Heavens

Super-Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the eastern Philippines as the strongest tropical cyclone of the year, and today, Nov. 8, is exiting the country and moving into the South China Sea. NASA's Aqua satellite captured visible and infrared data of Hiayan after it made landfall near Leyete, identifying the extent of its power.

Narrow stripes of dirt and rock beneath massive Antarctic glaciers create friction zones that slow the flow of ice toward the sea, researchers at Princeton University and the British Antarctic Survey have found. Understanding how these high-friction regions form and subside could help researchers understand how the flow of these glaciers responds to a warming climate.

RICHLAND, Wash. – Basic ocean conditions such as current directions and water temperature play a huge role in determining the behavior of young migrating salmon as they move from rivers and hit ocean waters for the first time, according to new research. The findings inform restoration policies and practices focused on boosting endangered salmon species in the Pacific Northwest.

Changes in solar activity have contributed no more than 10 per cent to global warming in the twentieth century, a new study has found.

The findings, made by Professor Terry Sloan at the University of Lancaster and Professor Sir Arnold Wolfendale at the University of Durham, find that neither changes in the activity of the Sun, nor its impact in blocking cosmic rays, can be a significant contributor to global warming.

The results have been published today, 8 November, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.

Astronomers viewing our solar system's asteroid belt with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have seen for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

Unlike all other known asteroids, which appear simply as tiny points of light, this asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, resembles a rotating lawn sprinkler. Astronomers are puzzled over the asteroid's unusual appearance.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Far away from home and family, pregnant Japanese women who met with each other for prenatal group visits felt less anxious and better prepared for childbirth and motherhood, says a new University of Michigan Health System study.

The women, who spoke limited English, were able to connect with peers with similar due dates and cultural backgrounds to discuss such topics as nutrition, labor, breastfeeding and newborn care. A year later, several moms stayed friends and continued to share issues that came up with their babies.

As scientists develop the next wave of smartwatches and other wearable computing, they might want to continue focusing their attention on the arms and the wrists. According to a recent Georgia Tech study, portable electronic devices placed on the collar, torso, waist or pants may cause awkwardness, embarrassment or strange looks.

Super-Typhoon Haiyan was lashing the central and southern Philippines on Nov. 7 bringing maximum sustained winds of a Category 5 hurricane. NASA is providing visible, infrared and microwave satellite data to forecasters and warnings are in effect for the Philippines and Micronesia as Haiyan moves west.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a unique and baffling object in the asteroid belt that looks like a rotating lawn sprinkler or badminton shuttlecock. While this object is on an asteroid-like orbit, it looks like a comet, and is sending out tails of dust into space.

Astronomers have discovered a "weird and freakish object" resembling a rotating lawn sprinkler in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The find, reported online in the Nov. 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, has left them scratching their heads and searching for an explanation for the strange asteroid's out-of-this-world appearance.

Normal asteroids appear simply as tiny points of light. This bizarre asteroid has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

The sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 5:12 p.m. EST on Nov. 5, 2013. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

A new study by a researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, says that by 2015, the sum of media asked for and delivered to consumers on mobile devices and to their homes would take more than 15 hours a day to see or hear. That volume is equal to 6.9 million-million gigabytes of information, or a daily consumption of nine DVDs worth of data per person per day.

A pair of University of Cincinnati researchers has seen the light – a bright, powerful light – and it just might change the future of how building interiors are brightened.

In fact, that light comes directly from the sun. And with the help of tiny, electrofluidic cells and a series of open-air "ducts," sunlight can naturally illuminate windowless work spaces deep inside office buildings and excess energy can be harnessed, stored and directed to other applications.

Black holes—massive objects in space with gravitational forces so strong that not even light can escape them—come in a variety of sizes. On the smaller end of the scale are the stellar-mass black holes that are formed during the deaths of stars. At the larger end are supermassive black holes, which contain up to one billion times the mass of our sun. Over billions of years, small black holes can slowly grow into the supermassive variety by taking on mass from their surroundings and also by merging with other black holes.

Tropical Storm 30W weakened into a tropical depression again on Nov. 6 and wind shear stretched out the storm. The storm's elongation was evident in infrared NASA satellite imagery.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Depression 30W on Nov. 5 at 18:23 UTC/1:23 p.m. EST. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument captured infrared data about the storm's cloud top temperatures. The AIRS data also showed wind shear had stretched the system from west to east.