These delicate wisps of gas make up an object known as SNR B0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short. The thin, blood-red shells are actually the remnants from when an unstable progenitor star exploded violently as a supernova around 600 years ago. There are several types of supernovae, but for SNR 0519 the star that exploded is known to have been a white dwarf star — a Sun-like star in the final stages of its life.
Heavens
A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy has wowed astronomers around the world. The eruption, which is classified as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, and designated GRB 130427A, produced the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.
Knowledge of ion channel function provides the basis for better drugs
Ion channels are important drug targets. 10 percent of current pharmaceuticals target ion channels. A detailed understanding of these proteins is therefore essential to develop drugs with improved risk-benefit profiles. An important basis for drug development is a detailed knowledge of the functional mechanisms of these channels. However, there are still many open questions; especially the energy profile and pathway of opening and closure are far from being understood.
A University of Iowa undergraduate student has discovered that a process occurring in Saturn's magnetosphere is linked to the planet's seasons and changes with them, a finding that helps clarify the length of a Saturn day and could alter our understanding of the Earth's magnetosphere.
The tick-borne Lone Star virus has been conclusively identified as part of a family of other tick-borne viruses called bunyaviruses, which often cause fever, respiratory problems and bleeding, according to new research led by scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF).
NASA's TRMM satellite captured an image of Cyclone Zane at 11:48 UTC (9:48 p.m. AEST/7:48 a.m. EDT, U.S.) May 1, 2013. At the time, the center of circulation was located about 215 km (~133 miles) due east of the coast of Queensland, Australia and was heading west-northwest. TRMM revealed that Zane was still not very well organized with no eye visible and very little evidence of banding (curvature) in the rain area. At the time of the image, Zane was a Category 1 cyclone (equivalent to a tropical storm on the U.S.
Two researchers affiliated with the Virginia Tech College of Engineering have published a paper which reports that hot water recirculating systems touted as "green," actually use both more energy and water than their standard counterparts.
If you had to explain what causes the change in seasons, could you? Surprisingly, studies have shown that as many as 95 percent of people — including most college graduates — hold the incorrect belief that the seasons are the result of the Earth moving closer to or further from the sun.
Today's image of southern Australia shows a combination of both planned fires and some bushfires.
Fires are often deliberately set by fire officials and controlled in order to clean out dry underbrush and accumulations of debris. The fire burns away the detritus which could otherwise be the ignition for a devastating bushfire that may easily get out of control.
In this image, most of the fires have been planned and are under control, however, there are some that are bushfires which, although started spontaneously, are currently under control by fire officials.
According to the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, "A fast-moving, wind-driven brush fire in Riverside County was 40 percent contained as of early Thursday morning, CAL Fire officials said. The Summit Fire broke out around 12:30 p.m. Wednesday near North San Gorgonio Road and Summit Drive in Banning. Crews fought the nearly 3,000-acre fire overnight and were aided by diminished winds that allowed them to lay containment lines around the blaze."
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite detected hundreds of fires burning in the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola on May 01, 2013. The fires are outlined in red. Most of the fires burn in grass or cropland.
NGC 6559 is a cloud of gas and dust located at a distance of about 5000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). The glowing region is a relatively small object, just a few light-years across, in contrast to the one hundred light-years and more spanned by its famous neighbour, the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8, eso0936 - http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0936/).
When people create and modify their virtual reality avatars, the hardships faced by their alter egos can influence how they perceive virtual environments, according to researchers.
A group of students who saw that a backpack was attached to an avatar that they had created overestimated the heights of virtual hills, just as people in real life tend to overestimate heights and distances while carrying extra weight, according to Sangseok You, a doctoral student in the school of information, University of Michigan.
There may be a way for older people to prevent natural aging of their minds, and it could be as simple as playing a video game.
That's according to a study from the University of Iowa, which found that elderly people who played just ten hours of a game priming their mental processing speed and skills delayed declines by as many as seven years in a range of cognitive skills.
In an effort to determine if conditions were ever right on Mars to sustain life, a team of scientists, including a Michigan State University professor, has examined a meteorite that formed on the red planet more than a billion years ago.
And although this team's work is not specifically solving the mystery, it is laying the groundwork for future researchers to answer this age-old question.