Heavens

Whenever a super typhoon or major hurricane has sustained winds over 100 knots (115 mph/185 kph), eyewall replacement occurs naturally. That happens because the eyewall is small, or it contracts and some of the outer bands of thunderstorms can strengthen and form a ring or outer eyewall. That outer ring moves inward and takes energy from the inner eyewall. During the replacement, a typhoon or hurricane weakens, as Soulik has done. Eventually the inner eyewall is replaced by the outer eyewall. Once the replacement is completed, the storm may re-intensify.

Tropical Storm Chantal moved over Hispaniola on July 10 when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead from space, and less than twenty-four hours later the storm weakened to a remnant low pressure area.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Chantal when it was a tropical storm over Hispaniola on July 10 at 15:20 UTC (11:20 a.m. EDT). At that time, Chantal's northern quadrant covered the Dominican Republic and eastern Haiti while the center of the storm remained south of Hispaniola.

More support is needed to help women overcome doubts in the hope that they will breastfeed their babies for longer, says a University of Alberta nutrition researcher.

Astronomers making visible-light observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have deduced the actual color of a planet orbiting another star 63 light-years away.

The planet is HD 189733b, one of the closest exoplanets that can be seen crossing the face of its star.

A solar tsunami observed by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Japanese Hinode spacecraft has been used to provide the first accurate estimates of the Sun's magnetic field.

Solar tsunamis are produced by enormous explosions in the Sun's atmosphere called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). As the CME travels out into space, the tsunami travels across the Sun at speeds of up to 1000 kilometres per second.

A study published in the journal Animal Behaviour found that the noise of passing ships disrupts feeding for the common shore crab. Perhaps worse, the team from the Universities of Exeter and Bristol also found that when threatened, crabs took longer to retreat to shelter and lost their natural 'play dead' behaviour.

In coastal seas around the world noise caused by humans is a dominant feature, with construction and transportation fundamentally modifying ocean soundscapes.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have, for the first time, determined the true colour of a planet orbiting another star. If seen up close this planet, known as HD 189733b, would be a deep cobalt blue, reminiscent of Earth's colour as seen from space.

But that's where the similarities end. This "deep blue dot" is a huge gas giant orbiting very close to its host star. The planet's atmosphere is scorching with a temperature of over 1000 degrees Celsius, and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 kilometre-per-hour winds [1].

One might expect that collisions between the remains of monstrous stars, with masses reaching 200-300 times that of our Sun, would be among the most spectacular phenomena in the Universe. Perhaps they are, but we will unfortunately probably never have the chance to find out. Astrophysicists from the Astronomical Observatory of the Faculty of Physics at University of Warsaw have discovered that the first such collisions will not occur until billions of years from now.

Victims of forced marriage and honour violence in the UK are hesitant to seek professional help because they are worried social workers will not understand their cultural differences, according to new research presented today at Royal Holloway University.

Researchers at Royal Holloway have called for social workers to receive mandatory training on sensitive issues surrounding different cultures and religious backgrounds, so that they understand that normal practices, such as involving family members, may not be the best solution in forced marriage cases.

On July 9, 2013, at 11:09 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.

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft recently provided the first complete pictures of the solar system's downwind region, revealing a unique and unexpected structure.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University have shown how tiny graphene microsheets — ultra-thin materials with a number of commercial applications — could be big trouble for human cells.

Fires around James Bay continue raging in Canada due to the driest summer the region has seen in 40 years as seen in this Aqua satellite photo from July 09, 2013. These fires have been raging for several weeks now and are also causing other problems besides burning land and causing pollution. About 10 per cent of Quebecers lost electricity on July 5, on the second day of blackouts triggered by the powerful forest fires. Hydro-Quebec said 500,000 households or businesses were affected at the peak of the blackout.

MANHATTAN -- Wind power development does not ruffle the feathers of greater prairie chicken populations, according to the results of a seven-year study from a Kansas State University ecologist and his team.

On 8 July 2013 a huge area of the ice shelf broke away from the Pine Island glacier, the longest and fastest flowing glacier in the Antarctic, and is now floating in the Amundsen Sea in the form of a very large iceberg. Scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute - Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research have been following this natural spectacle via the earth observation satellites TerraSAR-X from the German Space Agency (DLR) and have documented it in many individual images. The data is intended to help solve the physical puzzle of this "calving".