LOS ALAMOS, N.M., August 30, 2012 — Los Alamos National Laboratory expertise in radiation detection and shielding is poised to help a national team of scientists better understand a mysterious region that can create hazardous space weather near our home planet.
Heavens
Nature hath no fury like a dying star – and astronomers couldn't be happier…
An international research team, led by Edo Berger of Harvard University, made the most of a dying star's fury to probe a distant galaxy some 9.5 billion light-years distant. The dying star, which lit the galactic scene, is the most distant stellar explosion of its kind ever studied. According to Berger, "It's like someone turned on a flashlight in a dark room and suddenly allowed us to see, for a short time, what this far-off galaxy looks like, what it is composed of."
In a Physics World special report on Japan, Dennis Normile reports on how the Japanese space agency JAXA plans to land a spacecraft onto an asteroid in 2018 to search for clues of how life began on Earth.
Hayabusa 2 will be JAXA's second attempt at collecting material from an asteroid, after its first mission returned to Earth in June 2010. Hayabusa 2 will be launched in 2014 with a view to settling on the targeted asteroid, named 1999 JU3, in mid-2018 before arriving back on Earth in 2020.
Tropical Storm Bolaven made landfall on Aug. 28 and has been moving quickly over land while undergoing a transition. NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the remnants of the ex-tropical storm mostly centered over eastern China.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of Tropical Storm Bolaven on August 29 at 0220 UTC. Some clouds still remain over North Korea and extend over the Sea of Japan as Bolaven's remnants continue speeding to the north-northeast at 29 knots (33.3 mph/53.7 kmh).
Hurricane Isaac made two landfalls in southeastern Louisiana. Isaac's first landfall occurred in southeastern Louisiana on Aug. 28 at 7:45 p.m. EDT (1145 UTC), second landfall on Aug. 29 at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 UTC). NASA's TRMM satellite observed heavy rainfall in this slow moving storm, which leads to higher rainfall totals and flooding.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—If you're diabetic or prone to diabetes, having a steady job appears to be good for your health, and not just because of the insurance coverage.
A new University of Michigan study found that that jobless working-age people with diabetes are less likely to adhere to their oral anti-diabetic medications than diabetics who are employed. Further, people of working age with diabetes are more likely to be unemployed than those who do not have diabetes.
Oxford, August 29, 2012 - The Moon is believed to have formed from a collision, 4.5 billion years ago, between Earth and an impactor the size of Mars, known as "Theia." Over the past decades scientists have simulated this process and reproduced many of the properties of the Earth-Moon system; however, these simulations have also given rise to a problem known as the Lunar Paradox: the Moon appears to be made up of material that would not be expected if the current collision theory is correct.
WASHINGTON –- U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Tactical Satellite-4 successfully completes three weeks of intense testing, June 28, as part of the Navy's annual Trident Warrior Experiment 2012 (TW12). TacSat-4 is a Navy-led Joint mission that provides Ultra High Frequency (UHF) satellite communications (SATCOM).
Oxford, August 29, 2012 - The Moon is believed to have formed from a collision, 4.5 billion years ago, between Earth and an impactor the size of Mars, known as "Theia." Over the past decades scientists have simulated this process and reproduced many of the properties of the Earth-Moon system; however, these simulations have also given rise to a problem known as the Lunar Paradox: the Moon appears to be made up of material that would not be expected if the current collision theory is correct.
Two identical FLOYDS spectrographs, installed in recent weeks at telescopes 6,000 miles apart, robotically acquired a supernovae target this week. Due to the level of precision required and the difficulty involved, few if any, other ground-based spectrographs have ever achieved this milestone.
The system, known as Kepler-47, harbours the smallest known transiting circumbinary planets -- planets orbiting a pair of stars -- to date. The planets were discovered using NASA's Kepler space telescope [1] by monitoring thefaint drop in brightness produced when both planets transit (eclipse) their host stars [2].
University of Adelaide researchers are working with colleagues in Italy to produce better quality pasta that also adds greater value to human health.
Life is made up of a series of complex organic molecules, including sugars. A team of astronomers led by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, have now observed a simple sugar molecule in the gas surrounding a young star and this discovery proves that the building blocks of life were already present during planet formation. The results have been published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has spotted sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star. This is the first time sugar been found in space around such a star, and the discovery shows that the building blocks of life are in the right place, at the right time, to be included in planets forming around the star.
Astronomers at the International Astronomical Union meeting announced the discovery of the first transiting circumbinary multi-planet system: two planets orbiting around a pair of stars. The discovery shows that planetary systems can form and survive even in the chaotic environment around a binary star. And such planets can exist in the habitable zone of their stars.