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All space missions have one inescapable dependency: the electricity flowing through their systems to keep them alive. Take away its power and a spacecraft is nothing more than space debris – an eventuality the space power professionals strive to avoid.
(PhysOrg.com) -- After 12 missions to the International Space Station, the space shuttle Endeavour has returned to Earth. This mission’s conclusion is bittersweet for Texas Tech University graduate Joel Tumbiolo.
A pioneering project to drill deep under the heart of Newcastle in search of geothermal energy is about to enter its final phase.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Natural carbon dioxide (CO2) seeps in Papua New Guinea have given scientists rare insights into what tropical coral reefs could look like if human-induced atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise unabated. At present rates of increase, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts atmospheric CO2 levels of about 750ppm or more by 2100.
The same precision farming techniques that work with crops can work with manure management on cattle feedlots, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.
Humans have been building reservoirs and dams for thousands of years. Over the past few decades, their construction has spiked as our need to harness water – critical in flood control, irrigation, recreation, navigation and the creation of hydroelectric power – has grown. And while dams and reservoirs have important benefits, they can also be disruptive and costly to both humans and the environment.
The Canadian Arctic. The Amazonian jungle. The fringes of an African rainforest.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution leads expedition to measure radioactive contaminants in Pacific
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will lead the first international, multidisciplinary assessment of the levels and dispersion of radioactive substances in the Pacific Ocean off the Fukushima nuclear power plant—a research effort funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
(AP) -- The final crew of the space shuttle Endeavour has arrived home in Houston to a cheering crowd of hundreds of co-workers and families.
It is now known that most, if not all, of the stars in our Galaxy were born in star clusters. These spherical groupings contain anywhere from a few tens to several million members all milling about under the influence of gravity. But their fate is sealed. All star clusters slowly dissolve over time. "The net effect of this is that their stars eventually become redistributed throughout the Galaxy," said Nathan Leigh, a PhD student at McMaster University and lead author for a study being presented this week at the CASCA 2011 meeting in Ontario, Canada. "This is how we think most of the stars in the Milky Way came to be found in their currently observed locations."
The Draconid meteor shower is expected to produce unusually high peak meteor rates of 1,000 per hour on October 8, 2011.
And now there is only one. With Wednesday's landing of Endeavour, just one more space shuttle flight remains, putting an end to 30 years of Florida shuttle launches and more than 535 million miles of orbits controlled at Houston's Johnson Space Center. Now a sense of melancholy has permeated the community that calls itself "the space shuttle family."
(PhysOrg.com) -- A space flight by millions of microscopic worms could help us overcome the numerous threats posed to human health by space travel. The Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) have also given experts an insight into how to block muscle degradation in the sick and elderly.
New technologies can improve agricultural sustainability in developing countries, but only with the engagement of local farmers and the social and economic networks they depend on, say Stanford University researchers. Their findings are published in the May 23 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
An international team led by astronomers at ASTRON and the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen have used the LOFAR telescope, designed and constructed by ASTRON, to make the deepest wide-field images of the sky in the relatively unexplored part of the spectrum around 150 MHz. It reveals faint radio sources never seen before.
A Spanish research team, using 3D reflection seismology, has for the first time mapped the geomorphological features of the Ebro river basin between five and six million years ago. The images obtained show that the surface analysed is today 2.5 or 3 kilometres below the sea bed.
Using a model organism isolated from a uranium seep of the Columbia River, scientists recently quantified how extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) in subsurface environments can be used to immobilize heavy metal and radionuclide contaminants such as uranium [U(VI)].
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists will tell you that the romantic idea is factually true: we are made of the same stuff as stars. In fact, all chemical elements heavier than helium are made in the stars, and research into how the universe became enriched in these “metals” is the focus of much current research in astronomy. Astronomers tend to call these elements “metals,” though many are not metals in the usual sense.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Detectors in the US, Germany and Italy are lying in wait to gather evidence that would unveil one of Albert Einstein’s last secrets: gravitational waves. Up to now, it has not been possible to detect these ripples in the curvature of space-time directly. However, if the available detectors were to be distributed differently across the globe, the chance of detecting the gravitational waves would increase more than twofold. This is the conclusion reached in a new study by Bernard F. Schutz, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Golm. A further improvement in the detection process could also be achieved through the construction of additional gravitational wave observatories.
A new study concludes that models may be predicting releases of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are either too high or too low, depending on the region, because they don't adequately reflect variable temperatures that can affect the amount of carbon released from soil.
(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of astronomers has ruled out transits of a water-rich or hydrogen-helium atmosphere planet for Gliese 581e. The host star itself is relatively quiet which means good news for the potential habitability of at least one of its planets.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
