Heavens

MADISON – If so many poor people live around national parks in developing countries, does that mean that these parks are contributing to their poverty?

Yes, according to the conventional wisdom, but no, according to a 10-year study of people living around Kibale National Park in Uganda that was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the dwarf planet 2007 OR10, nicknamed Snow White, is an icy world, with about half its surface covered in water ice that once flowed from ancient, slush-spewing volcanoes. The new findings also suggest that the red-tinged dwarf planet may be covered in a thin layer of methane, the remnants of an atmosphere that's slowly being lost into space.

The Universe forms fewer stars than it used to, and a CSIRO study has now shown why: compared to the past, galaxies today have less gas from which to make stars.

Dr Robert Braun (CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science) and his colleagues used CSIRO's Mopra radio telescope near Coonabarabran, NSW, to study far-off galaxies and compare them with nearby ones.

Light (and radio waves) from the distant galaxies takes time to travel to us, so we see the galaxies as they were between three and five billion years ago.

Cosmic distances are difficult to grasp and no less difficult to measure. When it comes to other galaxies or even remote parts of our own Milky Way, distance measurements are nothing but assessments, derived from indirect clues.

As the Office of Naval Research (ONR) increases its science and technology (S&T) investment in unmanned systems, a number of hurdles need to be overcome including autonomy and littoral operations, ONR's director of innovation said at an Aug. 18 conference on unmanned systems.

Sunspots spawn solar flares that can cause billions of dollars in damage to satellites, communications networks and power grids. But Stanford researchers have developed a way to detect incipient sunspots as deep as 65,000 kilometers inside the sun, providing up to two days' advance warning of a damaging solar flare.

The eighth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season formed from the low pressure System 93L on Aug. 19 at 8 a.m. EDT and satellite data from NASA shows strong rainmaking potential as the depression moves out of the Caribbean and inland this weekend.

It is helpful -- even life-saving -- to have a warning sign before a structural system fails, but, when the system is only a few nanometers in size, having a sign that's easy to read is a challenge. Now, thanks to a clever bit of molecular design by University of Pennsylvania and Duke University bioengineers and chemists, such warning can come in the form of a simple color change.

Analysis of a piece of lunar rock brought back to Earth by the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 has shown that the Moon may be much younger than previously believed. This is concluded in new research conducted by an international team of scientists that includes James Connelly from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. Their work has just been published in Nature.

A team of astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to study an unusual object called a Lyman-alpha blob [1]. These huge and very luminous rare structures are normally seen in regions of the early Universe where matter is concentrated. The team found that the light coming from one of these blobs is polarised [2]. In everyday life, for example, polarised light is used to create 3D effects in cinemas [3].

Often, comets are portrayed as harbingers of gloom and doom in movies and on television, but most pose no threat to Earth. Comet Elenin, the latest comet to visit our inner solar system, is no exception. Elenin will pass about 22 million miles (35 million kilometers) from Earth during its closest approach on Oct. 16, 2011.

Why does Titan, Saturn's largest moon, have what looks like an enormous white arrow about the size of Texas on its surface? A research group has answered this question by using a global circulation model of Titan to demonstrate how planetary-scale atmospheric waves affect the moon's weather patterns, leading to a "stenciling" effect that results in sharp and sometimes surprising cloud shapes. "These atmospheric waves are somewhat like the natural, resonant vibration of a wine glass," said Jonathan L.

Stanley Miller gained fame with his 1953 experiment showing the synthesis of organic compounds thought to be important in setting the origin of life in motion. Five years later, he produced samples from a similar experiment but he shelved them and, as far as anyone knows, never returned to them.

A spinning neutron star is tied to a mysterious tail -- or so it seems. Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found that this pulsar, known as PSR J0357+3205 (or PSR J0357 for short), about 1,600 light years from Earth, apparently has a long, X-ray bright tail streaming away from it.

Type Ia supernovae are violent stellar explosions whose brightness is used to determine distances in the universe. Observing these objects to billions of light years away has led to the discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the foundation for the notion of dark energy. Although all Type Ia supernovae appear to be very similar, astronomers do not know for certain how the explosions take place and whether they all share the same origin.