REPEATED RADIO SIGNALS COMING FROM GALAXY 1.5 BILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY, SCIENTISTS ANNOUNCE

Andrew Griffin 

Scientists pick up large number of blasts over a few weeks

Scientists have spotted repeated blast of radio signals coming from deep in space.

The breakthrough is only the second time scientists have seen such a repeating radio burst. It both deepens the mystery and offers a potential opportunity to finally understand what might be throwing out the burst from a galaxy billions of light years away.

Fast radio bursts have been speculated to be the result of everything from exploding stars to transmissions from aliens. But they have remained entirely mysterious, with little evidence at all of where they might be coming from.

The flashes only last for a milisecond but they are flung out with the same amount of energy the sun takes 12 months to produce.

The Large Hadron Collider celebrates 10 years. What have we learned?

The world's largest particle accelerator has been going for a decade. Physicist Todd Adams from Florida State University in the US sums up the progress so far.

Ten years! Ten years since the start of operations for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), one of the most complex machines ever created. The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator, buried 100 meters under the French and Swiss countryside with a 17-mile circumference.

On Sept. 10, 2008, protons, the center of a hydrogen atom, were circulated around the LHC accelerator for the first time. However, the excitement was short-lived because on Sept. 22 an incident occurred that damaged more than 50 of the LHC’s more than 6,000 magnets – which are critical for keeping the protons traveling on their circular path. Repairs took more than a year, but in March 2010 the LHC began colliding protons. The LHC is the crown jewel of CERN, the European particle physics laboratory that was founded after World War II as a way to reunite and rebuild science in war-torn Europe. Now scientists from six continents and 100 countriesconduct experiments there.

Mathematicians zero in on the birth of Hypatia

Probability theory deployed to recalculate the birth date of antiquity’s most famous female scholar. Gabriella Bernardi reports.

She was born in Egypt, at Alexandria, in an era in which women were not considered equals to men. However, her father, Theon, rector of the city’s famous library, took care of her education to make her, history records, “a perfect human being”. So Hypatia of Alexandria, highly educated, wise and beautiful, became a celebrated philosopher.

She deepened her studies in Athens and in Italy, and at the age of 31 succeeded her father at the helm of the most famous academy of antiquity. Here Hypatia strongly oriented her activity towards teaching, transmission, and commentary of ancient texts.