Scientists have found opal-like crystals in the Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell to Earth in Canada in 2000. This is the first extraterrestrial discovery of these unusual crystals, which may have formed in the primordial cloud of dust that produced the sun and planets of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago, according to a report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Heavens
Manufacturers of everything from smart phones to SUVs are starting to design products not just for the customer's use, but also for an often troublesome life after the consumer, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.
Several University of Colorado Boulder faculty and students are participating in NASA's Juno Mission to Jupiter, now slated for launch Aug. 5 from Florida's Kennedy Space Center and which is expected to help steer scientists toward the right recipe for planet-making.
ESA's Herschel space observatory has found molecules of oxygen in a nearby star-forming cloud. This is the first undisputed detection of oxygen molecules in space. It concludes a long search but also leaves questions unanswered.
The oxygen molecules have been found in the nearby Orion star-forming complex. While atomic oxygen has been long known in warm regions of space, previous missions looking for the molecular variety – two atoms of oxygen bonded together – came up largely empty-handed.
Instead, some of the biggest storms in the UK's history, such as the Great Storm of October 1987, did not fit this basic understanding.
With groundbreaking research, Dr David Schultz, from The University of Manchester believes the way we learn about the weather is wrong and has been wrong for 90 years.
Writing in the journal Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Dr Schultz, along with his colleague Professor Geraint Vaughan, has worked out that the traditional model for how low pressure systems evolve is deeply flawed.
The width of an image from the AIRS instrument that flies on NASA's Aqua satellite is about 1700 km (1056 miles), and the clouds and thunderstorms associate with Tropical Storm Muifa take up that entire distance on today's imagery.
NASA is analyzing Tropical Storm Don from all angles, inside and out, using three different satellites. Don is expected to make landfall in southeastern Texas tonight or early Saturday.
The strongest thunderstorms that make up tropical storm Muifa are on the storm's eastern and southern sides, according to infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite. The northern side is being weakened by a nearby weather system.
Tropical Storm Muifa is moving through the western North Pacific Ocean, and had strengthened during the early morning hours of July 28. On July 27, it was tropical depression 11W and winds have since increased to 40 knots (46 mph/74 kmh).
Infrared satellite imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite shows bands of strong thunderstorms wrapping around the center of Tropical Storm Nock-Ten as it makes its way through the South China Sea and two landfalls on Hainan Island and in Vietnam.
Water isn't the only thing pouring over Niagara Falls. Pollution from fires in Ontario, Canada is also making the one thousand mile trip, while being measured by NASA's Aqua satellite.
One instrument that flies aboard two of NASA's satellites has provided two views of the pollution from the fires in Ontario. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS instrument, flies onboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. MODIS has provided a visible look at the smoke and pollution that has spread over Niagara Falls and east to Nova Scotia.
On Nov. 4, 2010, NASA's EPOXI spacecraft came within 450 miles of Comet Hartley 2, a small comet not even a mile in diameter, which takes about six and a half years to orbit the sun. Designated officially as 103P/Hartley 2, the comet thus became the fifth for which scientists have collected close-up images.
As of July 28, a tropical storm watch is in effect for Texas coast from the mouth of the Rio Grande northward to west of San Luis Pass and those conditions are possible by late Friday.
Forty years ago, Americans could expect to live slightly longer than Europeans. This has since reversed: in spite of similar levels of economic development, Americans now live about a year-and-a-half less, on average, than their Western European counterparts, and also less than people in most other developed nations. How did Americans fall behind?
Like giant strands of seaweed some 32,000 miles high, material shooting up from the sun sways back and forth with the atmosphere. In the ocean, it's moving water that pulls the seaweed along for a ride; in the sun's corona, magnetic field ripples called Alfvén waves cause the swaying.
A NASA satellite has observed Tropical Depression 11W become more organized on infrared imagery. Fortunately, it is moving away from land areas for the next couple of days.
Yap and Guam are both experiencing the tail end of gusty winds and rains as Tropical Depression 11W moves between the two islands in the western North Pacific today.