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The Zhuque-2 rocket lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Wednesday China said the rocket completed the flight mission. Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua via EPA-EFE July 12 (UPI) -- A methane-fueled rocket, launched by China, has reached orbit for the first time, beating out potential competitors from the United States and indicating a renewed effort by that nation to land astronauts on the moon with a more powerful spacecraft. Built by Landspace, a private Chinese company, the 164-foot Zhuque-2 rocket lifted off from its Jiuquan launch complex, in China's Inner Mongolia, on Wednesday morning local time, Chinese...

Caption:When measuring a nucleus with a certain “magic” number of neutrons — 82 — the magnetic field of the nucleus exhibits a drastic change, and the properties of these very complex nuclei appear to be governed by just one of the protons of the nucleus. Credit: Adam Vernon ================================================================================================== A curious thing happened when MIT researchers Adam Vernon and Ronald Garcia Ruiz, along an international team of scientists, recently performed an experiment in which a sensitive laser spectroscopy technique was used to measure how the nuclear electromagnetic properties of indium isotopes evolve when an extreme number of neutrons are added...

Inside JET's torus, with superimposed plasma. (UKAEA) Late last century, the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, UK, churned out 22 megajoules of energy in what was, at the time, a record in fusion power. Now, experimental upgrades have brought the facility into line with the technology anticipated for a major international project, resulting in the production of nearly three times that amount of power. The advances are a major step forward for tokamak-based fusion, bringing us ever closer to a balance point where we can harvest a near endless stream of energy without the cost of polluting emissions or...

Experimental setup. As a beam of beryllium comes in from the left, the deuteron Trojan horse intercepts it at the target and delivers its neutron soldier. This allows the decay products of the beryllium and neutron reactions to be captured by a curved array of six detectors on the right. Credit: Hayakawa et al. There is a significant discrepancy between theoretical and observed amounts of lithium in our universe. This is known as the cosmological lithium problem, and it has plagued cosmologists for decades. Now, researchers have reduced this discrepancy by around 10%, thanks to a new experiment on...

Size measurements of two neutron stars are narrowing down what kinds of exotic matter might exist in their extremely dense cores.Neutron stars are the tricksters of the celestial sphere. Their age, their temperature, even their size is not always what it first appears to be. But with the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) aboard the International Space Station, astronomers are finally beginning to make some headway measuring these stars’ actual size — and with that, some insight into their strange interiors.Members of the NICER team presented two independent size measurements of the most massive neutron star known at the...

A satellite experiment has revealed that the heaviest known neutron star is unexpectedly large, which suggests that the matter in the star’s inner core is less “squeezable” than some models predict. NICER measures the size of a neutron star by tracking the x-ray emission from “hot spots” on the surface as the star rotates. These spots occur at the magnetic poles of the star, where the field slams particles onto the star surface. Neutron stars are “cosmic zombies”­—corpses of massive stars that collapsed in violent explosions after running out of fuel. By studying these ultradense objects, researchers hope to understand...

An emerging consensus suggests the crash can explain distant gamma-ray bursts GREAT ESCAPE A bright jet of fast-moving particles fled the scene after two neutron stars collided, spewing material and potentially forming a black hole (shown in this artist’s illustration). When a pair of ultradense cores of dead stars smashed into one another, the collision shot a bright jet of charged subatomic particles through space. Astronomers thought no such jet had made it out of the wreckage of the neutron star crash, first detected in August 2017. But new observations of the crash site using a network of radio telescopes...

These remaining cores of dead stars can only get so massive before they become black holes. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The subtle difference between when a massive dying star compresses into a core and when it collapses entirely may have been found. In a study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers at the Goethe University in Frankfurt say they’ve found the dividing line between compact objects called neutron stars and black holes. When a massive star reaches the end of its life, it goes out with an immense bang called a supernova. From there, one of two known things Can happen: it either...

A startling collision in an ancient galaxy slews Earth's largest telescopes to a spot in the Hydra constellation. Two rapidly spinning neutron stars have violently merged to form a possible black hole. And, for the first time, astronomers see its electromagnetic flash and hear its gravitational thunder as they watch new elements being born.

Document CMPC-2003-000537 is a secret and personal memo written in November 1999 by the director of the Iraqi National Monitoring Department (NMD) and addressed to the Minister of the Iraqi Military Industrialization Commission (MIC). The memo talks about a Neutron Source Device with High Radioactive Activity that was found in one Iraqi University and the NMD is asking that it should be returned to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization. The Neutron Source Device can be also called Neutron Generator or Neutron Initiator. This Neutron Generator device was not declared to the UN inspectors all the time they were in Iraq...

