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(PhysOrg.com) -- In the 1950s, biochemist Stanley Miller performed a series of experiments to demonstrate that organic compounds could be created under conditions mimicking the primordial Earth.
April and May were the wettest on record for nine cities in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, reports climatologist Jessica Rennels of Cornell's Northeast Regional Climate Center.
Exploding stars are the 'factories' that produce all the heavy elements found, among other places, in our bodies. In this sense, we are all stardust. These exploding stars – supernovae – are highly energetic events that can occasionally light up the night sky. Such an explosion generally involves disruption in the balance between gravity – which pulls the star's material inward – and the thermonuclear reaction at the star's core – which heats it and pushes it outward.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Space and time are inextricably linked, which is why astrophysicists speak of them in the same breath.
The NASA Astrobiology Science & Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) program has announced a set of new projects to develop and test technologies that will enable the astrobiological exploration of the Solar System. The ASTEP program advances the search for life on other planets by supporting research and exploration of some of Earth's most remote and extreme places.
(AP) -- A volcano in the Caulle Cordon of southern Chile erupted for a second day Sunday, shooting out pumice stones and pluming a cloud of ash six miles (10 kilometers) high and three miles (five kilometers) wide.
(AP) -- Cucumbers may be out of favor on earth, but a Japanese astronaut said Monday that he plans to harvest the vegetable on board the International Space Station.
(AP) -- An international mission will chart the saltiness of the ocean - from outer space.
The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists. The results will be published later this month in the journal Climatic Change.
The human impact on the environment, especially through the release of greenhouse gases, is an area of controversy in public understanding of climate change, and is important for predicting future changes. Many studies into our collective impact use climate models to understand the causes of observed climate changes, both globally and in specific regions. Writing in WIREs Climate Change, Professors Gabriele Hegerl from the University of Edinburgh and Francis Zwiers from the University of Victoria assess the role of climate models in studies of observed changes and the robustness of their results.
The six men in the Mars500 facility near Moscow have been in isolation now 365 days. The European crewmembers have been writing in their latest letters home about the highlights, monotonous life, team spirit and determination to go on.
There are a lot of things someone could do in nearly 900 hours.
Scientists have uncovered a landscape of deep fjords in Antarctica, carved by millions of years of ice movement.
Forests in many regions are becoming larger carbon sinks thanks to higher density, U.S. and European researchers say in a new report.
After rigorous validation for its positive impact on improving forecast accuracy, scientists at the NRL Marine Meteorology Division have transitioned the assimilation of GPS Radio Occultation (RO) data into the operational U.S. Navy Global Prediction System (NOGAPS). The assimilation of GPS RO reduces the NOGAPS upper-tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperature biases, introducing a complementary interaction with the radiance observations from other sensors being assimilated into the system.
(AP) -- Climate negotiators are exploring "constructive and creative" solutions so that wealthy countries keep trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even when binding commitments expire next year, the U.N. climate chief said Monday.
(AP) -- An erupting Chilean volcano sent a towering plume of ash across South America on Monday, forcing thousands from their homes, grounding airline flights in southern Argentina and coating ski resorts with a gritty layer of dust instead of snow.
Investing $40 billion annually in the forest sector is needed for the world to transition into a low carbon, resource-efficient green economy, according to a UN report released here Sunday.
A plan to build a giant open pit mine has created a sharp rift between those who think Uruguay's rich agricultural land should be protected, and those wanting to exploit its wealth.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Working with computer simulations to recreate what scientists believe to be the conditions that led to the formation of Earth’s moon, which up to now has been considered quite large, a team of researchers from Switzerland and the United States, in a paper published on arXiv, have shown the likelihood of other planets having proportionally large moons is much higher than was previously thought.
Two University of Minnesota Department of Earth Sciences researchers have developed an innovative approach to tapping heat beneath the Earth's surface. The method is expected to not only produce renewable electricity far more efficiently than conventional geothermal systems, but also help reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) -- dealing a one-two punch against climate change.
Scientists could have a revolutionary new way of measuring how much of the potent greenhouse gas methane is produced by cows and other ruminants, thanks to a surprising discovery in their poo.
On 8 June, mission controllers will have the first opportunity to switch ESA's Rosetta comet-hunter into deep-space hibernation for 31 months. During this loneliest leg of its decade-long mission, Rosetta will loop ever closer toward comet 67-P, soaring to almost 1000 million km from Earth.
(PhysOrg.com) -- During the last ice age, the Rhone Glacier was the dominant glacier in the Alps, covering a significant part of Switzerland. Over the next 11,500 years or so, the glacier, which forms the headwaters of the Rhone River, has been shrinking and growing again in response to shifts in climate.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A drive of 482 feet (146.8 meters) on June 1, 2011, took NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity past 30 kilometers (18.64 miles) in total odometry during 88 months of driving on Mars. That's 50 times the distance originally planned for the mission and more than 12 times the distance racehorses will run next week at the Belmont Stakes.
When geologists survey an area of land for the potential that gas or petroleum deposits could exist there, they must take into account the composition of rocks that lie below the surface. Take, for instance, sandstone—a sedimentary rock composed mostly of weakly cemented quartz grains. Previous research had suggested that compaction bands—highly compressed, narrow, flat layers within the sandstone—are much less permeable than the host rock and might act as barriers to the flow of oil or gas.
By studying the X-rays emitted when superheated gases plunge into distant and massive black holes, astrophysicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have provided an important test of a long-standing theory that describes the extreme physics occurring when matter spirals into these massive objects.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
