Heavens

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Terahertz radiation is a relatively unexplored slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, but it holds the promise of countless new imaging applications as well as wireless communication networks with extremely high bandwidth. The problem is that there are few off-the-shelf components available for manipulating terahertz waves.

Dark matter is all around us. Though no one has ever seen it, and no one knows what it really is, indisputable physical calculations state that approximately 27% of the universe is dark matter. Only five % is the matter of which all known materials consist; from the smallest ant to the largest galaxy.

Ice shelves, the floating extensions of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, are not simply resting on the ocean waters: they rise, fall and bend with the tides. Ultimately, these oceanic motions impact the flow of ice coming from the glaciers that these ice shelves buttress. Ryan Walker and Christine Dow, researchers with the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recently spent more than a month doing fieldwork in Antarctica to study the influence of tidal movements on a small, little-studied ice shelf.

An estimated 3 million shipwrecks are scattered across the planet's oceans. Most maritime mishaps take place close to shore where hazards to navigation -- such as rocks, reefs, other submerged objects and vessel congestion -- are abundant. While there is a romantic association of shipwrecks and buried treasure, it is desirable to know where they are located for many other practical reasons. The ships may be of historical significance or, if the hard substrate of the ship has created a reef, of ecological significance.

On Thursday, March 10, 2016 astronauts on the International Space Station logged their 1,000th educational contact with the ground. NASA astronaut Tim Kopra answered questions posed by the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium in Grand Forks, North Dakota. No matter how many times it happens, talking directly with someone orbiting above the Earth remains a thrill for students.

Imagine a house that could fit in a backpack or a wall that could become a window with the flick of a switch.

Harvard researchers have designed a new type of foldable material that is versatile, tunable and self actuated. It can change size, volume and shape; it can fold flat to withstand the weight of an elephant without breaking, and pop right back up to prepare for the next task.

The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite provided data on the heavy rainfall and strong storms that affected the southern U.S. on March 9. An analysis of rainfall between March 2 and 9 showed that over a foot of rain had fallen in areas of Texas to Arkansas.

GPM is a mission that is co-managed by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency that measures precipitation rates around the world every three hours. GPM flew over and analyzed the strong storms that occurred in the southwestern United States on March 9, 2016 at 1011 UTC (5:11 CST).

NASA has demonstrated the success of advanced technology for making precise measurements of Earth's orientation and rotation - information that helps provide a foundation for navigation of all space missions and for geophysical studies of our planet.

The technology includes a new class of radio antenna and electronics that provide broadband capabilities for Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI. This technique is used to make precise measurements of Earth in space and time.

Just weeks before the historic encounter of comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) with Mars in October 2014, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft entered orbit around the Red Planet. To protect sensitive equipment aboard MAVEN from possible harm, some instruments were turned off during the flyby; the same was done for other Mars orbiters. But a few instruments, including MAVEN's magnetometer, remained on, conducting observations from a front-row seat during the comet's remarkably close flyby.

Just weeks before the historic encounter of comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) with Mars in October 2014, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft entered orbit around the Red Planet. To protect sensitive equipment aboard MAVEN from possible harm, some instruments were turned off during the flyby; the same was done for other Mars orbiters. But a few instruments, including MAVEN's magnetometer, remained on, conducting observations from a front-row seat during the comet's remarkably close flyby.

Different personalities are maintained in the wild mainly because of changes in density. This is what researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen and colleagues of the University Groningen found out for great tits. During four years, they observed that slow explorers are more likely to survive if intraspecific competition increases due to an increase of density in a population.

A recent observational campaign involving more than two dozen optical telescopes and NASA's space based SWIFT X-ray telescope allowed a team of astronomers to measure very accurately the rotational rate of one of the most massive black holes in the universe. The rotational rate of this massive black hole is one third of the maximum spin rate allowed in General Relativity. This 18 billion solar mass heavy black hole powers a quasar called OJ287 which lies about 3.5 billion light years away from Earth.

A group of researchers using the Suprime-Cam instrument on the Subaru Telescope has discovered about 80 young galaxies that existed in the early universe about 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. The team, with members from Ehime University, Nagoya University, Tohoku University, Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in the U.S., and California Institute of Technology, then made detailed analyses of imaging data of these galaxies taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space Telescope. At least 54 of the galaxies are spatially resolved in the ACS images.

Changes in income do not affect most people's happiness, most of the time, according to a new study led by the University of Stirling.

The research, which examined levels of life satisfaction and income changes in more than 18,000 adults over a nine year period, revealed that income change is only important when individuals with specific personality characteristics experience an income loss.

Researchers at the universities of Stirling and Nottingham found that for most people happiness is likely to rest on avoiding loss, rather than aiming for continual financial gain.

A research team using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has detected the faintest millimeter-wave source ever observed. By accumulating millimeter-waves from faint objects like this throughout the Universe, the team finally determined that such objects are 100% responsible for the enigmatic infrared background light filling the Universe. By comparing these to optical and infrared images, the team found that 60% of them are faint galaxies, whereas the rest have no corresponding objects in optical/infrared wavelengths and their nature is still unknown.