An optical image of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1407 and the large population of globular clusters (small starlike objects) scattered around it. New studies of these globular clusters confirm the theory that the outer regions of this galaxy are younger, and probably the result of interactions with neighboring galaxies. Credit: Hubble Space Telescope
Galaxies frequently collide with one another. Our own Milky Way galaxy, for example, and its nearest giant neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, are heading towards each other at a rate of about 120 kilometers per second; predictions claim the two will merge together in another four billion years or so.
For more information about Updates, Click on the titles:
Researchers at Columbia Engineering School have built optical nanostructures that enable them to engineer the index of refraction and fully control light dispersion. They have shown that it is possible for light (electromagnetic waves) to propagate from point A to point B without accumulating any phase, spreading through the artificial medium as if the medium is completely missing in space. This is the first time simultaneous phase and zero-index observations have been made on the chip-scale and at the infrared wavelength.
Physicists at the University of California, Riverside report that they have discovered a new way to create positronium, an exotic and short-lived atom that could help answer what happened to antimatter in the universe, why nature favored matter over antimatter at the universe's creation.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Nobody knows quite how life originated on Earth, but most scientists agree that living cells did not abruptly appear from nonliving cells in a single step. Instead, there were probably a series of pre-cellular life forms that arose from nonliving chemicals and eventually led to a living cell, one that could undergo metabolism and reproduce. One of the most well-known theories of pre-cellular life is the RNA world theory, which proposes that life based on RNA predates current life, which is based on DNA, RNA, and proteins. But recently, scientists have been wondering what may have preceded RNA. In a new study, a team of scientists from Germany has suggested that the ability to self-replicate may have first emerged in the form of an RNA reactor, which they show can transmit information.
Underwater Antarctic volcanoes discovered in the Southern Ocean
Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered previously unknown volcanoes in the ocean waters around the remote South Sandwich Islands. Using ship-borne sea-floor mapping technology during research cruises onboard the RRS James Clark Ross, the scientists found 12 volcanoes beneath the sea surface – some up to 3km high. They found 5km diameter craters left by collapsing volcanoes and 7 active volcanoes visible above the sea as a chain of islands.
China sent the high-tech industry and markets reeling last fall when it blocked exports of raw rare earth minerals to Japan, Europe and the U.S. The sudden severing of rare earths supply was a frightening prospect as the minerals are key ingredients in a broad range of high-tech products, from smartphones to wind turbines and hybrid cars. Although the bans have since been lifted, governments around the world saw the ban as a kind of wake-up call and started looking at ways to develop their own mineral resources — for rare earths as well as basic industry metals like copper and zinc.
The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) has announced completion of a feasibility study of drilling and coring activities that would be conducted in an ultra-deepwater environment into very high temperature igneous rocks to reach the upper oceanic mantle.
With the final launch of the Atlantis, NASA retires its space shuttle program. We spoke to Professor Chris Damaren of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies about the end of an era in manned space travel.
(AP) -- Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has decided Exxon Mobil and the state don't make good roommates after nearly a week of working together in close quarters to clean up an estimated 42,000 gallons of crude oil released into the Yellowstone River.
(AP) -- Usually space shuttle astronauts are awakened in orbit by a song sent by a loved one. But not much is routine for the final space shuttle flight, not even a wake-up call.
The Atlantis crew on Saturday inspected the craft's thermal protection system, the outer barrier that protects it from the searing heat upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, NASA said.
(AP) -- The space shuttle Atlantis hasn't performed like a ship ready for retirement. The first full day of the final flight of the aging space shuttle fleet - the most complicated machines ever built - was practically flawless.
Australia Sunday announced plans to tax carbon pollution at Aus$23 (US$24.74) per tonne to help battle climate change, as it moves towards an emissions trading scheme similar to that of Europe.
The crew of Atlantis prepared to link up with the International Space Station Sunday as part of the final mission of the US space shuttle program.
When Atlantis takes off from Kennedy Space Center, it will be the last time NASA launches astronauts aboard a government-built spacecraft for perhaps the rest of this decade.
Pollution that blows hundreds of miles from coal-fired power plants into other states will be reduced under a final plan that the Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday.
Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard began Monday the mammoth task of selling a bold new tax on carbon emissions to sceptical voters, in a battle that could make or break her fragile rule.
(AP) -- The astronauts aboard the orbiting shuttle-station complex will get cracking Monday on all their supply delivery work.
A piece of Soviet space debris is not likely to collide with the International Space Station after all, and astronauts have moved ahead with restocking the orbiting lab, NASA said Monday.
