Three of Titan's major surface features-dunes, craters and the enigmatic Xanadu-appear in this radar image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Three of Titan's major surface features -- dunes, craters and the enigmatic Xanadu -- appear in this radar image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hazy, bright area at the left that extends to the lower center of the image marks the northwest edge of Xanadu, a continent-sized feature centered near the moon's equator. At upper right is the crater Ksa, first seen by Cassini in 2006. The dark lines running between these two features are linear dunes, similar to sand dunes on Earth in Egypt and Namibia.
Three of Titan's major surface features -- dunes, craters and the enigmatic Xanadu -- appear in this radar image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hazy, bright area at the left that extends to the lower center of the image marks the northwest edge of Xanadu, a continent-sized feature centered near the moon's equator. At upper right is the crater Ksa, first seen by Cassini in 2006. The dark lines running between these two features are linear dunes, similar to sand dunes on Earth in Egypt and Namibia.
For more information about Updates, Click on the titles:
Paleontologists have discovered a group of more than 20 polar dinosaur tracks on the coast of Victoria, Australia, offering a rare glimpse into animal behavior during the last period of pronounced global warming, about 105 million years ago.
Archaeologists leading the University of Toronto's Tayinat Archaeological Project in southeastern Turkey have unearthed the remains of a monumental gate complex adorned with stone sculptures, including a magnificently carved lion. The gate complex provided access to the citadel of Kunulua, capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina (ca. 950-725 BCE), and is reminiscent of the citadel gate excavated by British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley in 1911 at the royal Hittite city of Carchemish.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine are piecing together the process of tooth enamel biomineralization, which could lead to novel nanoscale approaches to developing biomaterials. The findings are reported online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Research involving scientists from The University of Nottingham is pioneering a new method of studying and making molecules.
Concerns over the finite availability of oil and the effect of greenhouse gases on climate have spurred intense efforts to develop electric-drive vehicles; the major barrier to successful commercialization being battery technology. Although Li-ion batteries, crucial in the boom of portable electronics, stand as the technology of choice in soon-to-be marketed models, further improvements in their energy density, cost, cycle life and safety are still necessary.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are seen as a promising replacement for the liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) used in many flat-screen televisions because they are cheaper to mass-produce. Zhikuan Chen at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and co-workers have now shown how meticulous engineering of fluorescent molecules can dramatically increase OLED efficiency.
(PhysOrg.com) -- An undergraduate student has overcome a major hurdle in the development of invisibility cloaks by adding an optical device into their design that not only remains invisible itself, but also has the ability to slow down light.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Alexey Snezhko and Igor Aronson, physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, have coaxed "micro-robots" to do their bidding.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Silicon is an ideal platform for integrated photonic circuits because the material is cheap and readily available. Silicon chips with an integrated laser source capable of emitting light at a specific wavelength are particularly useful in telecommunications. Unfortunately, silicon is a material with high optical loss, which often degrades the output power and performance of the laser source.
When drops of water are sprinkled on an extremely hot skillet, the drops can slide around the skillet for a full minute or so before evaporating. The phenomenon is called the Leidenfrost effect, which says that when a surface is significantly hotter than the boiling point of a given liquid (the “Leidenfrost point”), droplets of that liquid will take longer to evaporate than if the temperature of the surface were somewhat cooler - above the liquid’s boiling point but below the Leidenfrost point. (For water, the Leidenfrost point is 250 °C [482 °F].)
Night-shining “noctilucent” clouds create a magical glow in the night skies over Reykjavíc, Iceland in this beautiful photo by Örvar Atli Þorgeirsson, taken on August 6. In the foreground is “The Sun Voyager” (Sólfar), an iconic steel sculpture located on the city waterfront representing a Viking ship.
"Study of lightning rays in the Basque Country, and their relation to precipitation" is the title of the PhD thesis that physicist Joseba Areitio presented at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). In fact, since systems for the detection of these rays of lightning were developed in the 80s, the possibility of estimating the precipitation produced in a storm as a function of the rays generated therein has been an object of research.
To help farmers make the best use of limited irrigation water in the arid West, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers are helping farmers determine how much water major crops actually need.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI), built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo., has been approved by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for shipment to Orbital Sciences Corporation, Gilbert, Ariz. for integration onto the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft.
(AP) -- Sweltering may have reached a new record last month, as Oklahoma racked up the country's highest monthly average temperature ever.
Farmers and policymakers should wait before converting Conservation Reserve Program land to corn and soybean production, according to a Michigan State University study.
An international team of researchers has found the strongest evidence yet that parts of North America and Antarctica were connected 1.1 billion years ago, long before the supercontinent Pangaea formed.
Marine algae that turn carbon dissolved in seawater into shell will produce thinner and thinner shells as carbon dioxide levels increase.
On April 4, 2010, the ground beneath the deserts of Baja California started to rumble, then rip apart, sending tremors throughout a region 40 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. In the months that followed, the 7.2-magnitude quake — the second-strongest ever recorded in Baja California — triggered aftershocks that could be felt as far north as Los Angeles.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Way back in the 70’s Georges Mougin, then an engineering graduate, had a big idea. He suggested that icebergs floating around in the North Atlantic could be tethered and dragged south to places that were experiencing a severe drought, such as the Sahel of West Africa. Mougin received some backing funds from a Saudi prince but most “experts” at the time scoffed at his idea and the whole scheme was eventually shelved.
Colliding neutron stars and black holes, supernova events, rotating neutron stars and other cataclysmic cosmic events… Einstein predicted they would all have something in common – oscillations in the fabric of space-time. This summer European scientists have joined forces to prove Einstein was right and capture evidence of the existence of gravitational waves.
A team of scientists just discovered a new eruption of Axial Seamount, an undersea volcano located about 250 miles off the Oregon coast – and one of the most active and intensely studied seamounts in the world.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A derivative of a common culinary spice found in Indian curries could offer a new treatment hope for sufferers of the painful condition tendinitis, an international team of researchers has shown.
A relatively simple combination of naturally occurring sugars and amino acids offers a plausible route to the building blocks of life, according to a paper published in Nature Chemistry co-authored by a professor at the University of California, Merced.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
