He came up with the 80m figure by multiplying the number of dots, or pixels, in a high-resolution image (about 1m-2m) by the number of surfaces that an imaginary ray of light corresponding to each pixel would encounter as it bounced around a complex scene (say, 50-100).

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One small ray of light came with news that the immediate, short-term future could be secured with a bridging loan of just 150m euros, compared with earlier estimates of a 230m euro loan.

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Fermi and a laundry list of the world's great observatories on the ground and in space were all watching because of a coordinated plan to study Markarian 421 across a number of "colours" of light from radio to gamma-ray.

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Current Blu-ray lasers emit light in the blue part of the electromagnetic spectrum (about 405 nm wavelength).

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Only instead of amplifying visible light, it amplifies photons in the X-ray spectrum.

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The researchers used the star's X-ray light curves to determine its spin, which makes V1647 one of the youngest stars whose spin has been determined using an X-ray based technique, they said.

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