Vly News - Professional news Platform

As beautiful as it may look, works of art are not immortal. For example, pigments and binders in oil paintings are inevitably degraded. Fluctuations in light, humidity, and temperature are common causes, but exposure to certain cleaning solvents during conservation and improper mixing of pigments by the artist can also destabilize the paint over time. The task of conservation scientists is to understand the chemical reactions that cause degradation to answer three questions: How was the painting created, how did it first appear, and how did it change—both naturally and by intervention? The questions are not completely backwards. By reconstructing how the painting deteriorated, conservators may be able to prevent further damage and better preserve it. Painting conservator and doctoral student Nouchka De Keyser (Rijksmuseum, University of Amsterdam, and University of Antwerp), his advisers Katrien Keune and Koen Janssens, and their colleagues scientifically answered all three questio...

WASHINGTON — Facing rising costs, the European Space Agency is looking at ways to revise the design of a large X-ray space telescope, an effort that could have implications for NASA’s own astrophysics program. ESA selected the Athena mission in 2014 as one of the two flagship astrophysical missions, along with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Athena — the name comes from the Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics — will launch in the mid-2030s to study supermassive black holes, supernova explosions, and other X-ray sources using large X-ray mirrors. At the time of the election, each mission had an estimated cost to ESA of 1.05 billion euros ($1.07 billion), or about 1.17 billion euros today, said Paul McNamara, ESA’s astronomy and astrophysics coordinator, during a July 21 presentation to NASA astronomers and astrophysicists. committee. However, in 2019, the combined price of Athens and LISA has grown to 2.5 billion euros. As of May 2022, LISA had a...

Before (top) and after 150 hours of annealing (bottom) on different length scales (left to right). It can be seen that the surface roughness measured using Atomic Force Microscopy is significantly reduced over a wide range of length scales. Credit: Tokyo Metropolitan University A team led by scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University has created an unprecedented lightweight optic for an X-ray space telescope, breaking the traditional trade-off between angular resolution and weight. They used Micro Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) technology, creating intricate patterns in silicon wafers that can direct and collect X-rays. By annealing and polishing, they realized ultra-sharp features that could rival the performance of existing telescopes for a fraction of their weight, at significantly lower launch costs. X-ray astronomy is a vital tool that helps scientists study and classify various celestial bodies that emit and interact with X-rays, i...

Tokyo, Japan – A team led by scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University has created unprecedented light optics for X-ray space telescopes, breaking the traditional trade-off between angular resolution and weight. They used Micro Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) technology, creating intricate patterns into silicon wafers that can direct and collect X-rays. By annealing and polishing, they realized ultra-sharp features that could rival the performance of existing telescopes for a fraction of their weight, at significantly lower launch costs. X-ray astronomy provides a vital tool that helps scientists study and classify various celestial bodies that emit and interact with X-rays, including our planet. But there’s something interesting: most of the X-ray radiation is absorbed in our atmosphere, which means that telescopes and detectors have to be launched into space. With this comes various limitations, in particular, how heavy the device can be. One of the main features of all...