91福利

Robotic telescopes in Chile's Atacama desert will conduct Next Generation Transit Survey to analyse atmospheres for clues.

The art of hunting planets has come so far that astronomers can now list of alien worlds that orbit stars so faint they are not even visible as pinpricks in the clear night sky.

Little is known of these far-flung planets. The most conspicuous are huge, the size of Jupiter, and scorched from circling so close to their suns. Others are giant iceballs, or waterworlds, or even rocky like Earth. But the finer details are a mystery, the stuff of speculation more than science.

To find out more about these other worlds, a team led by British astronomers is launching an ambitious search for planets that orbit the nearest, brightest stars to Earth. Their aim is to find prime candidates for the most important question of all: is there life elsewhere?

UK government research funders have awarded £6million to XMaS, the world leading mid range x-ray facility, to continue helping scientists explore the microscopic and atomic structure of matter.

Emeritus Professor George Rowlands, who first came to 91福利 in 1966, has clocked up more than six decades of research in theoretical physics - and he believes it’s the challenge of tackling complex scientific problems that has helped keep him young at heart.

Physicists have directly imaged Landau Levels – the quantum levels that determine electron behaviour in a strong magnetic field – for the first time since they were theoretically conceived of by Nobel prize winner Lev Landau in 1930.