Heavens

Nearly doubling the efficiency of a breakthrough photovoltaic cell they created last year, UCLA researchers have developed a two-layer, see-through solar film that could be placed on windows, sunroofs, smartphone displays and other surfaces to harvest energy from the sun.

WASHINGTON, July 29, 2013 — After six years of anticipation, that rock star of plants — a rainforest giant known as the corpse flower for its putrid odor — has bloomed here, and is the subject of a new video by the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. It is available at http://www.bytesizescience.com.

Tree ring records indicate that in the years to 774-775, atmospheric carbon-14 levels increased substantially.

NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of smoke from northern Oregon's Sunnyside Turnoff Fire on July 25 as the satellite passed overhead in space.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard Aqua captured an image of the smoke and heat from the Sunnyside Turnoff Fire on July 25 at 21:10 UTC (5:10 p.m. EDT/2:10 p.m. PDT). MODIS has the ability to detect hot spots or fires and they appear red in the image.

The Expedition 36 crew completed packing the Materials International Space Station Experiment-8 (MISSE-8) Payload Experiment Container (PEC) and Optical Reflector Materials Experiment-III (ORMatE-III) after it was retrieved during the spacewalk. The MISSE-8 samples have been in orbit for a little over two years and the PEC and ORMatE are manifested for return to Earth on SpaceX 3.

As Eastern Pacific Ocean's Tropical Storm Flossie continues to move further west toward Hawaii, NASA's TRMM satellite analyzed its rainfall.

NASA satellites analyzed Tropical Storm Dorian in infrared light, giving scientists an idea of the storm's structure, cloud heights and cloud temperatures.

A Suomi-NPP Satellite View

Complicated statistical behaviour observed in complex systems such as early universe can often be understood if it is broken down into simpler ones. Two physicists, Petr Jizba (currently affiliated with the Czech Technical University in Prague), and Fabio Scardigli (now working at Kyoto University in Japan), have just published results in EPJ C pertaining to theoretical predictions of such cosmological systems' dynamics.

Approaching the sun, Comet ISON floats against a seemingly infinite backdrop of numerous galaxies and a handful of foreground stars. The icy visitor, with its long gossamer tail, appears to be swimming like a tadpole through a deep pond of celestial wonders.

Scientists have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe called the Van Allen radiation belts. Scientists knew that something in space accelerated particles in the radiation belts to more than 99 percent the speed of light but they didn't know what that something was. New results from NASA's Van Allen Probes now show that the acceleration energy comes from within the belts themselves.

The moment when a telescope first opens its doors represents the culmination of years of work and planning -- while simultaneously laying the groundwork for a wealth of research and answers yet to come. It is a moment of excitement and perhaps even a little uncertainty. On July 17, 2013, the international team of scientists and engineers who supported and built NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, all lived through that moment.

Two University of Iowa researchers and their colleagues have advanced scientists' knowledge of the Earth's Van Allen radiation belts by answering a long-standing question about the belts.

Craig Kletzing and William Kurth of the UI Department of Physics and Astronomy note that since 1958 when UI space physicist James Van Allen discovered the doughnut-shaped bands of intense radiation encircling the Earth, scientists have wondered just how and where electrons trapped within the belts get their ultra-high energies.

DURHAM, N.H. –– Space scientists have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe called the Van Allen radiation belts.

Two University of Iowa researchers and their colleagues have advanced scientists' knowledge of the Earth's Van Allen radiation belts by answering a long-standing question about the belts.

Craig Kletzing and William Kurth of the UI Department of Physics and Astronomy note that since 1958 when UI space physicist James A. Van Allen discovered the doughnut-shaped bands of intense radiation encircling the Earth, scientists have wondered just how and where electrons trapped within the belts get their ultra-high energies.

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Scientists can learn a tremendous amount about neutron stars and quark stars without understanding their internal structure in detail, according to two Montana State University scientists who published their findings in the July 26 issue of "Science."

"The stars could be the softest or the hardest in their kind, and it wouldn't matter," said Nicolas Yunes, assistant professor in MSU's Department of Physics.