The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite provided a look at the rainfall associated with the large storm system that brought soaking rains to California on Feb. 28 and Mar. 1. Satellite imagery created at NASA shows the movement of the storm from the U.S. West Coast to the East Coast.
Heavens
In the giant system that connects Earth to the sun, one key event happens over and over: solar material streams toward Earth and the giant magnetic bubble around Earth, the magnetosphere helps keep it at bay. The parameters, however, change: The particles streaming in could be from the constant solar wind, or perhaps from a giant cloud erupting off the sun called a coronal mass ejection, or CME. Sometimes the configuration is such that the magnetosphere blocks almost all the material, other times the connection is long and strong, allowing much material in.
Beta Pictoris, a nearby star easily visible to the naked eye in the southern sky, is already hailed as the archetypal young planetary system. It is known to harbour a planet that orbits some 1.2 billion kilometres from the star, and it was one of the first stars found to be surrounded by a large disc of dusty debris [1].
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope have discovered the splattered remains of comets colliding together around a nearby star; the researchers believe they are witnessing the total destruction of one of these icy bodies once every five minutes.
The "smoking gun" implicating this frosty demolition is the detection of a surprisingly compact region of carbon monoxide (CO) gas swirling around the young, nearby star Beta Pictoris.
Astronomers exploring the disk of debris around the young star Beta Pictoris have discovered a compact cloud of carbon monoxide located about 8 billion miles (13 billion kilometers) from the star. This concentration of poisonous gas – usually destroyed by starlight – is being constantly replenished by ongoing rapid-fire collisions among a swarm of icy, comet-like bodies.
In fact, to offset the destruction of carbon monoxide (CO) molecules around the star, a large comet must be getting completely destroyed every five minutes, say researchers.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Much of the research on post-combat mental health of veterans focuses on problems like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depression. A paper co-authored by R. Tyson Smith, visiting assistant professor of sociology, takes an even broader snapshot of returning soldiers' mental state by focusing instead on the identity conflict many face when transitioning from soldier to civilian life and how that conflict manifests as mental distress. The paper was published in the January issue of Society and Mental Health.
The Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere, stretches from the planet's core out into space, where it meets the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted by the sun. For the most part, the magnetosphere acts as a shield to protect the Earth from this high-energy solar activity.
After more than a decade of incremental – and paradigm shifting, advances in stem cell biology, almost anyone with a basic understanding of life sciences knows that stem cells are the basic form of cell from which all specialized cells, and eventually organs and body parts, derive.
Future lunar missions may be fueled by gas stations in space, according to MIT engineers: A spacecraft might dock at a propellant depot, somewhere between the Earth and the moon, and pick up extra rocket fuel before making its way to the lunar surface.
Orbiting way stations could reduce the fuel a spacecraft needs to carry from Earth — and with less fuel onboard, a rocket could launch heavier payloads, such as large scientific experiments.
Astronomers have witnessed for the first time the breakup of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. The discovery is published online March 6 in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Though fragile comet nuclei have been seen falling apart as they near the sun, nothing resembling this type of breakup has been observed before in the asteroid belt. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed the demolition.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid, which has fragmented into as many as ten smaller pieces. Although fragile comet nuclei have been seen to fall apart as they approach the Sun, nothing like the breakup of this asteroid, P/2013 R3, has ever been observed before in the asteroid belt.
"This is a rock. Seeing it fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing," said David Jewitt of UCLA, USA, who led the astronomical forensics investigation.
One year of Head Start can make a bigger difference for children from homes where parents provide less early academic stimulation, such as reading to children, helping them recognize and pronounce letters and words, and helping them count. Showing parents how they can help their children with reading and counting may help, too.
Those are the conclusions of a new study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine. The study appears in the journal Child Development.
NASA has successfully concluded a remotely controlled test of new technologies that would empower future space robots to transfer hazardous oxidizer – a type of propellant – into the tanks of satellites in space today.
Concurrently on the ground, NASA is incorporating results from this test and the Robotic Refueling Mission on the International Space Station to prepare for an upcoming ground-based test of a full-sized robotic servicer system that will perform tasks on a mock satellite client.
University of Arizona researchers snapped images of a planet outside our solar system with an Earth-based telescope using essentially the same type of imaging sensor found in digital cameras instead of an infrared detector. Although the technology still has a very long way to go, the accomplishment takes astronomers a small step closer to what will be needed to image earth-like planets around other stars
The spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 looks like a dandelion caught in a breeze in this new Hubble Space Telescope image.
The galaxy is zooming toward the upper right of this image, in between other galaxies in the Norma cluster located over 200 million light-years away. The road is harsh: intergalactic gas in the Norma cluster is sparse, but so hot at 180 million degrees Fahrenheit that it glows in X-rays.