CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers have largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years – they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused by predictable changes in Earth's rotation and axis.
Heavens
"It is really surprising how closely Titan's surface resembles Earth's," says Rosaly Lopes, a planetary geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, who is presenting the results on Friday, 7 August. "In fact, Titan looks more like the Earth than any other body in the Solar System, despite the huge differences in temperature and other environmental conditions."
Felicia is the storm that rules the Eastern Pacific Ocean this week, but Enrique refuses to give up. Felicia is a major hurricane with sustained winds near 140 mph, and Enrique is still hanging onto tropical storm status with 50 mph sustained winds. Both cyclones are close to each other and NASA satellites captured them together.
DURHAM, N.C. – Scientists have identified a genomic "signature" in circulating blood that reveals exposure to common upper respiratory viruses, like the cold or flu, even before symptoms appear.
The tell-tale viral signature reflects a set of subtle but robust changes in genes that are activated as the body responds to infection. The signal from the signature is strong enough in symptomatic individuals to clearly reveal whether their infection is viral or bacterial. It can also discriminate between who has a viral infection and who does not - all from a single tube of blood.
New Haven, Conn.—A team of astronomers has measured the motions of stars in a very distant galaxy for the first time and discovered they are whizzing around at astonishingly high speeds—about one million miles per hour, or twice the speed at which the Sun circles our own Milky Way galaxy. The finding offers new insights into how these early galaxies may have evolved into the more familiar ones we see in the nearby universe.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken its first shots of the cosmos since starting its second career. The infrared telescope ran out of coolant on May 15, 2009, more than five-and-half-years after launch, and has since warmed to a still-frosty 30 Kelvin (about -406 Fahrenheit).
New images taken with two of Spitzer's infrared detector channels demonstrate that the observatory remains a powerful tool for probing the dusty universe. The images show a bustling star-forming region, the pretty remains of a star like the sun, and a swirling galaxy lined with stars.
A new image, showing a very rich field of stars towards the Carina arm of the Milky Way, is centered on the star HD 87643, a member of the exotic class of B[e] stars. It is part of a set of observations that provide astronomers with the best ever picture of a B[e] star.
Named the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS), the satellite will be the first to systematically measure the polarization of cosmic X-ray sources. It is a new astrophysics mission led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
NASA satellites do some really cool things, like take a sideways look at a slice of a tropical depression. That's what CloudSat did with Lana in the Central Pacific.
As Lana passed south of the Hawaiian Islands this past weekend, its maximum sustained winds peaked around 65 knots (74 mph), making it a Category One hurricane for a brief period before it ran into adverse atmospheric conditions that weakened the storm quickly.
New University of Washington research indicates it is highly unlikely that comets have caused any mass extinctions or have been responsible for more than one minor extinction event. The work also shows that many long-period comets that end up in Earth-crossing orbits likely originate from a region astronomers have long believed could not produce observable comets. A long-period comet takes from 200 years to tens of millions of years to make a single orbit of the sun.
The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply. Argues Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
A new study investigated the effectiveness of S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) in the prevention and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or primary liver cancer. SAMe, a widely available nutritional supplement, with little known side effects, was found to be effective in preventing the formation of HCC in rats. However, high enough levels of SAMe were not attainable to successfully treat established HCC.
A study published this week in the journal Nature offers an explanation for the origin of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. The research may settle an outstanding puzzle in understanding galaxy formation.
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies are small and very faint, containing few stars relative to their total mass. They appear to be made mostly of dark matter - a mysterious substance detectable only by its gravitational influence, which outweighs normal matter by a factor of five to one in the universe as a whole.
The masterpieces that spring from the talents of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and other artists often begin with the creation of a gradient of colors on a palette. In a similar manner, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created an innovative device called the "microfluidic palette" to produce multiple, steady-state chemical gradients—gradual changes in concentration across an area—in a miniature chamber about the diameter of a pinhead.
Betelgeuse — the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) — is a red supergiant, one of the biggest stars known, and almost 1000 times larger than our Sun [1]. It is also one of the most luminous stars known, emitting more light than 100 000 Suns. Such extreme properties foretell the demise of a short-lived stellar king. With an age of only a few million years, Betelgeuse is already nearing the end of its life and is soon doomed to explode as a supernova. When it does, the supernova should be seen easily from Earth, even in broad daylight.