Placing Pieces in the Atmospheric Puzzle
Moffett Field CA (SPX) May 15, 2014 -
Earth's atmosphere contains a number of trace gases that, while only present in small amounts, play important roles in processes that affect our planet's climate. One of these gases is nitrous acid, or HONO. HONO, when reacting with sunlight, is a source of hydroxyl radicals (OH) in the lower atmosphere.
These radicals are thought to help control the level of pollutants in the lowest regio ...
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Impact Theory Does Not Explain Post Ice Age Cold Snap
Dallas TX (SPX) May 15, 2014 -
Controversy over what sparked the Younger Dryas, a brief return to near glacial conditions at the end of the Ice Age, includes a theory that it was caused by a comet hitting the Earth. As proof, proponents point to sediments containing deposits they believe could result only from a cosmic impact.
Now a new study disproves that theory, said archaeologist David Meltzer, Southern Methodist Un ...
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Ice-loss moves the Earth 250 miles down
Newcastle UK (SPX) May 14, 2014 -
At the surface, Antarctica is a motionless and frozen landscape. Yet hundreds of miles down the Earth is moving at a rapid rate, new research has shown.
The study, led by Newcastle University, UK, and published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, explains for the first time why the upward motion of the Earth's crust in the Northern Antarctic Peninsula is currently taking place so quick ...
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Flexible supercapacitor raises bar for volumetric energy density
Cleveland OH (SPX) May 14, 2014 -
Scientists have taken a large step toward making a fiber-like energy storage device that can be woven into clothing and power wearable medical monitors, communications equipment or other small electronics.
The device is a supercapacitor-a cousin to the battery. This one packs an interconnected network of graphene and carbon nanotubes so tightly that it stores energy comparable to some thin ...
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Ultra-fast, the bionic arm can catch objects on the fly
Lausanne, Switzerland (SPX) May 14, 2014 -
With its palm open, the robot is completely motionless. A split second later, it suddenly unwinds and catches all sorts of flying objects thrown in its direction -a tennis racket, a ball, a bottle-. This arm measures about 1.5 meters long and keeps an upright position. It has three joints and a sophisticated hand with four fingers.
It was programmed at the Learning Algorithms and Systems L ...
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Fury UAS ground control station features latest technology
Orlando, Fla. (UPI) May 14, 2013 -
The latest ground control station technology for unmanned aerial systems has been fielded by Lockheed Martin for use with its Fury UAS, the company said.
The small and rugged ground control system, named xGCS, provides processing and communications support for the Fury and other company Advanced Group 3 UAS vehicles.
"The Fury UAS is an expeditionary platform with best-in-industr ...
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ScanEagle drone capabilities demonstrated in Australia
Brisbane, Australia (UPI) May 14, 2013 -
A ScanEagle unmanned aerial system has proven its worth to Australian firefighting officials, monitoring the movement of a bushfire at night.
The monitoring and reporting of the fire front movement was conducted from low altitude over the Wollemi National Park, northwest of the city of Sydney, where bush fires have burned more than 86,00 acres of land since December.
Insitu Pacif ...
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New unmanned areial system from Lockheed Martin
Orlando, Fla. (UPI) May 14, 2013 -
A new, small unmanned aircraft system that can be rapidly reconfigured in the field for a variety of missions has been introduced by Lockheed Martin.
The system is called Vector Hawk. Its gross weight is just four pounds, while its vertical profile is only four inches. It comes in a number of variants, including fixed-wing and vertical takeoff and landing. Fixed-wing variants can be lau ...
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A light-speed voyage to the distant future
Paris (ESA) May 16, 2014 -
An enthusiastic group of schoolchildren sent a greeting to the future today, beaming a radio signal into space via an ESA tracking station in Spain. In January, over 200 participants around the world sent us video selfies as part of ESA's Wake Up Rosetta campaign, with the videos collectively receiving some 75 000 votes.
As the final prize, ESA today transmitted the top 10 video selfies in ...
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NASA shares animated video of black hole formation
Washington (UPI) May 15, 2013 -
What does it look like when two stars merge, eating each other alive and forming a black hole?
According to scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center - and the supercomputer there that helped run advanced models on the behavior of colliding stars in deep space - it looks like this.
The video above, released today by NASA, offers a simulation of the "coalescence of unmagn ...
