Heavens

There has been much recent interest, especially among cosmologists, in theories known as galileons. Galileons are an interesting and novel, though still hypothetical, class of effective scalar fields which are extremely universal and have attracted much recent attention. They arise generically in describing the short distance behavior of the new degrees of freedom introduced during the process of modifying gravity, and in describing the dynamics of extra dimensional brane worlds.

Since 2006, when NASA's Stardust spacecraft delivered its aerogel and aluminum foil dust collectors to Earth, a team of scientists has combed through the collectors in search of rare, microscopic particles of interstellar dust.

The team now reports that they have found seven dust motes that probably came from outside our solar system, perhaps created in a supernova explosion millions of years ago and altered by eons of exposure to the extremes of space. They would be the first confirmed samples of contemporary interstellar dust.

The first analysis of space dust collected by a special collector onboard NASA's Stardust mission and sent back to Earth for study in 2006 suggests the tiny specks, which likely originated from beyond our solar system, are more complex in composition and structure than previously imagined.

The analysis, completed at a number of facilities including the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) opens a door to studying the origins of the solar system and possibly the origin of life itself.

An international team of sky scholars, including a key researcher from Johns Hopkins, has produced new maps of the material located between the stars in the Milky Way. The results should move astronomers closer to cracking a stardust puzzle that has vexed them for nearly a century.

Hurricane Julio moved past the Hawaiian Islands like a car on a highway in the distance, and NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the storm, now downgraded to a tropical storm located more than 700 miles away. Julio is far enough away from Hawaii so that there are no coastal watches or warnings in effect.

Socorro Island in the Eastern Pacific received an unwelcome tropical visitor on the morning of August 13 when satellite data confirmed the formation of Tropical Storm Karina.

Karina strengthened from the eleventh tropical depression in the Eastern Pacific. Tropical Depression 11-E formed at 11 p.m. EDT on August 12. Just twelve hours later at 11 a.m. EDT, the depression had become better organized and winds increased to tropical storm strength.

Although Tropical Storm Karina is still strengthening in the Eastern Pacific Ocean NASA's Aqua satellite revealed a large band of fragmented thunderstorms wrapping into its center from the north.

Young men are not always concerned about getting consent from young women to have anal sex, and pain for women is considered normal, according to new research published in BMJ Open.

Putting three radars on a plane to measure rainfall may seem like overkill. But for the Integrated Precipitation and Hydrology Experiment field campaign in North Carolina recently, more definitely was better.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have made a novel discovery that may potentially protect the world from future collisions with asteroids.

The team studied near-Earth asteroid 1950 DA and discovered that the body, which rotates so quickly it defies gravity, is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals, never detected before on an asteroid.

The findings, published in this week's edition of the science journal Nature, have potential implications for defending our planet from a massive asteroid impact.

Numerous wildfires have dotted the Russian landscape this past summer fire season. Although not quite as the adage says, although still true, where there's fire there's smoke. The smoke in this image has drifted from the Eastern Russian wildfires to the Arctic Sea. Other images that have been collected over the summer show both the fires that have broken out and the accompanying smoke.

n parts of British Columbia, Canada, the Canadian Wildfire Information System's (CWIS) interactive map shows extreme wildfire danger. The area targeted on the map is the area where these wildfires are showing up on this Aqua satellite image from August 12, 2014. The priority fires this week are all within British Columbia and have affected over 142,000 hectares (almost 351,000 acres).

From research stations drifting on ice floes to high-tech aircraft radar, scientists have been tracking the depth of snow that accumulates on Arctic sea ice for almost a century. Now that people are more concerned than ever about what is happening at the poles, research led by the University of Washington and NASA confirms that snow has thinned significantly in the Arctic, particularly on sea ice in western waters near Alaska.

Infrared satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite shows three tropical system s in the Central Pacific Ocean that appears like bookends with Hawaii in-between.

In an infrared image from the GOES-West satellite taken August 13 at 1200 UTC (8 a.m. EDT/2 a.m. HST), Hurricane Julio lies to the north of Hawaii, while two low pressure areas lie to the southeast of the island state. The image was created by NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 13, 2014 — As countries try to rid themselves of toxic mercury pollution, some people are slathering and even injecting creams containing the metal onto or under their skin to lighten it, putting themselves and others at risk for serious health problems. To find those most at risk, scientists are reporting today that they can now identify these creams and intervene much faster than before. They're speaking at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).