- Madrid beat Villarreal but Carvajal suffers knee injury
- Madrid beat Villarreal to move level with Liga leaders Barcelona
- Monaco take top spot in Ligue 1 with win at Rennes
- French rugby player on rape charge whistled but 'serene' on return
- Madrid beat Villarreal to level Liga leaders Barca
- Thuram treble fires Inter past Torino and up to second
- 'Fight': defiant Trump jets in to site of rally shooting
- Toddler among 3 dead in migrant Channel crossings
- Mexico City's new mayor sworn in with pledges on water, housing
- Israel on alert ahead of Hamas attack anniversary
- Guardians maul Tigers in MLB playoff series opener
- Macron criticises Israel on Gaza, Lebanon operations
- French rugby player whistled but 'serene' on return amid ongoing rape case
- Kovacic stars as Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- Retegui hat-trick fires five-star Atalanta to hammering of Genoa
- Heavyweights Australia, England off to World Cup winning starts
- Visiting UN refugee agency chief decries 'terrible crisis' in Lebanon
- Spinners come to party as England defeat Bangladesh at T20 World Cup
- Search continues for missing in deadly Bosnia floods
- Man City sink Fulham to get title bid back on track
- France's Auradou whistled on Pau return in Perpignan loss amid ongoing rape case
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Arsenal hit back in style after Southampton scare
- Thousands march for Palestinians ahead of Oct 7 anniversary
- Hezbollah heir apparent Safieddine out of contact after strikes
- Liverpool stay top of Premier League as Arsenal, Man City win
- In dank Tour of Emilia, Pogacar shines in rainbow jersey
- DR Congo launches mpox vaccination drive, hoping to curb outbreak
- Trump returns to site of failed assassination
- Careless Leverkusen held to Bundesliga draw
- O'Brien's 'superstar' Kyprios posts landmark win on Arc weekend
- Toddler crushed to death in migrant Channel crossing
- Liverpool suffer Alisson injury blow
- Habosi helps Racing beat Vannes before Auradou's playing return
- Thousands march in London in support of Palestinians, 1 year after Oct 7
- Israel readying response to Iran missile attack
- Schutt, Mooney help Australia beat Sri Lanka in Women's T20 World Cup
- Liverpool extend Premier League lead with win at Palace
- Djokovic 'shakes rust off' to make third round of Shanghai Masters
- 'Imperfect' PSG fighting on all fronts - Luis Enrique
- Struggling Pakistan look to thwart adaptable England
- Child 'trampled to death' in asylum seekers' Channel crossing: minister
- Gauff fights back to set up Beijing final against Muchova
- Guardiola claims Premier League won't delay season for Man City
- Israel to mark October 7 attack as Gaza war spreads
- Gauff fights back to reach China Open final
- Recovering Stokes ruled out of first Pakistan Test
- Hezbollah battles troops on border as Israel pounds Lebanon
- Alcaraz, Sinner breeze into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Bagnaia wins Japan MotoGP sprint to cut Martin's lead
China, France to launch satellite to better understand the universe
A French-Chinese satellite will blast off Saturday on a hunt for the mightiest explosions in the universe, in a notable example of cooperation between a Western power and the Asian giant.
Developed by engineers from both countries, the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) will seek out gamma-ray bursts, the light from which has travelled billions of light years to reach Earth.
The 930-kilogram satellite carrying four instruments -- two French, two Chinese -- will lift off aboard a Chinese Long March 2-C rocket from a space base in Xichang, in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
Gamma-ray bursts generally occur after the explosion of huge stars -- those more than 20 times as big as the sun -- or the fusion of compact stars.
The extremely bright cosmic beams can give off a blast of energy equivalent to over a billion billion suns.
Observing them is like "looking back in time, as the light from these objects takes a long time to reach us", Ore Gottlieb, an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Astrophysics in New York, told AFP.
- 'Several mysteries' -
The rays carry traces of the gas clouds and galaxies they pass through on their journey through space -- valuable data for better understanding the history and evolution of the universe.
"SVOM has the potential to unravel several mysteries in the field of (gamma-ray bursts), including detecting the most distant GRBs in the universe, which correspond to the earliest GRBs," Gottlieb said.
The most distant bursts identified to date were produced just 630 million years after the Big Bang -- five percent of the current age of the universe.
"We are... interested in gamma-ray bursts for their own sake, because they are very extreme cosmic explosions which allow us to better understand the death of certain stars," said Frederic Daigne, an astrophysicist at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris.
"All of this data makes it possible to test the laws of physics with phenomena that are impossible to reproduce in the laboratory on Earth."
Once analysed, the data could help to better understand the composition of space, the dynamics of gas clouds or other galaxies.
The project stems from a partnership between the French and Chinese space agencies as well as other scientific and technical groups from both nations.
Space cooperation at this level between the West and China is fairly uncommon, especially since the United States banned all collaboration between NASA and Beijing in 2011.
- Race against time -
"US concerns on technology transfer have inhibited US allies from collaborating with the Chinese very much, but it does happen occasionally," said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States.
In 2018, China and France jointly launched CFOSAT, an oceanographic satellite mainly used in marine meteorology.
And several European countries have taken part in China's Chang'e lunar exploration programme.
So while SVOM is "by no means unique", it remains "significant" in the context of space collaboration between China and the West, said McDowell.
Once in orbit 625 kilometres (388 miles) above the Earth, the satellite will send its data back to observatories.
The main challenge is that gamma-ray bursts are extremely brief, leaving scientists in a race against time to gather information.
Once it detects a burst, SVOM will send an alert to a team on duty around the clock.
Within five minutes, they will have to rev up a network of telescopes on the ground that will align precisely with the axis of the burst's source to make more detailed observations.
D.Kaufman--AMWN