[Updates] Space & Earth news - Universe's not-so-missing mass & 25 new Items...
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Space & Earth news
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 27 Commander Dmitry Kondratyev and Flight Engineers Paolo Nespoli and Cady Coleman in a remote area southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, May 24, 2011.
Researchers have begun a project to create the first global tool to forecast how changes in wave patterns and rising sea levels will affect Australian beach erosion.
Singapore's first locally-built micro-satellite in space, X-SAT, has started to transmit images back to Singapore.
(AP) -- In an unprecedented cosmic photo shoot Monday, a departing spaceship snapped close-up glamour pictures of the space shuttle Endeavour attached to the International Space Station.
Airlines halted dozens of flights on Tuesday after a plume of ash from an erupting volcano in Iceland blew over Britain, even forcing US President Barack Obama to revise his travel plans.
A Soyuz capsule brought back Italian, Russian and American astronauts from the International Space Station on Tuesday, with two of the space-suit clad crew phoning home from the Kazakh steppe.
A new and uniquely powerful tool for cutting-edge science is emerging on the crisp, high desert of western New Mexico. Outwardly, it looks much the same as the famed Very Large Array (VLA), a radio telescope that has spent more than three decades on the frontiers of astronomical research. The 27 white, 230-ton dish antennas still peer skyward, the 72 miles of railroad track still wait to transport the antennas across the arid plains, the familiar buildings remain, and crews still fan out across the desert to service the antennas.
"Rainy days and Mondays" is the song that the residents of the northern Philippines do not want to hear if it involves the approaching Tropical Storm Songda. The Carpenters song was a hit, but a hit from Songda is making residents of the Philippines nervous as NASA's Aqua satellite has been watching the progression and intensification of the storm over the last several days.
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's twin lunar probes have arrived in Florida to begin final preparations for a launch in late summer. The two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory spacecraft (Grail) were shipped from Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, to the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., Friday, May 20. NASA's dynamic duo will orbit the moon to determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon.
(PhysOrg.com) -- As Iceland's Grímsvötn volcano spews ash high into the atmosphere, satellite observations are providing essential information to advisory centres assessing the possible hazards to aviation.
Rice University will send an experiment to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year. If all goes perfectly, it will be precisely the same when it returns two years later.
Researchers at the University of Warwick have found a unique feuding double white dwarf star system where each star appears to have been stripped down to just its helium.
(AP) -- Weather experts said it's unusual for deadly tornadoes to develop a few weeks apart in the U.S. But what made the two storm systems that barreled through a Missouri city and the South within the last month so rare is that tornadoes took direct aim at populated areas.
A new study aimed at refining the way scientists measure ice loss in Greenland is providing a "high-definition picture" of climate-caused changes on the island.
A report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and The University of Texas at Austin urges the U.S. to accelerate efforts to pursue carbon capture and storage (CCS) in combination with enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a practice that could increase domestic oil production while significantly curbing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Currently, astronomers have two competing models for planetary formation. In one, the planets form in a single, monolithic collapse. In the second, the core forms first and then slowly accretes gas and dust. However, in both situations, the process must be complete before the radiation pressure from the star blows away the gas and dust. While this much is certain, the exact time frames have remained another matter of debate. It is expected that this amount should be somewhere in the millions of years, but low end estimates place it at only a few million, whereas upper limits have been around 10 million. A new paper explores IC 348, a 2-3 million year old cluster with many protostars with dense disks to determine just how much mass is left to be made into planets.
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has its sights set on asteroid exploration, which is just as tricky as it sounds. An asteroid has little gravitational force, which rules out walking on one. Anchoring to the surface is a solution, but because an asteroid comprises so many different materials even that is a challenge.
US astronauts on Tuesday will try out a new set of exercises to prepare them for the change in pressure they encounter on their spacewalk outside the International Space Station, NASA said.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A Monash student has made a breakthrough in the field of astrophysics, discovering what has until now been described as the Universe's 'missing mass'. Amelia Fraser-McKelvie, working within a team at the Monash School of Physics, conducted a targeted X-ray search for the matter and within just three months found it – or at least some of it.
The magnitude 9 earthquake and resulting tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 were like a one-two punch – first violently shaking, then swamping the islands – causing tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Now Stanford researchers have discovered the catastrophe was caused by a sequence of unusual geologic events never before seen so clearly.
(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler spacecraft is proving itself to be a prolific planet hunter. Within just the first four months of data, astronomers have found evidence for more than 1,200 planetary candidates. Of those, 408 reside in systems containing two or more planets, and most of those look very different than our solar system.
(PhysOrg.com) -- For many movie stars, their age is a well-kept secret. In space, the same is true of the actual stars. Like our Sun, most stars look almost the same for most of their lives. So how can we tell if a star is one billion or 10 billion years old? Astronomers may have found a solution - measuring the star's spin.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A local supernova factory has recently started production, according to a wealth of new data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory on the Carina Nebula. This discovery may help astronomers better understand how some of the Galaxy's heaviest and youngest stars race through their lives and release newly-forged elements into their surroundings.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, seeps naturally from the seafloor in many places around the planet, including in the Gulf of Mexico.
NASA said Tuesday that a new spacecraft to ferry humans into deep space will be based on designs for the Orion crew exploration vehicle and built by Lockheed Martin.
Spirit, the scrappy robot geologist that captivated the world with its antics on Mars before getting stuck in a sand trap, is about to meet its end after six productive years.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
