Bytes From All Over The Globe

Milky Way's Black Hole Davouring Asteroids

2012-02-09T13:22:00.001+05:30

The giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be vaporizing and devouring asteroids, which could explain the frequent flares observed, according to astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

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Surface of Mars an Unlikely Place for Life After 600-Million-Year Drought, Say Scientists

2012-02-07T12:40:00.001+05:30

Mars may have been arid for more than 600 million years, making it too hostile for any life to survive on the planet's surface, according to researchers who have been carrying out the painstaking task of analysing individual particles of Martian soil. Dr Tom Pike, from Imperial College London, will discuss the team's analysis at a European Space Agency (ESA) meeting on 7 February 2012.

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Revisiting the 'Pillars of Creation'

2012-01-24T11:39:00.000+05:30

In 1995, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took an iconic image of the Eagle nebula, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation," highlighting its finger-like pillars where new stars are thought to be forming. Now, the Herschel Space Observatory has a new, expansive view of the region captured in longer-wavelength infrared light.

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Ancient Popcorn Discovered in Peru

2012-01-19T12:36:00.001+05:30

People living along the coast of Peru were eating popcorn 1,000 years earlier than previously reported and before ceramic pottery was used there, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences co-authored by Dolores Piperno, curator of New World archaeology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and emeritus staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

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Pink Core of Omega Nebula:Image Captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT)

2012-01-05T12:36:00.001+05:30

A new image of the Omega Nebula, captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), is one of the sharpest of this object ever taken from the ground. It shows the dusty, rose-coloured central parts of this famous stellar nursery and reveals extraordinary detail in the cosmic landscape of gas clouds, dust and newborn stars.

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Debris of Pacific Ocean, Possibly Heading to US

2012-01-02T01:10:00.001+05:30

ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2011) — Debris from the tsunami that devastated Japan in March could reach the United States as early as this winter, according to predictions by NOAA scientists. However, they warn there is still a large amount of uncertainty over exactly what is still floating, where it's located, where it will go, and when it will arrive. Responders now have a challenging, if not impossible situation on their hands: How do you deal with debris that could now impact U.S. shores, but is difficult to find.

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Canada to formally withdraw from Kyoto accord

2011-12-13T13:59:00.001+05:30

Canada will formally withdraw from the Kyoto accord on climate change, Environment Minister Peter Kent said.
Kent made the announcement in the foyer of the House of Commons, after his return from an international summit in Durban, South Africa, on the issue of global warming.

Canada to formally withdraw from Kyoto accord

Landsat Satellites Track Yellowstone's Geothermal Activity

2011-12-11T09:16:00.001+05:30

Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a vast, ancient, and still active volcano. Heat pours off its underground magma chamber, and is the fuel for Yellowstone's famous features -- more than 10,000 hot springs, mud pots, terraces and geysers, including Old Faithful.But expected development by energy companies right outside Yellowstone's borders have some fearing that Old Faithful could be cheated out of its energy.

The park funded a study by Lawrence and his co-author Shannon Savage to apply a new perspective to the problem of tracking geothermal activity. Their work is being presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on December 9. Lawrence and Savage used both visible light and heat-sensitive Landsat data channels to get a broad view of the park's geothermal activity....

Whales win, walruses lose in warmer Arctic

2011-12-02T23:33:00.001+05:30

The Arctic zone has moved into a warmer, greener "new normal" phase, which means less habitat for polar bears and more access for development, an international scientific team reported.Arctic air temperatures were higher - about 2.5 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) higher in 2011 than the baseline number for the previous 30 years - and there was a dramatic loss of sea ice and glacier mass, the scientists said in a telephone briefing.

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Walnut Trees May Not Be Able to Withstand Climate Change

2011-12-01T11:13:00.001+05:30

Warmer, drier summers and extreme weather events considered possible as the climate changes would be especially troublesome -- possibly fatal -- for walnut trees, according to research at Purdue University.

A Clean Energy Resource Too Large to be Ignored

2011-11-30T11:46:00.001+05:30

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London Bridge Will Soon Be All Lit Up With LEDs!

2011-11-20T16:05:00.001+05:30

It was over 25 years ago that the London Bridge lighting system, used to illuminate the landmark at night, was last upgraded. But GE and its UK partner EDF Energy recently received a formal approval to retrofit the 800-foot bridge with new energy efficient LED technology and a cabling system that will bring it into the 21st century with style.

