(Press-News.org) The first scientific results from Europe's Planck spacecraft featuring the coldest objects in the Universe have today been released.
Astronomers at The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory played a key role in the worldwide teams searching for an exciting variety of astronomical finds, from massive galaxy clusters to new, unidentified objects.
Ranging from within our Galaxy to the most distant reaches of space, Planck is a flagship mission of the UK Space Agency, which funds the UK's involvement in both of Planck's scientific instruments.
Astronomers from around the UK are now heavily involved in the operation of Planck's two scientific instruments and in understanding the images and data it is now producing.
Dr David Parker, Director of Space Science and Exploration for the UK Space Agency, said: "We're proud to be playing a key role in this amazing discovery machine.
"These new results are all vital pieces of a jigsaw that could give us a full picture of the evolution of both our own cosmic backyard – the Milky Way galaxy that we live in – as well as the early history of the whole Universe."
The routine phase of Planck's mission began on 13th August 2009. The observatory's primary goal is to image the Cosmic Microwave Background, the afterglow of the Big Bang, but to do so it must look through the rest of the Universe.
Whist scanning the whole sky, Planck detects emission from our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, as well as from other galaxies. It does not see stars, however, but the gas and dust from which the stars are born, and which they create when they die.
Dr Clive Dickinson, from The University of Manchester, said: "We are now becoming rather confident that the anomalous emission is due to nano-scale spinning grains of dust, which rotate up to ten thousand million times per second. This is a great result made possible by the exceptional quality of the Planck data."
One of the advantages of Planck's broad wavelength coverage is that it can detect very cold dust both within our Galaxy and beyond. Cold clumps of dust in our Galaxy, of which Planck has found over 900, represent the first stages of starbirth.
Additionally, a survey of around 500 galaxies within a few billion light years has shown that some of them contain much more cold dust than previously thought.
Dr Althea Wilkinson, from The University of Manchester, added: "We could hardly imagine this point when we were building amplifiers for the Low Frequency Instrument at Jodrell Bank more than five years ago.
"It is fantastic to have reached the stage where we see real science emerging."
Planck continues to survey the Universe. Its next data release is scheduled for January 2013 and will reveal the cosmic microwave background in unprecedented detail, the opening act of the cosmic drama, a picture of the beginning of everything.
INFORMATION: END
The negative reaction to Starbucks' redesigned logo by the company's self-described most loyal customers may be attributable to the strong connection Starbucks' consumers feel toward the brand, according to research co-authored by a professor at Penn State's Smeal College of Business.
Karen Winterich, assistant professor of marketing at Smeal, and researchers Michael Walsh of West Virginia University and Vikas Mittal of Rice University recently examined how consumers react to logo redesigns. They found that consumers who are strongly committed to a brand tend to react ...
Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, continue to chip away at the mysterious existence of water on the moon -- this time by discovering the origin of lunar water.
Larry Taylor, a distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, was the one last year to discover trace amounts of water on the moon. This discovery debunked beliefs held since the return of the first Apollo rocks that the moon was bone-dry.
Then, he discovered water was actually pretty abundant and ubiquitous -- enough so a human settlement on the moon is not ...
BETHESDA, Md., Jan. 11, 2011 – An international team of researchers is reporting that it has uncovered new information about human papillomavirus that one day may aid in the development of drugs to eliminate the cervical-cancer-causing infection.
Led by researcher Per Jemth of Uppsala University in Sweden, the collaborators from four institutions detail in the Journal of Biological Chemistry how an offensive protein generated by the sexually transmitted virus handicaps a defensive protein made by the human body.
Co-author Neil Ferguson, a biophysicist at University ...
VIDEO:
This animation illustrates the position on the sky of all compact sources detected by Planck during its first all-sky survey and listed in the Early Release Compact Source Catalogue (ERCSC)....
Click here for more information.
The first scientific results from ESA's Planck mission were released at a press briefing today in Paris. The findings focus on the coldest objects in the Universe, from within our Galaxy to the distant reaches of space.
If William Shakespeare ...
The first scientific results from Europe's Planck spacecraft were released at a press briefing today in Paris. The findings, focusing on the coldest objects in the Universe - both within our galaxy and also out to the most distant reaches of space - include an exciting variety of astronomical finds, from massive galaxy clusters to new, unidentified objects. Planck is a flagship mission of the UK Space Agency, which funds the UK's involvement in both of Planck's scientific instruments. Astronomers from around the UK are now heavily involved in the operation of Planck's ...
PROVIDENCE, RI – Does obesity tend to "cluster" among young adults? And if so, what impact does it have on both their weight and weight-related behaviors? That's what researchers from The Miriam Hospital's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center set out to answer to better understand how social influences affect both weight status and weight loss intentions in this difficult-to-reach age group.
According to the study, published online by the journal Obesity, overweight and obese young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 were more likely to have overweight romantic ...
Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced doctor who claimed a link between MMR and autism, planned secret businesses intended to make huge sums of money, in Britain and America, from his now-discredited allegations.
The Wakefield scheme is exposed today in the second part of a BMJ series of special reports, "Secrets of the MMR scare", by investigative journalist Brian Deer. Last week we revealed the scientific fraud behind the appearance of a link between the vaccine and autism. Now Deer follows the money.
Drawing on investigations and documents obtained under the Freedom of ...
The drugs include traditional non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) as well as new generation anti-inflammatory drugs, known as COX-2 inhibitors.
The researchers say that doctors and patients need to be aware that prescription of any anti-inflammatory drug needs to take cardiovascular risk into account.
NSAIDs have been the cornerstone of managing pain in patients with osteoarthritis and other painful conditions. In 2004, the COX-2 inhibitor rofecoxib was withdrawn from the market after a trial found that the drug increased the risk of cardiovascular disease. ...
The blood test could mean that 98% of invasive procedures could be avoided, say the authors. The test uses the latest DNA technology to analyse genetic components in the mother's blood that indicate whether the foetus has Down's.
Down's syndrome or trisomy 21 occurs in around 1 in 800 births and older women are at higher risk.
Women in high risk groups tend to undergo a combination of scans and hormone level tests in order to determine if they need to have an invasive test such as amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling. The latter tests take samples of genetic ...
Cambridge, MASS. -- Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital have shown that they can deliver the cancer drug cisplatin much more effectively and safely in a form that has been encapsulated in a nanoparticle targeted to prostate tumor cells and is activated once it reaches its target.
Using the new particles, the researchers were able to successfully shrink tumors in mice, using only one-third the amount of conventional cisplatin needed to achieve the same effect. That could help reduce cisplatin's potentially severe side effects, which include kidney damage ...
