ESASat, 14 Apr 2007 08:24 UTC
Cluster is providing new insights into the working of a 'space tsunami' that plays a role in disrupting the calm and beautiful aurora, or Northern Lights, creating patterns of auroral dances in the sky.
Generally seen in high-latitude regions such as Scandinavia or Canada, aurorae are colourful curtains of light that appear in the sky. Caused by the interaction of high-energy particles brought by the solar wind with Earth's magnetic field, they appear in many different shapes.
WHOISat, 14 Apr 2007 08:03 UTC
Scientists have found one of the largest fields of seafloor vents gushing super-hot, mineral-rich fluids on a mid-ocean ridge that, until now, remained elusive to the ten-year hunt to find them.
"The discovery of the first active vents ever found on an ultraslow-spreading ridge is a significant milestone event," said Jian Lin, leader of a team of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists who participated in a Chinese expedition to the remote Southwest Indian Ridge in the Indian Ocean in February and March.
Since deep-sea hydrothermal vents were first discovered 30 years ago in the Pacific Ocean, scientists have studied them all along the Mid-Ocean Ridge, a 40,000-mile-long mountain range that zigzags through the middle of the world's ocean basins like a giant zipper. The ridge marks the area where the Earth's giant tectonic plates spreads apart and new ocean crust forms from hot lava rising from deep within Earth's mantle.
David Shiga and Maggie McKee
New ScientistThu, 12 Apr 2007 19:00 UTC
A newly discovered nebula, called the 'Red Square', displays a dazzling, gem-like symmetry, new observations reveal. But the nature of the star or stars that produced it remains a mystery.
|
| ©P Tuthill/Palomar Obs/Keck Obs
|
| The Red Square is revealed in this infrared image made by combining data from the Hale telescope atop Mount Palomar in California, and the Keck II telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii
|
We have to climb a mountain in order to conquer it. In quantum physics there is a different way: objects can reach the opposite side of a hill simply by tunnelling through it, instead of laboriously climbing over it. An international team of researchers working with Prof. Ferenc Krausz from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics has now observed electrons in this tunnelling process. This effect is responsible for the ionization of atoms under the influence of strong magnetic fields. The electrons overcome the attraction of the atomic nucleus by tunnelling through a potential wall. The scientists used ultra-short laser pulses to show discrete stages of ionization in this process, each of which lasts 100 attoseconds - a fraction of a billionth of a second. The results make a significant contribution to understanding how electrons move around in atoms and molecules.
Through photosynthesis, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer sunlight energy to molecular reaction centers for conversion into chemical energy with nearly 100-percent efficiency. Speed is the key - the transfer of the solar energy takes place almost instantaneously so little energy is wasted as heat. How photosynthesis achieves this near instantaneous energy transfer is a long-standing mystery that may have finally been solved.
A study led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) at Berkeley reports that the answer lies in quantum mechanical effects. Results of the study are presented in the April 12, 2007 issue of the journal Nature.
"We have obtained the first direct evidence that remarkably long-lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence plays an important part in energy transfer processes during photosynthesis," said Graham Fleming, the principal investigator for the study. "This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one."
WASHINGTON - Researchers have decoded genetic material from a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, an unprecedented step once thought impossible.
Iridescent, silvery blue clouds at the edge of space that may be connected to global warming will be studied by a NASA spacecraft set to launch on 25 April.
|
| ©Hampton University
|
| Noctilucent clouds were first observed in 1885, two years after the Krakatoa eruption. But most volcanic eruptions do not spew material high enough in the atmosphere to seed the formation of the icy clouds
|
The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission will be the first satellite dedicated to studying the enigmatic phenomenon of "noctilucent", or night-shining clouds.
An adolescent female Tyrannosaurus rex died 68 million years ago, but its bones still contain intact soft tissue, including the oldest preserved proteins ever found, scientists say.
For thousands of years, the evidence lay at the bottom of Brown's Lake, buried in thick, gooey mud.
MSNBCTue, 10 Apr 2007 23:10 UTC
Temperature increase could be shrinking the planet's polar ice caps. Shifting dust storms on Mars might be contributing to global warming there that is shrinking the planet's southern polar ice caps, scientists say.
|
| ©Christensen
|
| These two views of Mars are derived from the MGS Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) measurements of global broadband visible and near-infrared reflectance, also known as albedo.
|
Comment: Uhm, yes, it's due to dust storms and warming on Earth is due to all those groovy cars driving around. The data, however, certainly indicates that whatever is 'going on' is doing so on a solar system basis, not a global one.
Comment: Uhm, yes, it's due to dust storms and warming on Earth is due to all those groovy cars driving around. The data, however, certainly indicates that whatever is 'going on' is doing so on a solar system basis, not a global one.