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NASA sees Tropical Cyclone Guito exit the Mozambique Channel

NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Guito as it exited the Mozambique Channel and moved into the open waters of the Southern Indian Ocean.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Guito on Feb. 21 at 07:05 UTC/2:05 a.m. EST and took a visible image of the storm exiting the Mozambique Channel. The image showed bands of thunderstorms were still wrapping around the western quadrant of the storm.

Will plug-in cars crash the electric grid?

Selecting a Chevy Volt, Tesla Model S, Nissan Leaf — or one of many other new models — shoppers in the United States bought more than 96,000 plug-in electric cars in 2013. That's a tiny slice of the auto market, but it's up eighty-four percent from the year before. By 2020, the International Energy Agency forecasts, there will be 20 million electric vehicles on the world's roads, many of them plug-ins.

NASA researcher finds planet-sized space weather explosions at Venus

Researchers recently discovered that a common space weather phenomenon on the outskirts of Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere, has much larger repercussions for Venus. The giant explosions, called hot flow anomalies, can be so large at Venus that they're bigger than the entire planet and they can happen multiple times a day.

NASA's TRMM satellite saw extreme rainfall from Tropical Cyclone Guito

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. a rainfall anomaly analysis was made by comparing rainfall data compiled during the twelve year period from 2001-2012 to "near real-time" Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis data collected for the same period. That analysis showed that rainfall in the northern Mozambique Channel has been above normal for the past month.

Sustainable manufacturing system to better consider the human component

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have developed a new approach toward "sustainable manufacturing" that begins on the factory floor and tries to encompass the totality of manufacturing issues – including economic, environmental, and social impacts.

This approach, they say, builds on previous approaches that considered various facets of sustainability in a more individual manner. Past methods often worked backward from a finished product and rarely incorporated the complexity of human social concerns.

New research shows the way a room is lit can affect the way you make decisions

The next time you want to turn down the emotional intensity before making an important decision, you may want to dim the lights first.

A new study from the University of Toronto Scarborough shows that human emotion, whether positive or negative, is felt more intensely under bright light. Alison Jing Xu, assistant professor of management at UTSC and the Rotman School of Management, along with Aparna Labroo of Northwestern University, conducted a series of studies to examine the unusual paradox of lighting and human emotion.

Astronomers find solar storms behave like supernovae

Researchers at UCL have studied the behaviour of the Sun's coronal mass ejections, explaining for the first time the details of how these huge eruptions behave as they fall back onto the Sun's surface. In the process, they have discovered that coronal mass ejections have a surprising twin in the depths of space: the tendrils of gas in the Crab Nebula, which lie 6500 light-years away and are millions of times larger.

Remote Antarctic telescope reveals gas cloud where stars are born

Using a telescope installed at the driest place on earth - Ridge A in Antarctica – a UNSW-led team of researchers has identified a giant gas cloud which appears to be in an early stage of formation.

Giant clouds of molecular gas – the most massive objects in our galaxy – are the birthplaces of stars.

"This newly discovered gas cloud is shaped like a very long filament, about 200 light years in extent and ten light years across, with a mass about 50,000 times that of our sun," says team leader, Professor Michael Burton, an astronomer at UNSW Australia.

Rocks around the clock: Asteroids pound tiny star

Scientists using the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's (CSIRO) Parkes telescope and another telescope in South Africa have found evidence that a tiny star called PSR J0738-4042 is being pounded by asteroids — large lumps of rock from space.

"One of these rocks seems to have had a mass of about a billion tonnes," CSIRO astronomer and member of the research team Dr Ryan Shannon said.

PSR J0738-4042 lies 37,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Puppis.

Ants build raft to escape flood, protect queen

When facing a flood, ants build rafts and use both the buoyancy of the brood and the recovery ability of workers to minimize injury or death, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on February 19, 2014 by Jessica Purcell from University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues. Furthermore, the queen ant is placed in the middle and protected on all sides by the rafting ants.

RXTE reveals the cloudy cores of active galaxies

Picture a single cloud large enough to span the solar system from the sun to beyond Pluto's orbit. Now imagine many such clouds orbiting in a vast ring at the heart of a distant galaxy, occasionally dimming the X-ray light produced by the galaxy's monster black hole.

NuSTAR helps untangle how stars explode

For the first time, an international team of astrophysicists, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists, have unraveled how stars blow up in supernova explosions.

Using NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) – a high-energy X-ray observatory - the international collaboration created the first-ever map of radioactive material in a supernova remnant, named Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short. The findings reveal how shock waves likely rip apart massive dying stars, and ultimately end their lives.

NuSTAR telescope takes first peek into core of supernova

Astronomers for the first time have peered into the heart of an exploding star in the final minutes of its existence.

The feat is one of the primary goals of NASA's NuSTAR mission, launched in June 2012 to measure high-energy X-ray emissions from exploding stars, or supernovae, and black holes, including the massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.

NASA satellite sees a ragged eye develop in Tropical Cyclone Guito

NASA satellite data was an "eye opener" when it came to Tropical Cyclone 15S, now known as Guito in the Mozambique Channel today, Feb. 19, 2014. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Guito and visible imagery revealed a ragged eye had developed as the tropical cyclone intensified.

Clouds seen circling supermassive black holes

Astronomers see huge clouds of gas orbiting supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. Once thought to be a relatively uniform, fog-like ring, the accreting matter instead forms clumps dense enough to intermittently dim the intense radiation blazing forth as these enormous objects condense and consume matter, they report in a paper to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, available online now.