Heavens

For the first time, a dramatic global climate shift has been linked to the impact in Quebec of an asteroid or comet, Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues report in a new study. The cataclysmic event wiped out many of the planet's large mammals and may have prompted humans to start gathering and growing some of their food rather than solely hunting big game.

Scientists have uncovered strong evidence that soot, or black carbon, sent into the air by a rapidly industrializing Europe, likely caused the abrupt retreat of mountain glaciers in the European Alps.

The research, published Sept. 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help resolve a longstanding scientific debate about why the Alps glaciers retreated beginning in the 1860s, decades before global temperatures started rising again.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite flew directly above western Taiwan on August 28, 2013 at 2108 UTC when Tropical Storm Kong-Rey was dropping enormous amounts of rain. Kong-Rey is expected to affect Japan over the next several days while moving parallel to its western coastline.

Tropical Depression Juliette became post-tropical and two low pressure areas were struggling to develop in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on Aug. 30 when NOAA's GOES-West captured a beautiful panoramic image of all three systems.

Update for August 30, 2013 - The fire is over 201,00 acres as of 6 am this morning, Aug. 30, 2013 with containment at 32%. More than 40,000 acres of that fire have burned within Yosemite National Park. At least 111 structures have been destroyed by the fire, which has been burning since Aug. 17.

The origin of cosmic rays in the universe has confounded scientists for decades. But a study by researchers using data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole reveals new information that may help unravel the longstanding mystery of exactly how and where these "rays" (they are actually high-energy particles) are produced.

Cosmic rays can damage electronics on Earth, as well as human DNA, putting astronauts in space especially at risk.

Nanosatellites are smartphone-sized spacecraft that can perform simple, yet valuable, space missions. Dozens of these little vehicles are now tirelessly orbiting the earth performing valuable functions for NASA, the Department of Defense and even private companies.

This light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust resembles a caterpillar on its way to a feast. But the meat of the story is not only what this cosmic caterpillar eats for lunch, but also what's eating it. Harsh winds from extremely bright stars are blasting ultraviolet radiation at this "wanna-be" star and sculpting the gas and dust into its long shape.

The Wallow Fire burned over 500,000 acres, making it the largest fire in Arizona history, to date. It is one of many large fires that fire managers and researchers have seen scorch forests nationwide since the early 2000s.

"We have entered a new era where we're definitely seeing higher fire activity," said Philip Dennison, a geographer at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Data from a NASA airborne science mission reveals evidence of a large and previously unknown canyon hidden under a mile of Greenland ice.

The canyon has the characteristics of a winding river channel and is at least 460 miles (750 kilometers) long, making it longer than the Grand Canyon. In some places, it is as deep as 2,600 feet (800 meters), on scale with segments of the Grand Canyon. This immense feature is thought to predate the ice sheet that has covered Greenland for the last few million years.

URBANA, Ill. – Is anyone surprised that brushes with the law are often related to finances? As one jailed man interviewed in a new University of Illinois study put it, "Most of us are in here because of money."

The canyon is at least 750km long and in places as much as 800m deep and is on the same scale as parts of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA.

This remarkable, previously unknown, feature is thought to predate the ice sheet that has covered Greenland for the last few million years and has the characteristics of a meandering river channel. By comparison, the longest river in the UK, the River Severn, is about 350km long and much less wide and deep.

In a materials science laboratory at Harvard University, a transparent disk connected to a laptop fills the room with music—it's the "Morning" prelude from Peer Gynt, played on an ionic speaker.

No ordinary speaker, it consists of a thin sheet of rubber sandwiched between two layers of a saltwater gel, and it's as clear as a window. A high-voltage signal that runs across the surfaces and through the layers forces the rubber to rapidly contract and vibrate, producing sounds that span the entire audible spectrum, 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz.

AMHERST, Mass. – Using NASA's super-sensitive Chandra X-ray space telescope, a team of astronomers led by Q. Daniel Wang at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has solved a long-standing mystery about why most super massive black holes (SMBH) at the centers of galaxies have such a low accretion rate—that is, they swallow very little of the cosmic gases available and instead act as if they are on a severe diet.

"Surprisingly, our model predicts that at any given time three per cent of scattered objects between Jupiter and Neptune should be co-orbitals of Uranus or Neptune," says Mike Alexandersen, lead author of the study to be published tomorrow in the journal Science. This percentage had never before been computed, and is much higher than previous estimates.