Earth

Mapping the Earth's magnetic field – to find oil, track storms or probe the planet's interior – typically requires expensive satellites.

University of California, Berkeley, physicists have now come up with a much cheaper way to measure the Earth's magnetic field using only a ground-based laser.

The method involves exciting sodium atoms in a layer 90 kilometers above the surface and measuring the light they give off.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Illinois researchers have documented the first observations of some unusual physics when two prominent electric materials are connected: superconductors and graphene.

Led by University of Illinois physics professor Nadya Mason, the group published its findings in the journal Nature Physics.

Scientists aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook have discovered a new set of deep-sea volcanic vents in the chilly waters of the Southern Ocean. The discovery is the fourth made by the research team in three years, which suggests that deep-sea vents may be more common in our oceans than previously thought.

Troy, N.Y. – Peter Fox and James Hendler of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are calling for scientists to take a few tips from the users of the World Wide Web when presenting their data to the public and other scientists in the Feb. 11 issue of Science magazine. Fox and Hendler, both professors within the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer, outline a new vision for the visualization of scientific data in a perspective piece titled "Changing the Equation on Scientific Data Visualization."

RICHMOND, Va. (Feb. 11, 2011) – An international team of researchers has discovered a new class of magnetic superhalogens – a class of atomic clusters able to exhibit unusual stability at a specific size and composition, which may be used to advance materials science by allowing scientists to create a new class of salts with magnetic and super-oxidizing properties not previously found.

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(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– UC Santa Barbara scientists have made a discovery that has the potential for use in the early diagnosis and eventual treatment of plaque-related diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Type 2 diabetes. Their work is published in a recent issue of Nature Chemistry.

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Feb. 10, 2011) -- A chronology of 1,000 years of earthquakes at the southern end of the San Andreas Fault nixes the idea that lake changes in the now-dry region caused past quakes. However, researchers say, the timeline pulled from sediment in three deep trenches confirms that this portion of the fault is long past the expected time for a major temblor that would strongly shake the Los Angeles Basin.

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Washington, D.C.—Chemical compounds called manganites have been studied for many years since the discovery of colossal magnetoresistance, a property that promises important applications in the fields of magnetic sensors, magnetic random access memories and spintronic devices. However, understanding—and ultimately controlling—this effect remains a challenge, because much about manganite physics is still not known.

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A milestone in the international Avogadro project coordinated by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) has been reached: With the aid of a single crystal of highly enriched 28Si, the Avogadro constant has now been measured as exactly as never before with a relative overall uncertainty of 3 · 10-8. Within the scope of the redefinition of the kilogram, the value NA = 6.02214078(18) · 1023 mol-1 permits the currently most exact realization of this unit. The results have been published in the most recent edition of the journal "Physical Review Letters".

Millbrook, NY— If society wants to address big picture environmental problems, like global climate change, acid rain, and coastal dead zones, we need to pay closer attention to the Earth's coupled biogeochemical cycles. So reports a special issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, published this month by the Ecological Society of America.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – This December marks the bicentennial of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12, which are the biggest earthquakes known to have occurred in the central U.S.

Now, based on the earthquake record in China, a University of Missouri researcher says that mid-continent earthquakes tend to move among fault systems, so the next big earthquake in the central U.S. may actually occur someplace else other than along the New Madrid faults.

A study of bound protons and neutrons conducted at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has allowed scientists, for the first time, to extract information through experimentation about the internal structure of free neutrons, without the assistance of a theoretical model. The result was published in the Feb. 4 issue of Physical Review Letters.