A popular theme in the movies is that of an incoming asteroid that could extinguish life on the planet, and our heroes are launched into space to blow it up. But incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought, finds a Johns Hopkins study that used a new understanding of rock fracture…
Scientist Finds Elusive Star with Origins Close to Big Bang
Astronomers have found what could be one of the universe’s oldest stars, a body almost entirely made of materials spewed from the Big Bang. The discovery of this approximately 13.5 billion-year-old tiny star means more stars with very low mass and very low metal content are likely out there—perhaps even some of the universe’s very…
Can The Parker Solar Probe Take The Heat?
The star of the show is a dark gray block, about the size of a textbook, and several inches thick. As an audience of reporters watches, an engineer runs a flaming blowtorch over the block until its face heats to a red glow. “You want to take a touch of the back surface?” she invites…
Parker Solar Probe Will Transport More Than 1 Million Names To The Sun
When the Parker Solar Probe lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida this summer on its historic journey to the sun, it will carry with it the names of more than a million people. Inscribed on a memory card the size of a fingernail, the names—1,137,202 in total—were submitted by members of…
Secrets of Ancient Egypt May Spark Better Fuel Cells for Tomorrow’s Cars
To make modern-day fuel cells less expensive and more powerful, a team led by John Hopkins chemical engineers has drawn inspiration from the ancient Egyptian tradition of gilding. Egyptians artists at the time of King Tutankhamun often covered cheaper metals (copper, for instance) with a thin layer of a gleaming precious metal such as gold…
Super-Strong Metal Made for Next Tech Frontier
The technological future of everything from cars and jet engines to oil rigs, along with the gadgets, appliances and public utilities comprising the internet of things, will depend on microscopic sensors. The trouble is: These sensors are mostly made of the material silicon, which has its limits. Johns Hopkins University materials scientist and mechanical engineer…
Can One Cosmic Enigma Help Solve Another?
Astrophysicists from the Johns Hopkins University have proposed a clever new way of shedding light on the mystery of dark matter, believed to make up most of the universe. The irony is they want to try to pin down the nature of this unexplained phenomenon by using another, an obscure cosmic emanation known as “fast…
Did Gravitational Wave Detector Find Dark Matter?
The eight scientists from the Johns Hopkins Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy had already started making calculations when the discovery by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was announced in February. Their results, published recently inPhysical Review Letters, unfold as a hypothesis suggesting a solution for an abiding mystery in astrophysics. “We…
Hobby Drones Made to Crash to Expose Design Flaws
Sales of drones — small flying machines equipped with cameras — are soaring. But new research by a Johns Hopkins computer security team has raised concerns about how easily hackers could cause these robotic devices to ignore their human controllers and land or, more drastically, crash. Five graduate students and their professor discovered three different…
Quasars Slowed Star Formation: First Observed Evidence of Galactic-Wind
Research led by Johns Hopkins University scientists has found new persuasive evidence that could help solve a longstanding mystery in astrophysics: Why did the pace of star formation in the universe slow down some 11 billion years ago? A paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society finds evidence supporting the argument that the…
Scientists Get First Glimpse Of Black Hole Eating Star, Ejecting High-Speed Flare
An international team of astrophysicists led by a Johns Hopkins University scientist has for the first time witnessed a star being swallowed by a black hole and ejecting a flare of matter moving at nearly the speed of light. The finding reported Thursday in the journal Science tracks the star—about the size of our sun—as it shifts…
Study: Enthusiasm Dwindles for ObamaCare Spending
The Affordable Care Act has eroded support for federal health care spending not just from Republicans, but also from Democrats and independents, a Johns Hopkins University study has found. Before the 2010 passage of the law widely known as “ObamaCare,” as many as 86 percent of Democrats thought too little was being spent on health. At…
Photos of the Day: The Map Backpack
A Johns Hopkins APL engineer uses EMAPS aboard a ship to generate a map. Produced for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an Enhanced Mapping and Positioning System (EMAPS) captures a floor-plan-style map of the area traversed as well as 360-degree photos and sensor readings of that area using a combination of lasers and sensors.…
APL Backpack-Sized Mini-Mapper Captures Intel in Tight Spots
Engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have developed a portable mapping system — carried in a backpack — that can be used to automatically create annotated physical maps of locations where GPS is not available, such as in underground areas and on ships. See the photos here. Produced for the Defense Threat…