Heavens

The ability to track animal movements across long distances has revolutionized our understanding of animal ecology and has been helpful to conservation. Until recently, our ability to record this information was limited to larger animals that could carry satellite transmitters. However, recent technological advances have developed miniaturized devices that extend our ability to track much smaller animals, especially migratory songbirds.

New York, NY -- Dec. 7, 2015--Columbia Engineering researchers have, for the first time, harnessed the molecular machinery of living systems to power an integrated circuit from adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of life. They achieved this by integrating a conventional solid-state complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane containing ATP-powered ion pumps, opening the door to creating entirely new artificial systems that contain both biological and solid-state components.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered the most tenuous molecular gas ever observed. They detected the absorption of radio waves by gas clouds in front of bright radio sources. This radio shadow revealed the composition and conditions of diffuse gas in the Milky Way galaxy.

A new study questions the popular notion that 10th-century Norse people were able to colonize Greenland because of a period of unusually warm weather. Based upon signs left by old glaciers, researchers say the climate was already cold when the Norse arrived--and that climate thus probably played little role in their mysterious demise some 400 years later. On a larger scale, the study adds to building evidence that the so-called Medieval Warm Period, when Europe enjoyed exceptionally clement weather, did not necessarily extend to other parts of the world.

A new study questions the popular notion that 10th-century Norse people were able to colonize Greenland because of a period of unusually warm weather. Based upon signs left by old glaciers, researchers say the climate was already cold when the Norse arrived--and that climate thus probably played little role in their mysterious demise some 400 years later. On a larger scale, the study adds to building evidence that the so-called Medieval Warm Period, when Europe enjoyed exceptionally clement weather, did not necessarily extend to other parts of the world.

Astronomers discovered a nest of monstrous baby galaxies 11.5 billion light-years away using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The young galaxies seem to reside at the junction of gigantic filaments in a web of dark matter. These findings are important for understanding how monstrous galaxies like these are formed and how they evolve in to huge elliptical galaxies.

It is the brightest infrared star in the Northern sky, but a University of Sydney student has found that astronomers have been mistakenly interpreting the dust in the environment of a famous star that lies 450 light years from Earth.

Washington, DC-- As astronomers continue to find more and more planets around stars beyond our own Sun, they are trying to discover patterns and features that indicate what types of planets are likely to form around different kinds of stars. This will hopefully inform and make more efficient the ongoing planet hunting process, and also help us better understand our own Solar System's formation.

Astronomers harnessing the combined power of NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found the faintest object ever seen in the early universe. It existed about 400 million years after the big bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

The team has nicknamed the object Tayna, which means "first-born" in Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America.

Astronomers have made a significant step toward confirming a proposed explanation for how solar flares accelerate charged particles to speeds nearly that of light. This important advance was made possible by the new capabilities of the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope.

Solar flares, the most powerful explosions in the Solar System, can accelerate large numbers of charged particles to nearly the speed of light. How they do that, however, has been uncertain.

Most people think of black holes as giant vacuum cleaners sucking in everything that gets too close. But the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies are more like cosmic engines, converting energy from infalling matter into intense radiation that can outshine the combined light from all surrounding stars. If the black hole is spinning, it can generate strong jets that blast across thousands of light-years and shape entire galaxies. These black hole engines are thought to be powered by magnetic fields.

A University of Montana professor who studies astrophysics has discovered how water ions escape from Saturn's environment. His findings recently were published in the journal Nature Physics.

UM Professor Daniel Reisenfeld is a member of the Cassini research team. Cassini is a NASA-managed probe that studies Saturn. It has been in orbit continuously collecting data since 2004.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) -- Almost 9 percent of popular apps downloaded from Google Play interact with websites that could compromise users' security and privacy, according to a study released in December by researchers at the University of California, Riverside. The team is now developing a tool that allows users to evaluate the riskiness of individual apps before downloading them.

Dec. 3, 2015 (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) - A new discovery, published today in the journal Science, has greatly deepened our understanding black holes, which are believed to be the gravitational engines at the centres of most galaxies, including our own.

Using an array of telescopes that spans the globe, astronomers detected evidence of magnetic fields near Sagittarius A*, the 4.5-million-solar-mass black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

The Sun demonstrates the potential to superflare, new research into stellar flaring suggests.

Led by the University of Warwick, the research has found a stellar superflare on a star observed by NASA's Kepler space telescope with wave patterns similar to those that have been observed in solar flares.

Superflares are thousands of times more powerful than those ever recorded on the Sun, and are frequently observed on some stars.