NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, also known as TRMM, flew over Cyclone Sandra twice in one day and noticed a large decrease in rainfall intensity over a nine hour period.
Heavens
The sun recently erupted with two coronal mass ejections (CMEs). One began at 8:36 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2013 and is directed toward three NASA spacecraft, Spitzer, Kepler and Epoxi. There is, however, no particle radiation associated with this event, which is what would normally concern operators of interplanetary spacecraft since the particles can trip computer electronics on board. A second CME began at 6:54 a.m. EDT on March 13, 2013 and its flank may pass by Earth at a speed that does not typically have a significant impact at Earth.
PASADENA, Calif.—Galaxies have been experiencing vigorous bursts of star formation from much earlier in cosmic history than previously thought, according to new observations by a Caltech-led team.
These so-called starburst galaxies produce stars at a prodigious rate—creating the equivalent of a thousand new suns per year. Now the astronomers have found starbursts that were churning out stars when the universe was just a billion years old. Previously, astronomers didn't know whether galaxies could form stars at such high rates so early in time.
The most intense bursts of star birth are thought to have occurred in the early Universe, in massive, bright galaxies. These starburst galaxies convert vast reservoirs of cosmic gas and dust into new stars at a furious pace -- many hundreds of times faster than in stately spiral galaxies like our own galaxy, the Milky Way. By looking far into space, at galaxies so distant that their light has taken many billions of years to reach us, astronomers can observe this busy period in the Universe's youth.
Observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) show that the most vigorous bursts of star birth in the cosmos took place much earlier than previously thought. The results are published in a set of papers to appear in the journal Nature and in the Astrophysical Journal. The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today.
Pasadena, CA — Using information gathered from several telescopes, a team of astronomers, including Carnegie's Eric Murphy, searched the sky for very rarely seen dusty starburst galaxies, formed soon after the Big Bang. These galaxies are characterized by an unusually high rate of star formation. They are much more abundant in the early Universe than previously thought. Two of those identified are among the oldest ever found, indicating that these dusty starbursts likely evolve into the most massive galaxies ever observed in the local Universe.
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope have discovered starburst galaxies earlier in the Universe's history than they were previously thought to have existed. These newly discovered galaxies represent what today's most massive galaxies looked like in their energetic, star-forming youth. The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today.
Some of the brightest galaxies in the universe – infant galaxies that churned out tens of thousands of stars each year at the dawn of the universe – evolved much sooner and in greater numbers than previously thought, according to new measurements obtained by University of Arizona astronomers.
When a batch of bright cosmic objects first appeared in maps in 2008 made with data from the South Pole Telescope, astronomers at the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics regarded it only as an unavoidable nuisance.
The immune system's T cells, while coordinating responses to diseases and vaccines, act like honey bees sharing information about the best honey sources, according to a new study by scientists at UC San Francisco.
"In the morning, each bee goes looking individually for a sugar source, then comes back to the hive and does a dance in front of the other bees describing the location of what it's found, which helps the hive decide collectively where the best source is," said senior scientist Matthew Krummel, PhD, a UCSF professor of pathology.
A joint expedition of scientists led by Chapurukha M. Kusimba of The Field Museum and Sloan R. Williams of the University of Illinois at Chicago has unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese coin on the Kenyan island of Manda that shows trade existed between China and east Africa decades before European explorers set sail and changed the map of the world.
We say that time flies, it marches on, it flows like a river — our descriptions of time are closely linked to our experiences of moving through space. Now, new research suggests that the illusions that influence how we perceive movement through space also influence our perception of time. The findings provide evidence that our experiences of space and time have even more in common than previously thought.
When, how and why modern humans first stood up and walked on two legs is considered to be one of the greatest missing links in our evolutionary history. Scientists have gone to the far ends of the earth – and the wonderful creatures in it - to look for answers to why we walk the way we walk.
In the latest such search, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (South Africa) have taken a closer look at bipedal kangaroos and wallabies and how they move compared to their cousin-marsupials, such as the quadrupedal Tasmanian wolf.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating stronger, lightweight magnesium alloys that have potential structural applications in the automobile and aerospace industries.
Engineers constantly seek strong, lightweight materials for use in cars and planes to improve fuel efficiency. Their goal is to develop structural materials with a high "specific strength," which is defined as a material's strength divided by its density. In other words, specific strength measures how much load it can carry per unit of weight.
PASADENA, Calif.—Thanks to a new high-tech gadget, astronomers have observed four planets orbiting a star relatively close to the sun in unprecedented detail, revealing the roughly ten-Jupiter-mass planets to be among the most exotic ones known.
The team, which includes several researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), describes its findings in a paper accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal.