University of British Columbia astronomer Ludovic Van Waerbeke with an international team has confirmed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating after looking at data from the largest-ever survey conducted by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Heavens
A group of astronomers [1], led by Tim Schrabback of the Leiden Observatory, conducted an intensive study of over 446 000 galaxies within the COSMOS field, the result of the largest survey ever conducted with Hubble. In making the COSMOS survey, Hubble photographed 575 slightly overlapping views of the same part of the Universe using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) onboard Hubble. It took nearly 1000 hours of observations.
A University of Alberta researcher is questioning the notion of "group think"— a common psychological phenomenon—that has been used to explain some of the extreme things people do once they are within the confines of a group. Rob Wilson, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, rejects the popular idea that groups tend to have a mind of their own and says the notion of a collective mind is problematic.
Tropical Cyclone 02W still has maximum sustained winds near 46 mph but one thing changed: it has been named "Omais."
Few Web sites provide high-quality patient information about treatment options for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.
Astronomers have long known that in many surveys of the very distant Universe, a large fraction of the total intrinsic light was not being observed. Now, thanks to an extremely deep survey using two of the four giant 8.2-metre telescopes that make up ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and a unique custom-built filter, astronomers have determined that a large fraction of galaxies whose light took 10 billion years to reach us have gone undiscovered. The survey also helped uncover some of the faintest galaxies ever found at this early stage of the Universe.
Ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet, which has been increasing during the past decade over its southern region, is now moving up its northwest coast, according to a new international study.
The National Weather Service in Guam has posted advisories for small craft advisories and high surf advisories for Guam and the surrounding region, including Micronesia. NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites captured two views of limited areas of convection in the storm today.
The Southern Indian Ocean is still warm enough to enable tropical cyclones to form, and Tropical Cyclone 21S did just that today. NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared and visible images of 21S and the infrared showed some limited areas of strong convection, while the visible image showed a very small, compact storm.
At 900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT) today, March 23, Tropical Cyclone 21S was located about 505 miles west of Cocos Island near 12.9 degrees South latitude and 88.3 degrees East longitude.
A new approach to desalination being developed by researchers at MIT and in Korea could lead to small, portable desalination units that could be powered by solar cells or batteries and could deliver enough fresh water to supply the needs of a family or small village. As an added bonus, the system would also remove many contaminants, viruses and bacteria at the same time.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The newest generation of "virtual biopsy" colonoscopy probes being tested at the Mayo Clinic campus in Florida demonstrate that it might soon be possible to use such a device to determine whether a colon polyp is benign and not remove it for biopsy. Currently, all colon polyps are extracted during a colonoscopy and sent to a pathologist for examination, which adds time, expense, and some surgical risk, to the procedure.
The second tropical depression of the northwestern Pacific tropical cyclone season has formed and is currently located about 235 miles east-southeast of Yap, Micronesia. NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared, microwave and visible images of Tropical Depression 02W (TD 02W) early this morning.
On Earth, helium is a gas used to float balloons, as in the movie "Up."
In the interior of Jupiter, however, conditions are so strange that, according to predictions by University of California, Berkeley, scientists, helium condenses into droplets and falls like rain.
Helium rain was earlier proposed to explain the excessive brightness of Saturn, a gas giant like Jupiter, but one-third the mass.
When NASA's Galileo probe reached Jupiter in 1995 and began sending back data about the gas giant, astronomers were in for a surprise: Jupiter was unusually poor in helium and neon, the two lightest noble gases. New simulations of the physics inside the planet reveal why.
For the first time, astronomers have made direct measurements of the size and brightness of regions of star-birth in a very distant galaxy, thanks to a chance discovery with the APEX telescope. The galaxy is so distant, that we see it as it was 10 billion years ago. A cosmic "gravitational lens" is magnifying the galaxy, giving us a close-up view that would otherwise be impossible. The research is published online today in the journal Nature.