Heavens

While new evidence suggests that Mars may harbor a tiny amount of liquid water, it exists today as a largely cold and arid planet. Three billion years ago, however, the situation may have been much different.

In 2012 the Mars Curiosity rover beamed images back to Earth containing some of the most concrete evidence that water once flowed in abundance on the planet. Small, remarkably round and smooth pebbles suggested that an ancient riverbed had once carried these rocks and abraded them as they traveled.

A study of spiral galaxies seen edge-on has revealed that "halos" of cosmic rays and magnetic fields above and below the galaxies' disks are much more common than previously thought.

An international team of astronomers used the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to study 35 edge-on spiral galaxies at distances from 11 million to 137 million light-years from Earth. The study took advantage of the ability of the VLA, following completion of a decade-long upgrade project, to detect radio emission much fainter than previously possible.

New research at the Luxembourg School of Finance suggests that investor belief in higher returns by investing in private equity investment funds may be misplaced, calling into question their rising popularity.

The hope is to develop efficient and environmentally friendly solar energy applications. Solar energy is an inexhaustible resource that we currently only utilise to a very limited extent. Researchers around the world are therefore trying to find new and more efficient ways to use the energy in sunlight.

The technique the researchers in Lund are working on is solar cells consisting of a thin film of nanostructured titanium dioxide and a dye that captures solar energy. Today, the best solar cells of this type use dyes containing ruthenium metal - a very rare and expensive element.

Tropical Cyclone 03A formed in the Arabian Sea, Northern Indian Ocean on October 10 and by October 12 it weakened to a remnant low pressure area. NASA's Terra satellite happened over the storm when it developed and caught a visible image of this short-lived storm.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite passed over Tropical Cyclone 03A as it was forming on Oct. 10, 2015 at 06:30 UTC (2:30 a.m. EDT). The MODIS image showed a concentration of storms around the center of circulation.

An international team of astronomers, including Dr Simon Vaughan from the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy, has discovered a previously unknown link between the way young stars grow and the way black holes and other exotic space objects feed from their surroundings.

Tropical Storm Koppu formed in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean as a depression early on October 13 as NASA's Terra satellite passed over the storm and quickly intensified.

Scientists using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have produced new maps of Jupiter that show the continuing changes in its famous Great Red Spot. The images also reveal a rare wave structure in the planet's atmosphere that has not been seen for decades. The new image is the first in a series of annual portraits of the Solar System's outer planets, which will give us new glimpses of these remote worlds, and help scientists to study how they change over time.

Can the Web make people more fit?

It's a question hot on the minds of everyone from health insurers to gym owners to public health officials. Although millions of dollars a year are being spent designing promotional ads and social media campaigns, they clearly aren't working: more than 43 percent of Americans get insufficient levels of daily exercise, and nearly a third are obese.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Choi-wan as it moved over cooler waters and was becoming an extra-tropical storm.

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- The job market for college graduates is poised for a third straight year of explosive growth, as companies in most industries seek new talent, according to the largest annual survey of U.S. employers.

Michigan State University's Recruiting Trends report projects hiring in 2015-16 will increase an average 15 percent across all degree levels - associate's, bachelor's, MBA, master's, doctorate and professional.

There have been many estimates for when the earth's inner core was formed, but scientists from the University of Liverpool have used new data which indicates that the Earth's inner core was formed 1 - 1.5 billion years ago as it "froze" from the surrounding molten iron outer core.

Astronomers have long turned their telescopes, be they on satellites in space or observatories on Earth, to the wide swaths of interstellar medium to get a look at the formation and birth of stars. However, the images produced over the last 50 years look more like weather maps showing storm systems instead of glittering bursts of light that the untrained observer might expect of a "star map." That is, until now.

Astronomers have successfully peered through the 'amniotic sac' of a star that is still forming to observe the innermost region of a burgeoning solar system for the first time.

In a research paper published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team of astronomers describe surprising findings in their observations of the parent star, which is called HD 100546.

Trained volunteers are as good as professional astronomers at finding jets shooting from massive black holes and matching them to their host galaxies, research suggests.

Scientists working on citizen science project Radio Galaxy Zoo developed an online tutorial to teach volunteers how to spot black holes and other objects that emit large amounts of energy through radio waves.