Science | WPN World People News

This picture shows a lab demonstration of the measurement chamber inside the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, an instrument that is part of the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation on NASA's Curiosity rover.

The glowing jumble of gas clouds visible in this new image make up a huge stellar nursery nicknamed the Prawn Nebula. Taken using the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, this may well be the sharpest picture ever taken of this object. It shows clumps of hot new-born stars nestled in among the clouds that make up the nebula.

This illustration shows how the different effective viscosity of water affects the force required to slide two surfaces separated by a thin layer of water when confined by a hydrophilic material or a hydrophobic material.

This model of the guanidinium chloride salt (blue and silver) in solution shows carbon (yellow) and water (green) surrounding the cations and demonstrates cation-cation pairing.

Diagram of an example flight profile is shown. It takes about 3 hours from launch for the payload to reach float (maximum altitude). HEROES will observe the Sun for approximately 5 hours until it is no longer visible. Astrophysical observations will then take place during the night-time.

This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite.

This atomic force microscope image shows directed self-assembly of a printed line of block copolymer on a template prepared by photolithography. The microscope’s software colored and scaled the image. The density of patterns in the template (bounded by the thin lines) is two times that of the self-assembled structures (the ribbons).

If you could drive a car around the giant Asteroid Vesta, you would need a road map akin to the atlas of images released from NASA's Dawn mission. Twenty-nine new maps of the asteroid, one of which is shown here, show its mountains and craters at a scale similar to that of common road maps.

Japan has launched a new rocket that it hopes will be a less expensive and more efficient way of sending satellites into space.