Heavens

May 12, 2016 - A team of National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported researchers at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) discovered new evidence about how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with solar wind, almost as soon as they finished installing six data-collection stations across East Antarctic Plateau last January.

During the Antarctic summer of 2013-2014, a team of researchers released a series of translucent scientific balloons, one by one. The miniature membranous balloons - part of the Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses, or BARREL, campaign - floated above the icy terrain for several weeks each, diligently documenting the rain of electrons falling into the atmosphere from Earth's magnetic field.

URBANA, Ill. - Research shows that spending just 20 minutes in nature can promote health and well-being. Although the assumption may be that living in rural areas provides ample opportunities for recreation in nature, many rural, low-income mothers, who rely on outdoor activities to promote health and well-being for themselves and their families, face obstacles in accessing publicly available outdoor recreation resources.

Satellites provide data daily on our own planet, our sun and the universe around us. The instruments on these spacecraft are constantly bombarded with solar particles and intense light, not to mention the normal wear and tear from operating in space.

If it were a car that's a few years old, you would take it to the mechanic for a tune-up to make sure it continues running smoothly. However, with a spacecraft it's not that easy. Thus, scientists may turn to calibration flights to make sure the instruments are kept up to snuff and providing validated data.

The origin of many of the most precious elements on the periodic table, such as gold, silver and platinum, has perplexed scientists for more than six decades. Now a recent study has an answer, evocatively conveyed in the faint starlight from a distant dwarf galaxy.

In a roundtable discussion, published today, The Kavli Foundation spoke to two of the researchers behind the discovery about why the source of these heavy elements, collectively called "r-process" elements, has been so hard to crack.

An international team of astronomers have found evidence of ice and comets orbiting a nearby sun-like star, which could give a glimpse into how our own solar system developed.

Using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, detected very low levels of carbon monoxide gas around the star, in amounts that are consistent with the comets in our own solar system.

Some supernovae have a reserve tank of radioactive fuel that cuts in and powers their explosions for three times longer than astronomers had previously thought.

A team of astronomers jointly led by Dr Ivo Seitenzahl from The Australian National University (ANU) detected the faint afterglow of a supernova, and found it was powered by radioactive cobalt-57.

The discovery gives important new clues about the causes of Type Ia supernovae, which astronomers use to measure vast distances across the Universe.