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There is something strange in the cosmic neighbourhood. An unknown object in the nearby galaxy M82 has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before. "We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK. The thing appeared in May last year, while Muxlow and his colleagues were monitoring an unrelated stellar explosion in M82 using the MERLIN network of radio telescopes in the UK. A bright spot of radio emission emerged over only a few days, quite rapidly in...

Public release date: 14-Sep-2007 [ Print Article | E-mail Article | Close Window ] Contact: Laura Ostlaura.ost@nist.gov 303-497-4880National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 'Radio wave cooling' offers new twist on laser cooling NIST physicists used radio waves to cool this silicon micro-cantilever, the narrow orange strip across the middle of this colorized micrograph. The cantilever, created by ion etching through a silicon... Click here for more information. Visible and ultraviolet laser light has been used for years to cool trapped atoms—and more recently larger objects—by reducing the extent of their thermal motion. Now, applying a different form of...