Intense pressure can force neutrons into cubes rather than spheres, say physicistsInside atomic nuclei, protons and neutrons fill space with a packing density of 0.74, meaning that only 26 percent of the volume of the nucleus in is empty. That's pretty efficient packing. Neutrons achieve a similar density inside neutron stars, where the force holding neutrons together is the only thing that prevents gravity from crushing the star into a black hole. Today, Felipe Llanes-Estrada at the Technical University of Munich in Germany and Gaspar Moreno Navarro at Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, say neutrons can do even better. These...

Superfluids are strange states of matter, typically forming at very low and very high temperatures, exhibiting gonzo properties like a seemingly gravity-defying tendency to climb up the walls of containers and friction-free superconductivity. That is, they are perfect conductors that don't lose energy during transmission. And the fact that they appear to exist at the center of neutron stars tells scientists a lot about nuclear interactions in high-density matter and the life-cycles of neutron stars. The pressure within neutron stars is so intense that in the stars' cores, charged particles merge, resulting in a star mostly consisting of neutrons (hence...

Science Daily — For two generations of physicists, it has been a standard belief that the neutron, an electrically neutral elementary particle and a primary component of an atom, actually carries a positive charge at its center and an offsetting negative charge at its outer edge. The notion was first put forth in 1947 by Enrico Fermi, a Nobel laureate noted for his role in developing the first nuclear reactor. But new research by a University of Washington physicist shows the neutron's charge is not quite as simple as Fermi believed. Using precise data recently gathered at three different laboratories...

The former commander of Iraq's Republican Guard has accused the US of using non-conventional weapons in its war against the Middle East country. Saifeddin Fulayh Hassan Taha al-Rawi told Al Jazeera that US forces used neutron and phosphorus bombs during their assault on Baghdad airport before the April 9 capture of the Iraqi capital. Al-Rawi is one of the most wanted associates of Saddam Hussein, the deposed Iraqi leader, still on the run. "The enemy used neutron and phosphorus weapons against Baghdad airport... there were bodies burnt to their bones," he said.

Astronomers using the European Space Agency's gamma-ray observatory, Integral, have detected what appears to be the fastest spinning neutron star yet. This tiny stellar corpse is spinning 1122 times every second. If confirmed, the discovery gives astronomers the chance to glimpse the insides of the dead star. The neutron star, known by its catalogue number XTE J1739-285, was discovered during one of its active phases on 19 October 1999 by NASA's Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite. In August 2005, while Integral was monitoring the bulge of the Galaxy, XTE J1739-285 started to come back to life. About a month...

In a first response by Syria to the Israeli Air Force flyover the palace of Syrian President Basher Assad, a government spokesman said: "Two Israeli military planes circled with dawn at a low height, near our shore. The air defense forces opened fire at the planes and they split up and left the area." This was Syria's official version of the event, which was broadcast on Syrian television. In the message, Syria denied any ties or responsibility to the kidnapping of soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza. "These aggressive operations form a provocation and are unjustified. If their goal is to...

Fast-spinning neutron star smashes speed limit 19:00 12 January 2006 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee The fastest-spinning neutron star ever found is discovered in a crowded star cluster near the centre of the Milky Way, a new study reveals. The star rotates 716 times per second – faster than some theories predict is possible – and therefore may force researchers to revise their models. Neutron stars form when a massive star explodes at the end of its life and leaves behind a super-dense, spinning ball of neutrons. These stellar corpses emit intense beams of radio waves from their poles and...

with burst of radiation Hyperspace suction force manifests power by which earthquake is generated Terrestrial scientists watched it closely. Astronomers have found the first evidence of cracks in a neutron star's crust. The star cracked when it was rocked by the strongest "starquake" ever recorded. There are millions of neutron stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and some of these have magnetic fields trillions of times stronger than Earth's, the strongest of which are called magnetars. This particular magnetar – SGR 1806-20 – is surrounded by the strongest magnetic field known in the universe. The magnetar's crust could no...

A huge blast of radiation from an exploding star might have been behind one of the Earth's worst mass extinctions, some 450m years ago. In the latest issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, scientists argue that a gamma ray burst, the most powerful explosion that occurs in the universe, was responsible for the Ordovican mass extinction in which 60% of all marine invertebrates died. Gamma ray bursts are thought to be caused either when two neutron stars collide or when giant stars collapse into black holes at the end of their lives. For around 10 seconds, intense pulses of energy...

In 1979, Pope John Paul II conferred on one of the authors (Sam Cohen) a peace medal for his invention, the neutron bomb. This was a small nuclear weapon designed to do its work, killing enemy military forces, without destroying a country’s infrastructure. The Nuclear Threat That Doesn't Exist – or Does It?by Sam Cohen and Joe Douglass March 11, 2003 U.S. administration spokesmen have said they have no evidence that Iraq has produced or acquired nuclear warheads. Implicit in their statements is the assumption that any such warheads would have to be fission warheads containing uranium or plutonium....