RESEARCH NEWS → Far infrared and millimeter observations of Supernova 1987A made with the Herschel satellite by Geoff Clayton and collaborators reveal the presence of a population of cold dust grains with a mass close to half a solar mass. The observations, reported in Science 7 July 2011: 1205983, imply that supernovae can produce the large dust masses detected in young galaxies at high redshifts. More . . .

RESEARCH NEWS → Thomas Kutter, Martin Tzanov, and Bill Metcalf's T2K (Tokai to Kamioka) long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment has announced a new result. Using neutrinos produced in an accelerator at Tokai outside Tokyo and detected in the underground Kamiokande laboratory 185 miles away, T2K has reported observing a new variety of neutrino oscillations from "muon neutrinos" to "electron neutrinos." More . . .

RESEARCH NEWS → The Gamma ray Burst Monitor (GBM) instrument on the Fermi satellite mission has detected a decrease of several percent in the hard X-ray and gamma ray intensity from the Crab Nebula, previously thought to be a constant "standard candle". Gary Case, Mike Cherry, and James Rodi, working with an international team of collaborators, have confirmed the result with independent measurements on the RXTE, Swift, and INTEGRAL telescopes. By using archived results going back to 1999, they suggest that the Crab periodically increases and decreases in intensity by a few percent with a period of approximately three years. The current decrease is the largest so far observed. The initial catalog of hard x-ray sources observed by GBM has been published in the Astrophysical Journal 729, 105 (2011). More . . .