Washington, DC-- Brown dwarfs are smaller than stars, but more massive than giant planets. As such, they provide a natural link between astronomy and planetary science. However, they also show incredible variation when it comes to size, temperature, chemistry, and more, which makes them difficult to understand, too.
Heavens
DURHAM, N.C. -- Future climate warming will likely cause only minor cuts in energy output at most U.S. coal- or gas-fired power plants, a new Duke University study finds.
The study -- the first of its kind based on real-world data -- rebuts recent modeling-based studies that warn rising temperatures will significantly lower the efficiency of power plants' cooling systems, thereby reducing plants' energy output. Those studies estimated that plant efficiencies could drop by as much as 1.3 percent for each 1 degree Celsius of climate warming.
Our planet is nestled in the center of two immense, concentric doughnuts of powerful radiation: the Van Allen radiation belts, which harbor swarms of charged particles that are trapped by Earth's magnetic field. On March 17, 2015, an interplanetary shock - a shockwave created by the driving force of a coronal mass ejection, or CME, from the sun - struck Earth's magnetic field, called the magnetosphere, triggering the greatest geomagnetic storm of the preceding decade. And NASA's Van Allen Probes were there to watch the effects on the radiation belts.
NASA's Terra satellite flew over Tropical Storm Chanthu as it continued moving past the big island of Japan and staying to the east of the country.
On August 15 at 11:00 a.m. EDT (15:00 UTC) the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) indicated that Chanthu was located about 424 nautical miles south-southeast of Yokosuka, Japan, near 29.6 degrees north latitude and 143.3 degrees east longitude. Chanthu was moving to the north-northwest. Maximum sustained winds were near 46 mph (40 knots/74 kph). Slight intensification is forecast.
Record-setting rainfall and flooding in southern Louisiana have been calculated at NASA with data from satellites.
An extremely severe rainfall event hit the states of Louisiana and southern Mississippi when a very slow moving low pressure system continuously pulled tropical moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.
A botany researcher at New Zealand's University of Otago and colleagues have developed a new system to map the world's "biomes"-- large-scale vegetation formations -- that will provide an objective method for monitoring how vegetation reacts as climate changes.
The system uses satellite observations of the timing and intensity of vegetation activity and how this relates to temperature and soil moisture to classify the world's vegetation into 24 biome types.
Internet users tend to navigate between websites in a racially segregated way, despite pathways that provide equitable access to different sites, finds a new study by NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The findings are published online in the journal Information, Communication, and Society.
Discussions about racial inequality on the web have been going on for decades, but few studies have attempted to demonstrate whether and how systemic racial inequality might form on the web.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have combined X-ray diffraction and vibrational spectroscopy measurements together with first-principle calculations to examine the high-pressure structural behavior of magnesium chloride.
Dark matter, the mysterious substance that constitutes most of the material universe, remains as elusive as ever. Although experiments on the ground and in space have yet to find a trace of dark matter, the results are helping scientists rule out some of the many theoretical possibilities. Three studies published earlier this year, using six or more years of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, have broadened the mission's dark matter hunt using some novel approaches.
The low pressure center that has been gyrating over the northeastern Gulf of Mexico for days has now dropped very heavy precipitation over southeastern Louisiana. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission, or GPM, core satellite gathered rainfall data on the system and looked at it in three dimensions.
Lie on the beach this summer and your body will be bombarded by about sextillion photons of light per second.
Most of these photons, or small packets of energy, originate from the Sun but a very small fraction have travelled across the Universe for billions of years before ending their existence when they collide with your skin.
In a new study to be published in the Astrophysical Journal on August 12th, astronomers have accurately measured the light hitting the Earth from outside our galaxy over a very broad wavelength range.
Combining virtual reality and treadmill training helps prevent falls in older adults better than treadmill training alone, according to a new randomised controlled trial published in The Lancet. The authors say that the intervention, which combines the physical and cognitive aspects of walking, could potentially be used in gyms, rehabilitation centres or nursing homes to improve safe walking and prevent falls in older adults or people with disorders which affect movement such as Parkinson's disease.
COLUMBUS, Ohio--Researchers who are looking for new ways to probe the nature of gravity and dark energy in the universe have adopted a new strategy: looking at what's not there.
In a paper to appear in upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, the international team of astronomers reports that they were able to achieve four times better precision in measurements of how the universe's visible matter is clustered together by studying the empty spaces in between.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered two tiny dwarf galaxies that have wandered from a vast cosmic wilderness into a nearby "big city" packed with galaxies. After being quiescent for billions of years, they are ready to party by starting a firestorm of star birth.
NASA's RapidScat instrument provided measurements of sustained wind speeds as Tropical Storm Conson continued tracking north through the northwestern Pacific Ocean.
When RapidScat passed over Conson on Aug. 10, it was near peak intensity. RapidScat measured maximum sustained winds around the center of circulation as fast as 49 mph (22 meters per second/79 kph) on Aug. 10. The RapidScat instrument that flies aboard the International Space Station measures Earth's ocean surface wind speed and direction over open waters.