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Botanical Studies, Dragon Departure Preps for ISS Crew
Houston TX (SPX) May 16, 2014 -
The three-person Expedition 40 crew spent its first full workday Thursday aboard the International Space Station working with a trio of botanical experiments and preparing for Sunday's departure of the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft.
Following the crew's daily planning conference with the flight control teams around the world, Commander Steve Swanson set up a test sample for the Japan Aerospace ...
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Rosetta's target comet is becoming active
Paris (ESA) May 16, 2014 -
The target of ESA's Rosetta mission has started to reveal its true personality as a comet, its dusty veil clearly developing over the last six weeks. The sequence of images presented here of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were taken between 27 March and 4 May, as the gap between craft and comet closed from around 5 million km to 2 million km.
By the end of the sequence, the comet's dusty ...
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Stability lost as supernovae explode
Heidelberg, Germany (SPX) May 16, 2014 -
Exploding supernovae are a phenomenon that is still not fully understood. The trouble is that the state of nuclear matter in stars cannot be reproduced on Earth. In a recent paper published in EPJ E, Yves Pomeau from the University of Arizona, USA, and his French colleagues from the CNRS provide a new model of supernovae represented as dynamical systems subject to a loss of stability, just befor ...
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Moon rover Yutu comes closer to public
Beijing (XNA) May 16, 2014 -
A small replica of lunar rover Yutu, the Jade Rabbit, has gone on show in Beijing.
The model, half the size of the real rover, is the star of the 17th China Beijing International High-tech Expo at the China International Exhibition Center. The model was created by Chang'e Benyue Aerospace Science and Technology Co., Ltd (CBASTCL), a subsidiary of China's lunar exploration project.
Mi ...
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Giant telescope tackles orbit and size of exoplanet
Livermore CA (SPX) May 16, 2014 -
Using one of the world's largest telescopes, a Lawrence Livermore team and international collaborators have tracked the orbit of a planet at least four times the size of Jupiter.
The scientists were able to identify the orbit of the exoplanet, Beta Pictoris b, which sits 63 light years from our solar system, by using the Gemini Planet Imager's (GPI) next-generation, high-contrast adaptive ...
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First 'heavy mouse' leads to first lab-grown tissue mapped from atomic life
Cambridge, UK (SPX) May 16, 2014 -
Scientists have created a 'heavy' mouse, the world's first animal enriched with heavy but non-radioactive isotopes - enabling them to capture in unprecedented detail the molecular structure of natural tissue by reading the magnetism inherent in the isotopes.
This data has been used to grow biological tissue in the lab practically identical to native tissue, which can be manipulated and ana ...
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NASA hopes to continue cooperation with Russia on ISS
Moscow (Voice of Russia) May 16, 2014 -
NASA has not received from Russia notifications of changes in cooperation on the International Space Station (ISS) and expects to continue cooperation, press service of the US space agency stated, commenting on Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and the head of Roscosmos Oleg Ostapenko.
Ostapenko and Rogozin said the decision on Russia's participation in the ISS after 2020 is still pendi ...
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The shrinking of Jupiter's Great Red Spot
Baltimore MD (SPX) May 16, 2014 -
Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot - a swirling storm feature larger than Earth - is shrinking. This downsizing, which is changing the shape of the spot from an oval into a circle, has been known about since the 1930s, but now these striking new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images capture the spot at a smaller size than ever before.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a churning anticyclonic st ...
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MAVEN Solar Wind Ion Analyzer Will Look at Key Player in Mars Atmosphere Loss
Greenbelt MD (SPX) May 16, 2014 -
This past November, NASA launched the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission in the hope of understanding how and why the planet has been losing its atmosphere over billions of years.
One instrument aboard the spacecraft will study a special component of the Martian atmosphere to help solve this mystery. By studying ions, or small electrically charged particles, in and abov ...
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British MoD works on 'quantum compass' technology to replace GPS
Moscow (Voice of Russia) May 16, 2014 -
UK scientists say they are three to five years away from creating a new navigation system that would not rely on space-based technologies. A "quantum compass" might replace the US's widely-used GPS, first in military and then on smartphones.
The British Ministry of Defense is investing millions of pounds into the "earth-based" technology, which they hope may become an alternative to space- ...
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