but we didn't think they could be made so easily in the
air," said Dwyer.
Dwyer and his team set up their
equipment next to a Marx spark generator just to see what would happen.
Half the team guessed they would see X-rays, half thought not.
What
they found was 14 tests of 1.5- 2.0 million-volt sparks in the air
produced X-ray bursts similar to X-ray bursts previously observed from
lightning.
"This amazed us," said Florida Tech
Professor Hamid Rassoul, a co-author of the study. "It opens the door
to answering really big questions about lightning by generating it in
the lab. It also tells us that we have a lot to learn about how even
small sparks work."
The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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Physicist Sees Terahertz Imaging As Ultimate Defense Against Terrorism
John Federici, PhD, professor, department of physics, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and other physicists
at NJIT recently received a U.S. Patent for a Teraherz imaging system
and method. Since 1995, Terahertz imaging has grown in importance as
new and sophisticated devices and equipment have empowered scientists to understand its potential.
I
see the Terahertz spectrum as one of the critical technologies for
defense against suicide bombers and other terrorist activities,"
Federici said.
Federici's research
has focused on the potential applications of Terahertz rays for
directly detecting and imaging concealed weapons and explosives.
Another application is the remote detection of chemical and biological
agents in the atmosphere...
Read the whole story here:
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Super-massive black hole in center of Milky Way
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051102/sc_nm/space_blackhole_dc
LONDON
(Reuters) - Chinese scientists said on Wednesday they had gathered
evidence that shows a giant object in the center of our galaxy is a
super-massive black hole.
Zhi-Qiang
Shen and researchers at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory captured
radio waves emitted just beyond the edge of the mysterious object,
known as Sagittarius A, with a system of 10 radio telescopes spread
across the United States.
In a report in the science journal Nature they said it "provides strong evidence that Sgr A is a super-massive black hole."
The
celestial objects that suck in everything around them including light
are among the most mysterious objects in the universe. They are formed
when matter from a dying star collapses under its own gravity.
Black
holes have been described as the ultimate victory over gravity because
of their ability to suck in stars and other galactic features.
Scientists
have long suspected the presence of a black hole in the center of the
Galaxy. Astronomers believe it is four million times more massive than
our Sun.
The research reported in Nature suggests the black hole is as wide as the radius of the Earth's orbit.
"These
observations provide strong evidence that Sgr A is indeed a black hole,
and afford a glimpse of the behavior of the matter that is about to
flow into it," said Christopher Reynolds, of the University of Maryland
in the United States, in a commentary in the journal.
He
described the findings as a further step toward capturing an image of
the shadow around the edge of a black hole, which would be a classic
test of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.
The theory predicts that massive bodies -- planets, stars or black holes -- actually twist time and space around as they spin.