Science

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Hubble Sees Galaxy in a spin

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The image is a combination of exposures taken in visible and near-infrared light, using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is around 3.4 by 3.4 arcminutes, or around a tenth of the diameter of the full moon.

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Keck confirms: Armchair astronomers find planet in four-star system

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An artist's illustration of PH1, a planet discovered by volunteers from the Planet Hunters citizen science project. PH1, shown in the foreground, is a circumbinary planet and orbits two suns.

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Single-Crystal, Organic Nanowire High-Performance Phototransistors

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Growing graphene better for future electronics

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New cobalt-graphene catalyst could challenge platinum for use in fuel cells: Performs nearly as well as precious metal catalysts

There's a new contender in the race to find an inexpensive alternative to platinum catalysts for use in hydrogen fuel cells.

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Nanoparticles of cobalt attach themselves to a graphene substrate in a single layer. As a catalyst, the cobalt-graphene combination was a little slower getting the oxygen reduction reaction going, but it reduced oxygen faster and lasted longer than platinum-based catalysts.

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Jupiter: Turmoil from Below, Battering from Above

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Images in the visible-light and infrared parts of the spectrum highlight the massive changes roiling the atmosphere of Jupiter.

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Radioactive decay of titanium powers supernova remnant

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Supernova remnant SNR1987A is located 166 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The light from the stellar explosion arrived at Earth in 1987, and has since provided astronomers with a natural laboratory to monitor how the brightness of a supernova changes over time.
Dominating this Hubble Space Telescope view of the remnant are two glowing loops and a very bright ring of shocked hotspots surrounding the location of the now-exploded central star. The material making up these loops and rings was probably ejected from the star earlier in its history and is now being illuminated by the supernova and its shockwave.

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What's Baking on Titan?

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft obtained this image of a feature shaped like a hot cross bun in the northern region of Titan (left) that bears a striking resemblance to a similar feature on Venus (right).

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Penn Researchers Find New Way to Prevent Cracking in Nanoparticle Films

Making uniform coatings is a common engineering challenge, and, when working at the nanoscale, even the tiniest cracks or defects can be a big problem. New research from University of Pennsylvania engineers has shown a new way of avoiding such cracks when depositing thin films of nanoparticles.

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Nanoparticle films crack at certain thicknesses (left). By adding layers of thinner films, cracking can be avoided (right).

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X-ray Satellites Monitor the Clashing Winds of a Colossal Binary

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Two of these stars can be found in the intriguing binary system known as Cygnus OB2 #9. In 2011, NASA's Swift satellite, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory and several ground-based facilities took part in a campaign to monitor the system as the giant stars raced toward their closest approach.

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