Topic of the Day
Space mission scientists share their cosmic vision
Imperial scientists are planning to take physics to new limits with two missions given the rubber stamp by the European Space Agency (ESA) this month, known as Solar Orbiter and Euclid.
The Solar Orbiter mission will travel closer to the Sun than any other, measuring our star's magnetic field and improving our understanding of how solar activity and the harsh solar wind affect the Earth.
Professor Tim Horbury from Imperial's Space and Atmospheric Physics Group, who leads Solar Orbiter's magnetometer team, said: "Solar Orbiter will give us our first good view of the Sun's polar regions and a unique close-up view of the Sun's atmosphere and how it blows past the Earth and out to the far solar system."
Science News
Hi-tech scans catch prehistoric mite hitching ride on spider
Posted November 10th, 2011 in
Scientists have produced amazing three-dimensional images of a prehistoric mite as it hitched a ride on the back of a 50 million-year-old spider.
At just 176 micrometres long and barely visible to the naked eye, University of Manchester researchers and colleagues in Berlin believe the mite, trapped inside Baltic amber (fossil tree resin), is the smallest arthropod fossil ever to be scanned using X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanning techniques.
They say their study - published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters today (Wednesday, 9 November) - also sets a minimum age of almost 50 million years for the evolution among these mites of phoretic, or hitchhiking, behaviour using another animal species.
Scientists race against time to save the last ‘Flying Pencil’
Posted November 10th, 2011 in
Scientists are in a race against time to help save the last remaining intact World War II German light bomber Dornier Do-17, known as The Flying Pencil (Fliegender Bleistift), which lies underwater in the English Channel off the Kentish coast in the UK.
The researchers, from Imperial College London, are donating their time and scientific expertise to help the Royal Air Force Museum rescue the submerged aircraft, which was discovered in the shallows off the Goodwin Sands in 2010. Shifting sands have uncovered the aircraft, which was previously protected by layers of sediment, exposing it to the corrosive effects of seawater and threatening to destroy the plane entirely.
Aspirin cuts risk of inherited cancer
Posted November 2nd, 2011 in
Scientists co-funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) have confirmed that taking a regular dose of aspirin reduces the long-term risk of developing cancer in people with a family history of the disease.
An international collaboration found that cancer risk can be cut by 60 per cent, but that the benefits only become obvious five years after taking the drug. They published the results today in The Lancet.
