Heavens

Earlier this year, astronomers discovered a quiescent black hole in a distant galaxy that erupted after shredding and consuming a passing star. Now researchers have identified a distinctive X-ray signal observed in the days following the outburst that comes from matter on the verge of falling into the black hole.

Tropical Storm Saola and Typhoon Damrey appear on NASA satellite imagery to be arm-in-arm as they enter China on August 2.

Washington, D.C. — For decades it has been thought that a shock wave from a supernova explosion triggered the formation of our Solar System. According to this theory, the shock wave also injected material from the exploding star into a cloud of dust and gas, and the newly polluted cloud collapsed to form the Sun and its surrounding planets. New work from Carnegie's Alan Boss and Sandra Keiser provides the first fully three-dimensional (3-D) models for how this process could have happened. Their work will be published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Millions of women suffer from unexplained vulvar pain so severe it can make intercourse, exercise and even sitting unbearable.

New research now shows that women with this painful vaginal condition known as vulvodynia are two to three times more likely to also have one or more other chronic pain conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia (musculoskeletal pain) and interstitial cystitis (bladder pain).

NASA's Aqua satellite spotted some very cold, high, thunderstorms around the center of a tropical low pressure area in the Atlantic Ocean today, indicating that the system is getting stronger and more organized.

The low pressure area, designated as "System 99L" was located about 850 miles east of the southern Windward Islands, near 10.7 North latitude and 46.9 West longitude. It was moving west between 15 and 20 mph.

Terra satellite captured two tropical cyclones on visible imagery today, August 1 as they head for landfall. Typhoon Saola is approaching Taiwan and Typhoon Damrey approaching southern Japan, are both headed for landfall in China. Saola is forecast to landfall south of Shanghai on August 3, while Damrey is forecast to make landfall north of Shanghai on August 2.

Archeological sites that currently take years to map will be completed in minutes if tests underway in Peru of a new system being developed at Vanderbilt University go well.

The galaxy NGC 1187 [1] is seen almost face-on, which gives us a good view of its spiral structure. About half a dozen prominent spiral arms can be seen, each containing large amounts of gas and dust. The bluish features in the spiral arms indicate the presence of young stars born out of clouds of interstellar gas.

WASHINGTON, July 31, 2012 - After an epic 354-million-mile trek through space, the Mars Curiosity Rover is zooming along at 13,000 miles per hour toward a scheduled August 6 landing on the Red Planet to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. The newest episode of Bytesize Science highlights Curiosity Rover's mission, scientific instrumentation and the role that chemistry plays in the search for life on other planets.

The Social Security Trust Fund is off on its prediction by $730 billion for needed benefits in 2030. That is because its forecasting methods have hardly been updated since 1935 when the program first started, according to a study in the August issue of Demography.

Typhoon Saola looks like a monster tropical cyclone in infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite today, July 30. Although Saola's center is over 300 nautical miles (368 miles/592 km) south-southeast of Taiwan, it stretches over the north and central Philippines and has triggered a number of warnings throughout the country.

Tropical Storm Damrey appears to be a compact tropical storm on NASA satellite imagery as it heads west. It is expected to pass north of Iwo To, Japan and later south of Kyushu, one of Japan's large islands.

Curved VAWT blades are complex, making manufacture difficult. Producing very long VAWT blades demands innovative engineering solutions. Matt Barone, the project's other principal investigator, said partners Iowa State University and TPI Composites will explore new techniques to enable manufacture of geometrically complex VAWT blade shapes at an unprecedented scale, but at acceptable cost.

Grin and bear it! At some point, we have all probably heard or thought something like this when facing a tough situation. But is there any truth to this piece of advice? Feeling good usually makes us smile, but does it work the other way around? Can smiling actually make us feel better?

SALT LAKE CITY, July 30, 2012 – In the years after Columbus' voyage, burning of New World forests and fields diminished significantly – a phenomenon some have attributed to decimation of native populations by European diseases. But a new University of Utah-led study suggests global cooling resulted in fewer fires because both preceded Columbus in many regions worldwide.