In 2011 ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) discovered a gas cloud with several times the mass of the Earth accelerating towards the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way (eso1151 [1]. This cloud is now making its closest approach and new VLT observations show that it is being grossly stretched by the black hole's extreme gravitational field.
Heavens
On July 16, 2013, at 12:09 a.m. EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.
In the Yukon territory of Canada, several large wildfires continue to burn unabated. The fires on this image are located near Carmacks and also near Stewart Crossing. The Yukon Wildland Fire Management map dated July 15, 2013 shows quite a few fires in the Yukon territory with many currently uncontained. These MODIS image fires appear to be the uncontained fires noted on the map. During this year to date the Yukon territory has seen 133,166 hectares (329, 060 acres) of land burned by fires.
Infrared satellite data helps identify cloud top and sea-surface temperatures, and the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured those when it flew over Tropical Depression 08W in the western North Pacific Ocean. Tropical Depression 08W formed east of the Philippines.
Two NASA spacecraft have provided the most comprehensive movie ever of a mysterious process at the heart of all explosions on the sun: magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection happens when magnetic field lines come together, break apart and then exchange partners, snapping into new positions and releasing a jolt of magnetic energy. This process lies at the heart of giant explosions on the sun, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can fling radiation and particles across the solar system.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting the distant blue-green planet Neptune, the 14th known to be circling the giant planet.
The moon, designated S/2004 N 1, is estimated to be no more than 12 miles across, making it the smallest known moon in the Neptunian system. It is so small and dim that it is roughly 100 million times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the naked eye. It even escaped detection by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past Neptune in 1989 and surveyed the planet's system of moons and rings.
Typhoon Soulik still maintained an eye just before making landfall in southeastern China on July 13, and NASA's Terra satellite captured the eye in an image. Soulik's heavy rainfall in southern China is responsible for hundreds missing or dead.
WASHINGTON, DC— By pinpointing locations on Earth from space, GPS systems have long shown drivers the shortest route home and guided airline pilots across oceans. Now, by figuring out how messed up GPS satellite signals get when bouncing around in a storm, researchers have found a way to do something completely different with GPS: measure and map the wind speeds of hurricanes.
The Internet, motorways and other transport systems, and many social and biological systems are composed of nodes connected by edges. They can therefore be represented as networks. Scientists studying diffusion over such networks over time have now identified the temporal characteristics that affect their diffusion pathways.
Carnegie Mellon researchers develop artificial cells to study molecular crowding and gene expression
PITTSBURGH—The interior of a living cell is a crowded place, with proteins and other macromolecules packed tightly together. A team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University has approximated this molecular crowding in an artificial cellular system and found that tight quarters help the process of gene expression, especially when other conditions are less than ideal.
Typhoon Soulik's eyewall appears to have rebuilt as evidenced in NASA satellite imagery. Soulik is approaching Taiwan and is forecast to make landfall in southeastern China over the weekend of July 13 and 14.
NOAA's GOES-13 satellite spotted the remnant clouds and showers from former Tropical Storm Chantal lingering over the Bahamas on July 12. Chantal's chances for regeneration are diminishing because of upper-level winds.
A visible image from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite at 9:45 a.m. EDT on July 12, 2013 showed Chantal's remnant clouds and showers moving north in the Atlantic. The image of Chantal's remnants resembled the sideways view of a jellyfish. The GOES image was created by NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
"All we need to produce narrow rings and other structures in our models of debris disks is a bit of gas, too little for us to detect today in most actual systems," said co-author Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Here's how it works. When high-energy ultraviolet light from the central star strikes a clump of dust and ice grains, it drives electrons off the particles. These high-speed electrons then collide with and heat nearby gas.
Drug use is common among street children, posing serious threats to both their health and their chances for reintegration into society. It's difficult to reduce drug use among street children without a good understanding of the problem, and up to now the research has been confined mainly to local studies with inconsistent results.
This week a European Earth-observing satellite confirmed that a large iceberg broke off of Pine Island Glacier, one of Antarctica's largest and fastest moving ice streams. The rift that led to the new iceberg was discovered in October 2011 during NASA's Operation IceBridge flights over the continent. The rift soon became the focus of international scientific attention. Seeing the rift grow and eventually form a 280-square-mile ice island gave researchers an opportunity to gather data that promises to improve our understanding of how glaciers calve.