Heavens

When the moon is high in the sky, it creates bulges in the planet's atmosphere that creates imperceptible changes in the amount of rain that falls below.

New University of Washington research to be published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the lunar forces affect the amount of rain - though very slightly.

"As far as I know, this is the first study to convincingly connect the tidal force of the moon with rainfall," said corresponding author Tsubasa Kohyama, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences.

NASA's GPM satellite gathered rainfall rate and cloud height data on the newly developed tropical low pressure area designated System 92S in the Indian Ocean off Australia's northwestern coast. The low pressure area is expected to become a depression in the next day or two, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

The Global Precipitation Measurement Mission or GPM core observatory satellite flew over the area of disturbed weather on Jan. 27, 2016 at 0946 UTC (4:46 a.m. EST). GPM is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Health care systems and providers need to understand the unique realities of military culture in order to work effectively with veterans and military families, according to the findings of a study by a University at Buffalo research team.

NASA satellites provided data as the tropical low pressure area known as System 92S has consolidated and intensified into Tropical Cyclone Stan, north of the Pilbara area of Western Australia. NASA provided forecasters cloud extent, winds and rainfall data.

On Jan. 28 at 6 p.m. EST, the International Space Station's RapidScat instrument measured the surface winds around developing Tropical Cyclone Stan in the Southern Indian Ocean. Rapidscat showed that Stan's strongest winds were occurring west of the center at 30 meters per second (67.1 mph/108 kph).

The last million years of Earth's history was dominated by the cyclic advance and retreat of ice sheets over large swaths of North America. During cold glacial intervals, ice sheets reached as far south as Long Island and Indiana, while during warm interglacial periods the ice rapidly retreated to Greenland. It has long been known that ice ages occur every 40,000 years or so, but the cause of rapid transition between glacial and interglacial periods has remained a mystery.

Hubble Space Telescope astronomers are finding that the old adage "what goes up must come down" even applies to an immense cloud of hydrogen gas outside our Milky Way galaxy. The invisible cloud is plummeting toward our galaxy at nearly 700,000 miles per hour.

The moon was formed by a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a "planetary embryo" called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, UCLA geochemists and colleagues report.

Since astronomers discovered the Smith Cloud, a giant gas cloud plummeting toward the Milky Way, they have been unable to determine its composition, which would hold clues as to its origin. University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Nicolas Lehner and his collaborators have now determined that the cloud contains elements similar to our sun, which means the cloud originated in the Milky Way's outer edges and not in intergalactic space as some have speculated.

Analysis of ancient Babylonian tablets reveals that, to calculate the position of Jupiter, the tablets' makers used geometry, a technique scientists previously believed humans had not developed until at least 1,400 years later, in 14th century Europe. These tablets are the earliest known examples of using geometry to calculate positions in time-space and suggest that ancient Babylonian astronomers may have influenced the emergence of such techniques in Western science.

NASA's GPM satellite gathered rainfall rate and cloud height data on the newly developed tropical low pressure area designated System 92S in the Indian Ocean off Australia's northwestern coast. The low pressure area is expected to become a depression in the next day or two, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

The Global Precipitation Measurement Mission or GPM core observatory satellite flew over the area of disturbed weather on Jan. 27, 2016 at 0946 UTC (4:46 a.m. EST). GPM is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Exercise by itself isn't always enough to take off the weight. Now, evidence reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on January 28 helps to explain why that is: our bodies adapt to higher activity levels, so that people don't necessarily burn extra calories even if they exercise more.

The results suggest it's time to rethink the effect of physical activity on daily energy expenditure, the researchers say. They are also a reminder of the importance of diet and exercise in supporting weight loss goals.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A new design for gigantic blades longer than two football fields could help bring offshore 50-megawatt (MW) wind turbines to the United States and the world.

The oil refinery fires in Libya that were started by attacks on oil terminals in Libya in very early January continue.

New research from Griffith University's Centre for Quantum Dynamics is broadening perspectives on time and space.

In a paper published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Associate Professor Joan Vaccaro challenges the long-held presumption that time evolution -- the incessant unfolding of the universe over time -- is an elemental part of Nature.

In the paper, entitled Quantum asymmetry between time and space, she suggests there may be a deeper origin due to a difference between the two directions of time: to the future and to the past.

Inside a massive clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland the James Webb Space Telescope team is steadily installing the largest space telescope mirror ever. Unlike other space telescope mirrors, this one must be pieced together from segments using a high-precision robotic arm.