Copernical Team
A mission concept to fly a solar neutrino detector close to the sun
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Astronomers have proposed a concept mission to fly a neutrino observatory into orbit around the sun to get a better picture of what's happening in the sun's core.
Astronomers have very few tools to peer into the heart of the sun. Thankfully, the nuclear reactions constantly happening in the core of the sun as it fuses hydrogen into helium release a non-stop flood of neutrinos. Neutrinos are tiny ghost-like particles that hardly ever interact with matter.
On the Earth we have built giant detectors to catch the occasional neutrino. Astronomers have used those neutrinos to understand the nuclear processes happening inside of the sun and to probe the edge of known physics.
Video: The secrets of Jupiter
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Discover the top five mysteries that ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission will solve.
Jupiter, its magnetic environment, and its moons form one of the most intriguing systems in the solar system. Juice, planned for launch in 2023 and arrival at Jupiter in 2031, will reveal more about this fascinating planet and its natural satellites.
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A helping hand for Mars
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The mission to return martian samples back to Earth will see a European 2.5 metre-long robotic arm pick up tubes filled with precious soil from Mars and transfer them to a rocket for an historic interplanetary delivery.
New insights into the Earth's formation
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Although the Earth has long been studied in detail, some fundamental questions have still to be answered. One of them concerns the formation of our planet, about whose beginnings researchers are still unclear. An international research team led by ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS is now proposing a new answer to this question based on laboratory experiments an Predicting equatorial plasma bubbles with SWARM
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Changes in atmospheric density after sunset can cause hot pockets of gas called 'plasma bubbles' to form over the Earth's equator, resulting in communication disruptions between satellites and the Earth.
New AI models are now helping scientists to predict plasma bubble events and create a forecast. The work was presented this week at the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2022) by Sachin Redd Great Air Quality for the Great Lakes Region
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Air quality planning agencies in the U.S. Great Lakes region now include high-resolution NASA satellite data and near real-time Earth observations in their ozone pollution assessments. Creating models that accurately predict the complex lake and land breezes along Lake Michigan's shoreline is very difficult, but it's also vital to understanding how ozone pollution circulates in the region. Ozone depletion over North Pole produces weather anomalies
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Many people are familiar with the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, but what is less well known is that occasionally, the protective ozone in the stratosphere over the Arctic is destroyed as well, thinning the ozone layer there. This last happened in the spring months of 2020, and before that, in the spring of 2011.
Each time the ozone layer has been thinned out, climate researchers NASA Ice Scientists Take Flight from Greenland to Study Melting Arctic Ice
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Over the next two weeks, a handful of NASA scientists will be living very different lives from the rest of us: they will board a research plane in Greenland alongside laser instruments to help calibrate NASA's space-based measurements of Arctic ice.
The ice researchers and instrument scientists will board NASA's Gulfstream V jet and fly out of Thule Air Base in northwestern Greenland to he Researchers use quantum-inspired approach to increase lidar resolution
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Researchers have shown that a quantum-inspired technique can be used to perform lidar imaging with a much higher depth resolution than is possible with conventional approaches. Lidar, which uses laser pulses to acquire 3D information about a scene or object, is usually best suited for imaging large objects such as topographical features or built structures due to its limited depth resolution. Successful startup of the LUX-ZEPLIN Dark Matter Detector at Sanford
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Deep below the Black Hills of South Dakota in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), an innovative and uniquely sensitive dark matter detector - the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) - has passed a check-out phase of startup operations and delivered first results.
The take home message from this successful startup: "We're ready and