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Galaxies learned to "go green" early in the history of the universe

2011-11-18T10:27:00.001+05:30

Galaxies learned to "go green" early in the history of the universe, continuously recycling immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements to build successive generations of stars stretching over billions of years.This ongoing recycling keeps galaxies from emptying their "fuel tanks" and therefore stretches out their star-forming epoch to over 10 billion years. However, galaxies that ignite a rapid firestorm of star birth can blow away their remaining fuel, essentially turning off further star-birth activity....

Three New Planets and a Mystery Object Discovered Outside Our Solar System

2011-10-28T11:18:00.004+05:30

Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by a Penn State University astronomer.

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NASA Telescopes Help Solve Ancient Supernova Mystery

2011-10-25T21:23:00.002+05:30

A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.

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Astronomers Find Elusive Planets in Decade-Old Hubble Data

2011-10-09T00:04:00.002+05:30

In a painstaking re-analysis of Hubble Space Telescope images from 1998, astronomers have found visual evidence for two extrasolar planets that went undetected back then.

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Agriculture Can Adapt to Climate Change

2011-10-08T01:19:00.003+05:30

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Scientists to develop deep ocean seismic network

2011-10-08T00:42:00.001+05:30

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NASA's UARS Re-Enters Earth's Atmosphere

2011-09-25T10:17:00.001+05:30

NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23 and 1:09 a.m. Sept. 24, 20 years and nine days after its launch on a 14-year mission that produced some of the first long-term records of chemicals in the atmosphere.

The precise re-entry time and location of debris impacts have not been determined. During the re-entry period, the satellite passed from the east coast of Africa over the Indian Ocean, then the Pacific Ocean, then across northern Canada, then across the northern Atlantic Ocean, to a point over West Africa. The vast majority of the orbital transit was over water, with some flight over northern Canada and West Africa.

Six years after the end of its productive scientific life, UARS broke into pieces during re-entry, and most of it up burned in the atmosphere. Data indicates the satellite likely broke apart and landed in the Pacific Ocean far off the U.S. coast. Twenty-six satellite components, weighing a total of about 1,200 pounds, could have survived the fiery re-entry and reach the surface of Earth. However, NASA is not aware of any reports of injury or property damage.

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Gold Comes From Meteorites

2011-09-10T09:07:00.001+05:30

Ultra high precision analyses of some of the oldest rock samples on Earth by researchers at the University of Bristol provides clear evidence that the planet's accessible reserves of precious metals are the result of a bombardment of meteorites more than 200 million years after Earth was formed.

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Don't rebuild communities in landslide-stricken areas

2011-08-13T22:43:00.001+05:30

This advice comes from Dr. Beatriz Cuevas-Jadina of the Visayas State University (VSU) in Baybay City, Leyte, who has been studying high-risk landslide areas in Leyte.
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Arctic Ocean will have an ice-free summer byr 2100

2011-08-12T08:51:00.000+05:30

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had released its most recent report in 2007. It forecasts that the Arctic Ocean will have an ice-free summer by the year 2100. However, that finding has been contradicted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They say the Arctic summer will be ice-free several decades earlier, within many people’s lifetimes.
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Solar storms to hit Earth

2011-08-07T18:10:00.003+05:30

Three large explosions from the Sun over the past few days have prompted U.S. government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days.
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Sugar Doesn't Melt -- It Decomposes, Scientists Demonstrate

2011-08-02T11:35:00.001+05:30

Flying in the face of years of scientific belief, University of Illinois researchers have demonstrated that sugar doesn't melt, it decomposes.
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Mount Rainier Has Lost One-Seventh of Its Ice and Snow

2011-07-20T21:00:00.000+05:30

About 14% of the ice and permanent snow atop Washington's Mount Rainier melted in the last 4 decades, a new study suggests. Researchers arrived at that figure by comparing the estimated thicknesses and extents of ice seen in a 1970 aerial survey with those measured by an airborne laser altimeter in 2007 and 2008. All but two of the 28 glaciers and snowfields have thinned and shortened at their lower edges, and the exceptions likely thickened only because large amounts of rock fell upon the ice in recent years and insulated it from warming temperatures. Overall, the volcanic peak lost about 0.65 cubic kilometers of ice—enough to cover the entire state of Rhode Island to a depth of 20 centimeters—during the 38-year interval between surveys, the researchers report online inGeology. Prior to the ongoing meltback, Mount Rainier's ice and snow coverage expanded from the late 1950s to around 1980 during a wetter-than-normal phase of a multi-decadal climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. These recent trends indicate that Mount Rainier's glaciers are very sensitive to warming and could grow again with modest changes in temperature or precipitation, the scientists say.
source:Science Shots