Researchers in the US are testing biofilter systems as a viable alternative to releasing methane from passive landfill vents into the atmosphere. The technology could reduce the overall impact of old landfills on global warming. Details are reported in the current issue of the International Journal of Environmental Engineering.
Olympia, site of the famous Temple of Zeus and original venue of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, was presumably destroyed by repeated tsunamis that travelled considerable distances inland, and not by earthquake and river floods as has been assumed to date. Evidence in support of this new theory on the virtual disappearance of the ancient cult site on the Peloponnesian peninsula comes from Professor Dr. Andreas Vött of the Institute of Geography of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. Vött investigated the site as part of a project in which he and his team are studying the paleotsunamis that occurred along the coastlines of the eastern Mediterranean over the last 11,000 years. According to his account, the geomorphological and sedimentological findings in the area document that Olympia and its environs were destroyed by tsunami impact. The site of Olympia, rediscovered only some 250 years ago, was buried under a massive layer of sand and other deposi! ts that is up to 8 meters deep.
Some of the last images from ESA’s ERS-2 satellite have revealed rapidly changing glacial features in Greenland. In its final days, the veteran satellite gave us frequent views of the Kangerdlugssuaq glacier and its advancing ice stream.
In 1999, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor David Miller showed the movie, "Star Wars" to his students on their first day of class. Following the scene where Luke Skywalker spars with a floating droid "remote," Miller stood up and pointed: "I want you to build me some of those." So they did. With support from the Department of Defense and NASA, Miller's undergraduates built five volleyball-sized free-flying satellites called Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES); three of which have been on the International Space Station since 2006.
“Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee what thou art…” In this case it is Asteroid 3552 Don Quixote – one of the most well-known of Near Earth Asteroids. You may know its name, but did you know it has possible cometary origin? It may very well be one of the Jupiter-Family Comets just waiting for its turn to be ejected from our own solar system.
It is dubbed "Manhattanhenge" and happens two times a year when the Sun aligns at dusk with streets in a glowing magic trick as rays of sunlight span across New York perfectly, from west to east.
Astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis will get one extra day in space as they restock the International Space Station with a year's worth of food and supplies, NASA said Monday.
The shuttle Atlantis docked at the orbiting International Space Station for one last hitch-up Sunday, on its final space voyage before the entire 30-year US shuttle program shuts down for good.
Researchers believe Colorado River damming projects that followed the creation of the Salton Sea could be one reason why Southern California is overdue for a major earthquake.
NASA is tracking a piece of Soviet space debris that could collide with the International Space Station, the US space agency said Sunday after the shuttle Atlantis docked on its final mission.
This year, a rocket will carry a boxcar-sized module into orbit, the first building block for a Chinese space station. Around 2013, China plans to launch a lunar probe that will set a rover loose on the moon. It wants to put a man on the moon, sometime after 2020.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Galaxies frequently collide with one another. Our own Milky Way galaxy, for example, and its nearest giant neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, are heading towards each other at a rate of about 120 kilometers per second; predictions claim the two will merge together in another four billion years or so.
(PhysOrg.com) -- From space, NASA keeps a watchful eye on volcanic activity around the world with many satellites. NASA has just released satellite images showing activity this week from volcanoes in the countries of Eritrea, Chile and Indonesia.
The continued growth of cropland and loss of natural habitat have increasingly simplified agricultural landscapes in the Midwest. A Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) study concluded that this simplification is associated with increased crop pest abundance and insecticide use, consequences that could be tempered by perennial bioenergy crops.
(PhysOrg.com) -- How deep is the ocean's capacity to buffer against climate change? As one of the planet's largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.
National Physical Laboratory, after over nine years of extensive research, has developed a world-leading pvT (pressure-volume-temperature) and thermal conductivity test kit that can be used to help improve the design and processing of plastics.
The alarm caused by bisphenol A (BPA) presence in reusable plastic bottles resulted in a recent industry change, producing products made with supposed BPA-free materials.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Last October, a containment dam belonging to a Hungarian alumina manufacturer collapsed after heavy rains, releasing 200 million gallons of caustic sludge. Eight people died in the flood of lye-like red mud, which overwhelmed nearby towns and created an environmental catastrophe.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Plutonium gets taken up by our cells much as iron does, even though there's far less of it to go around.
The sheet of paper looks like any other document that might have just come spitting out of an office printer, with an array of colored rectangles printed over much of its surface. But then a researcher picks it up, clips a couple of wires to one end, and shines a light on the paper. Instantly an LCD clock display at the other end of the wires starts to display the time.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
