2011

Published Nov. 14, 2011 3:18 PM

An international team of scientists is now on Spitzbergen in the Svalbard archipelago to take readings within the aurora borealis itself. The aim: to investigate space weather and find out why GPS signals are disrupted.

Published June 21, 2011 9:43 AM

From a mountain top reaching 5080 meters above sea level, situated in the driest desert in the world, some of the world’s most sensitive arrays of “miniature TV antennas” have spent the last 30 months gazing at the sky, looking for tiny wrinkles in the fabric of space itself: Wrinkles that would reveal what the universe looked like when it was only 10-34 seconds old; wrinkles with a relative amplitude of perhaps no more than a few parts in a billion; and wrinkles that would qualify their discoverer for a Nobel prize.

Published May 31, 2011 3:31 PM

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory in Geneva is the first particle accelerator to directly explore the Tera-electron-Volt (TeV) scale, a new energy frontier. 1 TeV = 1000 GeV is equivalent to the energy of ca. 1000 proton masses.

By colliding beams of protons or lead nuclei, the LHC will probe deeper into matter than ever before, reproducing conditions in the first nanoseconds in the life of the Universe.

Four big experiments – among them ATLAS and ALICE with Norwegian participation – have been collecting data that should reveal new physics phenomena.

Published Mar. 15, 2011 10:22 AM

Why do some people have dark skin while others have light-coloured skin? The answer lies in the skin's need for protection against solar radiation and the body's need for vitamin D.