When NASA's Juno spacecraft flew past Earth early in October 2013, recording a first-of-a-kind movie of the approach was a special assignment for an onboard camera system known as a star tracker.
Heavens
MELBOURNE, FLA.—Bonefish, also called gray ghosts, are among the most elusive and highly prized fishes sought by recreational anglers in the Florida Keys, Bahamas and similar tropical habitats around the world. Bonefish support a fishery worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, but this fishery is threatened in many areas by habitat loss and degradation, and by overfishing. Scientists are scrambling to identify and protect critical habitats and identify other ways to conserve this vital fishery.
When soup is heated, it starts to boil. When time and space are heated, an expanding universe can emerge, without requiring anything like a "Big Bang". This phase transition between a boring empty space and an expanding universe containing mass has now been mathematically described by a research team at the Vienna University of Technology, together with colleagues from Harvard, the MIT and Edinburgh. The idea behind this result is a remarkable connection between quantum field theory and Einstein's theory of relativity.
A Cookbook for Spacetime
A long-standing difficulty with supercomputer simulations of the formation and evolution of galaxies has been getting consistent results among different codes (programs) and with actual observations, so that computationally simulated galaxies look like real galaxies. While such conflicts could be evidence of complex physics in invisible dark matter, emerging evidence suggests that inconsistencies may originate from a poor understanding of processes involving ordinary matter as well as limitations in computational capability and differences in computer codes.
Tropical Cyclone Madi has maintained its tropical storm-force strength over 24 hours as it neared the coast of east central India on December 10. NASA's Aqua satellite flew overhead and provided a clear picture of the storm's proximity to the coast.
SAN FRANCISCO—Scientists recently recorded the lowest temperatures on Earth at a desolate and remote ice plateau in East Antarctica, trumping a record set in 1983 and uncovering a new puzzle about the ice-covered continent.
An atmospheric peculiarity the Earth shares with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune is likely common to billions of planets, University of Washington astronomers have found, and knowing that may help in the search for potentially habitable worlds.
First, some history: It's known that air grows colder and thinner with altitude, but in 1902 a scientist named Léon Teisserenc de Bort, using instrument-equipped balloons, found a point in Earth's atmosphere at about 40,000 to 50,000 feet where the air stops cooling and begins growing warmer.
The study identifies five healthy behaviours as being integral to having the best chance of leading a disease-free lifestyle: taking regular exercise, non-smoking, a low bodyweight, a healthy diet and a low alcohol intake.
The people who consistently followed four or five of these behaviours experienced a 60 per cent decline in dementia and cognitive decline - with exercise being the strongest mitigating factor – as well as 70 per cent fewer instances of diabetes, heart disease and stroke, compared with people who followed none.
In the first 300 days of the Mars Science Laboratory's surface mission, the Curiosity rover cruised around the planet's Gale Crater, collecting soil samples and investigating rock structures while the onboard Radiation Assessment Detector made detailed measurements of the radiation environment on the surface of Mars.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University and the University of Hawaii have found some mineralogical surprises in the Moon's largest impact crater.
Fewer high school students across the U.S. started drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, committing crimes and engaging in violence before graduation when their towns used the Communities That Care prevention system during the teens' middle school years.
A University of Washington study found that the positive influence of this community-led system was sustained through high school.
Tropical Cyclone Madi is headed for a landfall in southeastern India, and NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's TRMM satellite found that rainfall was heaviest north of the storm's center.
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite known as TRMM captured data on Tropical Cyclone Madi's rainfall on Dec. 8 at 1144 UTC/6:44 a.m. EST. TRMM saw the bulk of the storm's rainfall was occurring north of the center of circulation and falling at a rate of 1 inch/30 mm per hour with isolated areas of 2 inches/50 mm.
Millions of people across the world live or depend on deltas for their livelihoods.
Formed at the lowest part of a river where its water flow slows and spreads into the sea, deltas are sediment-rich, biodiverse areas, a valuable source of seafood, fertile ground for agriculture, and host to ports important for transportation.
Using the new, high-frequency capabilities of the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), astronomers have captured never-before-seen details of the nearby starburst galaxy M82. These new data highlight streamers of material fleeing the disk of the galaxy as well as concentrations of dense molecular gas surrounding pockets of intense star formation.
A massive ejection of material from the sun initially traveling at over 7 million miles per hour that narrowly missed Earth last year is an event solar scientists hope will open the eyes of policymakers regarding the impacts and mitigation of severe space weather, says a University of Colorado Boulder professor.