COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land -- interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.
May 16, 2012 - 10:30:44 AM
MIAMI—Tropical Storm Aletta is weakening is it spins far out over the Pacific.The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami says the storm's maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 40 mph (65 kph) early Wednesday with gradual weakening expected during the next two days.
May 16, 2012 - 10:21:11 AM
Magnitude 6.0 Earthquake Hit New Britain Region, Papua New Guinea on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 00:59:34 UTC/10:59:34 AM at epicenter/.
May 16, 2012 - 10:21:10 AM
Researchers working with NASA's Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft report the frequent detections of Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) waves at the edge of the innermost planet's magnetosphere.
May 15, 2012 - 10:09:14 PM
Astrophysicists have just discovered a new heating source in cosmological structure formation. Until now, astrophysicists thought that super-massive black holes could only influence their immediate surroundings. A collaboration of scientists at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and in Canada and the US have now discovered that diffuse gas in the universe can absorb luminous gamma-ray emission from black holes, heating it up strongly. This surprising result has important implications for the formation of structures in the universe.
Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have provided the first X-ray evidence of a supernova shock wave breaking through a cocoon of gas surrounding the star that exploded. This discovery may help astronomers understand why some supernovas are much more powerful than others.
May 15, 2012 - 5:47:42 PM
When the crew aboard the research vessel Sonne set out on a cruise last spring, they were expecting a routine mapping expedition in the South Pacific. But they were in for a big surprise.
May 15, 2012 - 5:26:09 PM
An earthquake in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia on 11th April was unusually powerful, at magnitude 8.6, for a “strike-slip” type of quake, and a new analysis of the earthquake and its 8.2 magnitude after-shock has proposed that some of the assumptions made about earthquakes may need re-thinking.
May 11, 2012 - 2:48:02 PM
When UCLA's Christopher T. Russell looks at the images of the protoplanet Vesta produced by NASA's Dawn mission, he talks about beauty as much as he talks about science."Vesta looks like a little planet. It has a beautiful surface, much more varied and diverse than we expected," said Russell, a professor in UCLA's Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Dawn mission's principal investigator. "We knew Vesta's surface had some variation in color, but we did not expect the diversity that we see or the clarity of the colors and textures, or their distinct boundaries. We didn't find gold on Vesta, but it is still a gold mine."
More than a 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the motion of Uranus. In a paper published May 10 in the journal Science online, a group of researchers led by Dr. David Nesvorny of Southwest Research Institute has inferred another unseen planet, this time orbiting a distant star, marking the first success of this technique outside the solar system.
May 11, 2012 - 2:32:08 PM
Sunspot region 1476 is currently the dominant sunspot group. It continues to grow in size and number of spots and is now located on the Sun's central meridian. Future eruptions from this region have a higher probability of producing energetic particle events and Earth-directed CMEs also become more probable.
May 11, 2012 - 2:27:08 PM
For the last few decades, space scientists have generally accepted that the bubble of gas and magnetic fields generated by the Sun - known as the heliosphere - moves through space, creating three distinct boundary layers that culminate in an outermost 'bow shock'.
May 11, 2012 - 2:16:23 PM
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May 10, 2012 - 8:51:28 PM
During this period the moon reaches its last quarter phase on Saturday May 12th. At this time the moon will be located ninety degrees west of the Sun and will rise near 0100 local daylight time (LDT). As the week progresses the waning crescent moon will rise later in the morning, increasing the window of opportunity to view in totally dark conditions.
May 10, 2012 - 6:57:57 PM
An excavation of an archaeological site in Guatemala has uncovered Mayan astronomical records dating to the ninth century A.D. The tabulated numbers, which predate existing Mayan astronomical documents by several hundred years, chart the motion of the moon and also seem to relate to the orbits of Mars and Venus.
May 10, 2012 - 2:24:49 PM
