Where to land on a comet?
Spare a thought for scientists on the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, who will spend this weekend dissecting the ins and outs of five patches of land on a comet 440 million kilometres away. Read more
Spare a thought for scientists on the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, who will spend this weekend dissecting the ins and outs of five patches of land on a comet 440 million kilometres away. Read more
The Giant Magellan Telescope received a boost today when Brazil’s São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) confirmed its plans to join the project. The $880-million facility, currently under construction, is one of three competing megatelescopes that will study the skies in the next decade. Read more
Cosmic swirls that were hailed earlier this year as evidence for primordial gravitational waves – ripples in spacetime dating back to the early universe – may turn out to have been caused by dust. But several top physicists are standing by the decision to announce the result back in March, before it had been peer-reviewed. Read more
Germany’s science funding may look healthy to outsiders, but its research ministry seems to have stretched its cash too thinly. Last week, it decided that helping to fund the world’s biggest radio-telescope – to be built in South Africa and Australia by 2024 at a cost of more than €1.5 billion – was one international mega-project too many. On 5 June, it said it would pull out of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), to the dismay of German astronomers, who say they were not consulted and are hoping to reverse the move. Read more
The 2014 Kavli Prizes, announced today, were shared among nine scientists for their work on the theory of cosmic inflation, for contributions to the field of nano-optics and for the discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition. Read more
NASA’s Swift satellite has detected a burst of high-energy gamma rays coming from the Andromeda galaxy, the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way. The rare cosmic explosion is likely to deliver a flood of data to astronomers, who are swiveling their telescopes to capture its aftermath. Read more
The Hong Kong-based Shaw Prize Foundation announced the winners of the annual Shaw Prize today. Three prizes, in astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences, each carry US$1 million. It’s the 11th year the prizes were awarded. Read more
Where will host the world’s next generation ground-based γ-ray detector, the Cherenkov Telescope Array? The answer is, still no one knows. But a panel of funders have narrowed the field following a meeting in Munich, Germany, this week. Read more