Heavens

San Antonio — July 31, 2014 — A new terrestrial bombardment model developed by an international group of scientists led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) indicates that Earth's surface was heavily reprocessed — or melted, mixed and buried — as a result of giant asteroid impacts more than four billion years ago.

Observations by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope of several stellar eruptions, called novae, firmly establish these relatively common outbursts almost always produce gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.

"There's a saying that one is a fluke, two is a coincidence, and three is a class, and we're now at four novae and counting with Fermi," said Teddy Cheung, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, and the lead author of a paper reporting the findings in the Aug. 1 edition of the journal Science.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have unexpectedly discovered the most distant galaxy that acts as a cosmic magnifying glass. Seen here as it looked 9.6 billion years ago, this monster elliptical galaxy breaks the previous record-holder by 200 million years.

These "lensing" galaxies are so massive that their gravity bends, magnifies, and distorts light from objects behind it, a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Finding one in such a small area of the sky is so rare that you would normally have to survey a region hundreds of times larger to find just one.

TEMPE, Ariz. - The Universe is home to a variety of exotic objects and beautiful phenomena, some of which can generate almost inconceivable amounts of energy. ASU Regents' Professor Sumner Starrfield is part of a team that used the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope satellite to discover very high energy gamma rays (the most energetic form of light) being emitted by an exploding star. The surprising discovery dispels the long-held idea that classical nova explosions are not powerful enough to produce such high-energy radiation.

The resurrected Tropical Depression Genevieve appears squeezed between three other developing areas of low pressure. Satellite data from NOAA and NASA continue to show a lot of tropical activity in the Eastern and Central Pacific Oceans on July 31.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM Satellite passed over Guam as heavy rain fell over the island while Tropical Storm Halong's center passed just to the north of the island.

The TRMM satellite flew above tropical storm Halong on July 31, 2014 at 0904 UTC (August 1, 2014 at 7:04 p.m. local time, Guam).

There are two tropical low pressure areas in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean today and they're close enough to each other to be captured in one image generated from data gathered by NASA's Aqua satellite.

For many years astronomers have known that young 'protostars' drive supersonic jets of gas from their north and south poles. However, this is the first time that so many of them have been detected at once.

The results come from a five year survey undertaken with the UK Infra-Red Telescope and are expected to prompt significant changes in the understanding of the planetary nebulae population in the Galaxy, as well as the properties of jets ejected from young forming stars.

There are two tropical low pressure areas in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean today and they're close enough to each other to be captured in one image generated from data gathered by NASA's Aqua satellite.

Infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite helped confirm that the remnant low pressure area of former Tropical Storm Genevieve has become a Zombie storm, and has been reborn as a tropical depression on July 30.

Tropical Storm Genevieve weakened to a tropical depression on Sunday, July 27 and the National Hurricane Center issued their final advisory on the system as it was entering the Central Pacific. Now, after three days of living as a remnant low pressure area, Genevieve reorganized and was classified as a tropical depression again.

An innovative 'trigeneration' system fuelled entirely by raw plant oils could have great potential for isolated homes and businesses operating outside grid systems both in the UK and abroad.

Developed by a consortium led by Newcastle University and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the RCUK Energy Programme, the small-scale combined cooling, heat and power system has been designed to provide dependable electricity without the need for a mains connection.

Ann Arbor, Mich. -- Adults who undergo a minimally invasive technique to treat atrial fibrillation are significantly less likely to die from a heart attack or heart failure, according to a long-term study by the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center.

More than 4 million people have atrial fibrillation, an age-related heart rhythm disorder that can cause a fluttering sensation in the chest and impair the heart's ability to pump blood.

Earth and Mercury are both rocky planets with iron cores, but Mercury's interior differs from Earth's in a way that explains why the planet has such a bizarre magnetic field, UCLA planetary physicists and colleagues report.

The Milky Way is smaller than astronomers previously thought, according to new research.

For the first time, scientists have been able to precisely measure the mass of the galaxy that contains our solar system.

Researchers have found that the Milky Way is approximately half the weight of a neighbouring galaxy – known as Andromeda – which has a similar structure to our own. The Milky Way and Andromeda are the two largest in a region of galaxies which astronomers call the Local Group.

Astronomers at the University of British Columbia have collaborated with international researchers to calculate the precise mass of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, dispelling the notion that the two galaxies have similar masses.

While it was previously thought that the two galaxies weighed the same because of their similar size and structure, researchers found that neighboring Andromeda is about twice as heavy as our own Milky Way.