All articles tagged with #xenon
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will perform a Mars gravity assist on May 15, passing about 2,800 miles above the planet at roughly 12,333 mph to boost its trajectory toward the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche. Launched Oct 13, 2023, the mission uses solar-electric propulsion with xenon propellant, and the gravity assist helps save propellant while also calibrating science instruments for the upcoming encounter.
Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute and Peking University have used experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider to predict changes in the shape of Xenon nuclei during high-energy collisions. These findings, published in Physical Review Letters, reveal that the initial geometry of colliding nuclei significantly influences the outcomes of such collisions, challenging previous assumptions. The study also provides insights into the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter present shortly after the Big Bang, and demonstrates a novel algorithm for analyzing particle interactions without supercomputers.
For the first time, two dark matter experiments, XENON in Italy and PandaX in China, have detected a 'neutrino fog,' a dense cloud of neutrinos, using liquid xenon detectors. This discovery, involving coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS), complicates the search for dark matter as neutrinos can create background noise that mimics dark matter signals. Despite this challenge, experts believe the impact of this 'neutrino fog' on dark matter research is manageable. The findings are published in Physical Review Letters.
Two dark matter experiments, PandaX and XENON, have detected signals from solar neutrinos, known as the "neutrino fog," which could complicate future dark matter searches. These experiments, using liquid xenon detectors, observed coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) events, a process predicted to mimic dark matter signals. While the neutrino fog poses a potential challenge, it is not expected to significantly impact dark matter searches for at least a decade. The findings also open new avenues for neutrino research and standard-model testing.
Earth's atmosphere is missing a significant amount of xenon, a noble gas that typically does not react with other elements. Scientists have proposed various theories, including xenon being trapped in Earth's core, degassing into space, or being dissolved in perovskite in the mantle. Recent research suggests that a substantial amount of xenon may have been carried off into space early in Earth's history, leaving behind trace levels dissolved in perovskite. This mystery also raises questions about the xenon levels on Mars and the potential role of perovskite in trapping the gas.