Heavens

Alexandria, VA – Humans produce over 260 million tons of plastic each year. Almost a third of that plastic goes into disposable, one-time-use items, and only about 1% of it is recycled globally. Where does the rest of the plastic go? How does it interact with our environment? And how will it impact us in the future? In this month's issue of EARTH Magazine, follow the fate of many plastics as they make their way from our homes to our planet's oceans.

UCLA researchers have explained the puzzling disappearing act of energetic electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt, using data collected from a fleet of orbiting spacecraft.

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Physics, the team shows that the missing electrons are swept away from the planet by a tide of solar wind particles during periods of heightened solar activity.

CHICAGO --- Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers have identified a new and unusual role for a key player in the human immune system. A protein initially believed to regulate one routine function within the cell has proven vital for another critical step in the activation of the immune system.

Improved Forecasting to Coincide with Peak in Solar Activity

After years of relative somnolence, the sun is beginning to stir. By the time it's fully awake in about 20 months, the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., charged with researching and tracking solar activity, will have at their disposal a greatly enhanced forecasting capability.

Powerful Cyclone Funso's eye has been clear in NASA satellite imagery over the last several days until NASA's Aqua satellite noticed it had "closed" and become filled with high clouds on January 27.

NASA satellites are providing valuable data to forecasters as Tropical Cyclone Iggy nears Western Australia. NASA's Aqua satellite provided visible and infrared data on Iggy, observing colder cloud tops and strengthening storm. Iggy has already triggered warnings and watches along coastal areas.

The largest solar particle event since 2005 hit the Earth, Mars and the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft travelling in-between, allowing the onboard Radiation Assessment Detector to measure the radiation a human astronaut could be exposed to en route to the Red Planet.

Over dinner on R.V. Calypso while anchored on the lee side of Glover's Reef in Belize, Jacques Cousteau told Phil Dustan that he suspected humans were having a negative impact on coral reefs. Dustan—a young ocean ecologist who had worked in the lush coral reefs of the Caribbean and Sinai Peninsula—found this difficult to believe. It was December 1974.

The AIRS infrared instrument that flies on NASA's Aqua satellite has been providing forecasters with the cloud top temperatures in the Southern Indian Ocean's ninth tropical cyclone, which has officially been renamed Iggy. AIRS data showed that the area of strong thunderstorms around Iggy's center has expanded in area over the last day.

Powerful Cyclone Funso is now beginning to exit the Mozambique Channel, and NASA's Aqua satellite captured a stunning image of the storm that shows the depth and extent of it.

GALVESTON, Jan. 26, 2012 – Discoveries made in some underwater caves by Texas &M University at Galveston researchers in the Bahamas could provide clues about how ocean life formed on Earth millions of years ago, and perhaps give hints of what types of marine life could be found on distant planets and moons.

Though generally thought to be quite dry, roughly half of the giant asteroid Vesta is expected to be so cold and to receive so little sunlight that water ice could have survived there for billions of years, according to the first published models of Vesta's average global temperatures and illumination by the sun.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the low pressure system called System 97S on Jan. 24 and observed a large area of strong thunderstorms around its center that hinted at further development. On Jan. 25, the low strengthened into the ninth tropical depression and now a tropical storm of the Southern Indian Ocean.

Tropical Cyclone Funso is now a dangerous Category 4 cyclone in the Mozambique Channel, moving southward between Mozambique on the African mainland and the island nation of Madagascar. As Funso became a major cyclone two NASA satellites were providing forecasters with valuable storm information.

Two instruments aboard NASA's Aqua satellite and instruments aboard NASA and JAXA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite provided cloud extent, cloud temperature, rainfall rates, and a look at the eye of the storm.

Astronomers have combined observations from the LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope [1] with measurements made with ESO's Very Large Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and others, to look at the way that bright, distant galaxies are gathered together in groups or clusters.