BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A faint blue galaxy about 30 million light-years from Earth and located in the constellation Leo Minor could shed new light on conditions at the birth of the universe.
Astronomers at Indiana University recently found that a galaxy nicknamed Leoncino, or "little lion," contains the lowest level of heavy chemical elements, or "metals," ever observed in a gravitationally bound system of stars.
This sequence of images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows Comet 252P/LINEAR as it passed by Earth. The visit was one of the closest encounters between a comet and our planet.
The images were taken on April 4, 2016, roughly two weeks after the icy visitor made its closest approach to Earth on March 21. The comet traveled within 3.3 million miles of Earth, or about 14 times the distance between our planet and the moon. These observations also represent the closest celestial object Hubble has observed, other than the moon.
Like sending sensors up into a hurricane, NASA has flown four spacecraft through an invisible maelstrom in space, called magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection is one of the prime drivers of space radiation and so it is a key factor in the quest to learn more about our space environment and protect our spacecraft and astronauts as we explore farther and farther from our home planet.
From our vantage point on the ground, the sun seems like a still ball of light, but in reality, it teems with activity. Eruptions called solar flares and coronal mass ejections explode in the sun's hot atmosphere, the corona, sending light and high energy particles out into space. The corona is also constantly releasing a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind.
But this isn't the kind of wind you can fly a kite in.
The four planets of the Kepler-223 star system seem to have little in common with the planets of Earth's own solar system. And yet a new study shows that the Kepler-223 system is trapped in an orbital configuration that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune may have broken from in the early history of the solar system.
An international team led by Japanese researchers has made a 3D map of 3000 galaxies 13 billion light years from Earth, and found that Einstein's general theory of relativity is still valid.
Since it was discovered in the late 1990s that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, scientists have been trying to explain why. The mysterious dark energy could be driving acceleration, or Einstein's theory of general relativity, which says gravity warps space and time, could be breaking down.
In 2015, the website Reliefweb.int, which is a service provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, provided this information about the drought in the Caribbean (which includes Haiti and the Domnican Republic):
"In Haiti, about 200,000 families (1 million people) have been affected by drought conditions since the beginning of 2015, especially in Sud-Est, Nord-Ouest and Artibonite regions. These prolonged conditions are aggravating the situation of 3.8 million food-insecure people in the country. (ACAPS, 21 Jul 2015)
A clinical trial of same-day initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV patients in South Africa led to a higher proportion of people starting treatment and to better health outcomes, according to a new study led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher.
COLUMBIA, Mo. - The state of Missouri is a pioneer in adopting Diverging Diamond Interchanges (DDIs) named for their innovative design. At these interchanges drivers are diverted to the left side of the road prior to merging onto an interstate, freeway or highway. The first such interchange in the U.S. opened in Springfield, Mo. in 2009. Recent studies from the University of Missouri have found that these unusual designs are safer and save lives.
HANOVER, N.H. - Health advertorials, or advertisements camouflaged as credible news, succeed in misleading people, in part, by tamping down their skepticism and expectations for truth in advertising, a Dartmouth College-Stanford University study finds.
When the banks of a marsh channel accumulate sediment at a faster rate than relative sea level rise, it may seem like the marsh is resilient. However, a new study published in Geology proposes a new framework to look at sediment fluxes in marsh channels that takes into account the natural process of sediment recycling. Understanding how sediments are transported within salt marshes is critical to predict the effect that processes such as nutrient loading, sea-level rise and sediment supply have on marsh erosion.
Scientists from Princeton University and NASA have confirmed that 1,284 objects observed outside Earth's solar system by NASA's Kepler spacecraft are indeed planets. Reported in The Astrophysical Journal on May 10, it is the largest single announcement of new planets to date and more than doubles the number of confirmed planets discovered by Kepler so far to more than 2,300.
ATHENS, GA - Controlled environment agriculture is rapidly becoming an important part of the global food system. For example, there has been much interest in the potential of large-scale, indoor agricultural production - often referred to as vertical farming - as a means to produce high quantities of produce. These "plant factories" are expensive to operate, however, in part because of the large power requirements of electric lamps that provide the type and amount of light necessary for photosynthesis in plants.
Irvine, Calif., May 9, 2016 - Earth system scientists from the University of California, Irvine have taken water samples from the north Pacific, north and south Atlantic, and Arctic oceans in search of repositories of black carbon, soot from burning biomass and diesel engines, among other sources. They've found considerably less of the material than expected, and they've discovered that it exists in at least two varieties, a younger pool closer to the ocean's surface that is absorbed into the environment in a roughly 100-year cycle and an ancient reserve that remains stable for millennia.
Sorry, E.T. lovers, but the results of a new study make it far less likely that KIC 8462852, popularly known as Tabby's star, is the home of industrious aliens who are gradually enclosing it in a vast shell called a Dyson sphere.