Heavens

Given a legitimate need to protect Earth from the most intense forms of space weather – great bursts of electromagnetic energy and particles that can sometimes stream from the sun – some people worry that a gigantic "killer solar flare" could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth. Citing the accurate fact that solar activity is currently ramping up in its standard 11-year cycle, there are those who believe that 2012 could be coincident with such a flare.

In the first university-based planetary science experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), researchers have gradually compressed a diamond sample to a record pressure of 50 megabars (50 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure). By replicating the conditions believed to exist in the cores of several recently discovered "super-Earths" -- extra-solar planets three to 20 times more massive than Earth -- the experiments could provide clues to the formation and structure of these and other giant planets, as well as the exotic behavior of materials at ultrahigh densities.

GREENBELT, Md. -- By analyzing nearly a decade of satellite data, a team of scientists led by researchers from the University of California, Irvine and funded by NASA has created a model that can successfully predict the severity and geographic distribution of fires in the Amazon rain forest and the rest of South America months in advance.

Recent experiments carried out at the DIII-D tokamak in San Diego have allowed scientists to observe how fusion plasmas spontaneously turn off the plasma turbulence responsible for most of the heat loss in plasmas confined by toroidal magnetic fields. Using a new microwave instrument based on the same principles as police radar guns, researchers from UCLA observed the complex interplay between plasma turbulence and plasma flows occurring on the surface of tokamak plasmas.

The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) on board NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, NPP, acquired its first measurements on November 8, 2011. The image shows the ATMS channel 18 data, which measures water vapor in the lower atmosphere. Tropical Storm Sean is visible in the data, as the patch of blue, in the Atlantic off the coast of the Southeastern United States. The data were processed at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF) in Suitland, Md.

SANTA CRUZ, CA--For the first time, astronomers have found pristine clouds of the primordial gas that formed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. The composition of the gas matches theoretical predictions, providing direct evidence in support of the modern cosmological explanation for the origins of elements in the universe.

Just as an expert chess player sacrifices a piece to protect the queen, the solar system may have given up a giant planet and spared the Earth, according to an article recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"We have all sorts of clues about the early evolution of the solar system," says author Dr. David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute. "They come from the analysis of the trans-Neptunian population of small bodies known as the Kuiper Belt, and from the lunar cratering record."

Santa Barbara, Calif. –– Can fish save coral reefs from dying? UC Santa Barbara researchers have found one case where fish have helped coral reefs to recover from cyclones and predators.

Coral reefs worldwide are increasingly disturbed by environmental events that are causing their decline, yet some coral reefs recover. UCSB researchers have discovered that the health of coral reefs in the South Pacific island of Moorea, in French Polynesia, may be due to protection by parrotfish and surgeonfish that eat algae, along with the protection of reefs that shelter juvenile fish.

A Naval Research Laboratory instrument designed to study the Earth's thermosphere is part of a future science mission that has been selected by NASA for evaluation for flight.

The galaxies are churning out stars at such a rate that the number of stars in them would double in just ten million years. For comparison, the Milky Way has taken a thousand times longer to double its stellar population.

Last January two amateur meteorite hunters dropped by Randy Korotev's office at Washington University in St. Louis to show him their latest purchase, a 17-kilogram pallasite meteorite found in 2006 near Conception Junction (population 202) in northwest Missouri.

Korotev, an expert in lunar meteorites, identified the stone as of a fragment of an asteroid. His lab also analyzed crystals within the rock to help identify its body of origin, eventually referring the meteorite hunters to UCLA for analysis of the metal in which the crystals are embedded.

The report "A long gestation: the adoption process in Victoria" was launched this week by Dr Giuliana Fuscaldo, a lecturer in health ethics at the University of Melbourne and Dr Sarah Russell from Research Matters.

Peer review is crucial for evaluation of scientific work, but it could be much more effective if it were not anonymous, according to a study published in the Nov. 9 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.

An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released for public comment a draft "roadmap" that is designed to foster federal agencies' adoption of cloud computing, support the private sector, improve the information available to decision makers and facilitate the continued development of the cloud computing model.

NIST plans to issue the final U.S. Government Cloud Computing Roadmap as a three-volume work. The first two volumes were posted for public comment on Nov. 1, 2011.