An international team of researchers, led by astronomers from the University of Amsterdam, has directly demonstrated the presence of iron in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time. The researchers discovered emission lines of uncharged iron atoms in the light spectrum of KELT-9b. The observation was complicated as the exoplanet is outshined by its bright host star. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-iron-exoplanetary-atmosphere.html…
Tag: Amsterdam
Questionable stability of dissipative topological models for classical and quantum systems
Energy conservation lies at the core of every physical theory. Effective mathematical models however can feature energy gain and/or loss and thus break the energy conservation law by only capturing the physics of a subsystem. As a result, the Hamiltonian, the function that describes the system’s energy, loses an important mathematical property: it is no longer Hermitian. Such non-Hermitian Hamiltonians have…
Dutch Museum Says Van Gogh Painting Stolen In Overnight Raid
The Singer Laren museum in Laren, east of Amsterdam, says thieves have made off with a prize Vincent van Gogh painting while the institution was closed to the public. artnet News reports: The break-in at the museum happened in the early hours of Monday morning, at around 3:15 a.m. The thieves smashed a large glass door at the front of the…
Experts Say the Internet Will Mostly Stay Online During Coronavirus Pandemic
As millions of Americans hunker down to slow the spread of COVID-19, U.S. broadband networks are seeing a significant spike in usage. While industry insiders say that the U.S. internet should be able to handle the strain overall, broadband availability, affordability, and slow speeds could still pose a serious problem for many housebound U.S. residents. From a report: In a blog…
What’s new on Coursera for Business – January 2020
By Kyle Clark, Senior Skills Transformation Consultant 2020 is already proving to be an exciting year for skill development on Coursera. Our university and industry partners launched over 60 courses in January – an average of 2 courses per day. Our new courses range in topic from IT automation and feature engineering to visual analytics, […]
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Only Three of the Top 100 International Airports Pass Basic Security Checks
Only three of the world’s Top 100 international airports pass basic security checks, according to a report published last week by cyber-security firm ImmuniWeb. From a report: The three are the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands, the Helsinki Vantaa Airport in Finland, and the Dublin International Airport in Ireland. According to ImmuniWeb, these three “may serve a laudable example not…
Albatrosses Outfitted With GPS Trackers Detect Illegal Fishing Vessels
schwit1 shares a report from the Smithsonian: Capable of following fishing boats into remote regions out of reach of monitoring machines like ships, aircraft and even certain satellites, these feathered crimefighters could offer a convenient and cost-effective way to keep tabs on foul play at sea — and may even help gather crucial conservation data along the way. […] On top…
Scientists map a pulsar for the 1st time
Using a revolutionary X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station, scientists have finally created the 1st pulsar surface “map.” It shows odd hot spots and suggests that pulsar magnetic fields are more complicated than anyone had assumed. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/pulsar-surface-map-hot-spots-size-mass-j0030-nicer…
2019 Sees More Geeky Advent Calendars
It’s the first day of December, which means the return of an annual geek tradition: the computer programming advent calendars! An anonymous reader delivers this update:
It’s the very first year for the Raku Advent Calendar (using the language formerly known as Perl 6). Meanwhile, Perl 5 still has its own separate advent calendar. Amsterdam-based Perl programmer Andrew Shitov is also writing…