Heavens

Astronomers have long known that organic molecules form in diffuse gas clouds floating between stars. It is thought that as the Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago, some of these organic molecules were transported from interstellar space to the planet forming disk. Later, these molecules played important roles in the chemical evolution resulting in the emergence of life on the Earth. However, it is still unknown what kinds and quantities of organic molecules were actually supplied from interstellar space.

European countries should not adopt Australia's immigration system, with its emphasis on deterrence, warn ethicists in a special issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, dedicated to global medical ethics.

The system's lack of transparency is helping perpetuate ongoing human rights abuses and what amounts to the torture of asylum seekers in remote offshore detention centres, they argue.

Irvine, Calif., June 27, 2016 -- A first-of-its-kind survey has confirmed what some water polo players - especially goalies - have long suspected: Concussions seem to be prevalent in the sport.

More than a third of water polo participants reported sustaining a concussion either during games or in practice, according to a poll conducted by University of California, Irvine researchers.

Researchers at Disney Research and ETH Zurich have demonstrated that consumer-grade light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs can, with some modifications, do double duty -- both illuminating a room and providing a communications link for devices in that room.

This visible light communication (VLC) system would be suitable for connecting the many devices, such as appliances, wearable devices, sensors, toys and utilities, that could comprise the Internet of Things, or IoT, said Stefan Schmid, a Ph.D. student at Disney Research and ETH Zurich.

A team led by Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom are presenting new images of Jupiter at the UK's Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Nottingham.

Stunning new images and the highest-resolution maps to date of Jupiter at thermal infrared wavelengths give a glowing view of Juno's target, a week ahead of the NASA mission's arrival at the giant planet. The maps reveal the present-day temperatures, composition and cloud coverage within Jupiter's dynamic atmosphere, and show how giant storms, vortices and wave patterns shape the appearance of the giant planet. The observations will be presented on Monday 27 June at the National Astronomy Meeting in Nottingham by Dr Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester.

Washington, DC-- Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars. They're stars' dim, low-mass siblings and they fade in brightness over time. They're fascinating to astronomers for a variety of reasons, but much about them remains unknown. New work from a Carnegie-led team reports the distances of a number of brown dwarfs, as well as low-mass stars, in The Astronomical Journal.

Solar material twists above the sun's surface in this close-up captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 7-8, 2016, showcasing the turbulence caused by combative magnetic forces on the sun. This spinning cloud of solar material is part of a dark filament angling down from the upper left of the frame. Filaments are long, unstable clouds of solar material suspended above the sun's surface by magnetic forces. SDO captured this video in wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in red for easy viewing.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Around 4.6 billion years ago, the universe was a chaos of collapsing gas and spinning debris. Small particles of gas and dust clumped together into larger and more massive meteoroids that in turn smashed together to form planets. Scientists believe that shortly after their formation, these planets -- and particularly Mercury -- were fiery spheres of molten material, which cooled over millions of years.

hint

Tropical Cyclone 02A developed in the Northern Indian Ocean's Arabian Sea as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and analyzed the storm in infrared light and NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible look at the storm.

Since June 23, 2016 over two dozen people have been reported killed and hundreds of homes have been destroyed by flooding in West Virginia. Using satellite data, NASA calculated the heavy rainfall that occurred over the state.

San Antonio -- June 27, 2016 -- A Southwest Research Institute-led team has discovered an elusive, dark moon orbiting Makemake, one of the "big four" dwarf planets populating the Kuiper Belt region at the edge of our solar system. The findings are detailed in the paper "Discovery of a Makemakean Moon," published in the June 27 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Scientists led by Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology ran the huge cosmological simulations that can be used to predict the rate at which gravitational waves caused by collisions between the monster black holes might be detected.

The amplitude and frequency of these waves could reveal the initial mass of the seeds from which the first black holes grew since they were formed 13 billion years ago and provide further clues about what caused them and where they formed, the researchers said.

New calculations predict that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) will detect approximately 1,000 mergers of massive black holes annually once it achieves full sensitivity early next decade.

The prediction, published online June 22 in the journal Nature, is based on computer simulations of more than a billion evolving binary stars. The simulations are based on state-of-the-art modeling of the physics involved, informed by the most recent astronomical and astrophysical observations.