Why Europe will soon be cold
Moscow, Russia (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
What is the climate waiting for Russia and Europe in 15-20 years? Will be there weather abnormalities in the coming decades? Will some areas experience more severe winter, while the others will have hot summer? It all depends on how much the climate will be affected by the dynamics of the possible onset of minimum solar magnetic activity. The Sun's behaviour in future cycles is the main theme of ...
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Animal evolution: Revolution averted
Munich, Germany (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
Who came first - sponges or comb jellies? A new study by an team of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich reaffirms that sponges are the oldest animal phylum - and restores the classical view of early animal evolution, which recent molecular analyses had challenged.
The answer to the question of whether the sponges or the comb jellies (also known as sea gooseberries) represent th ...
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For Spanish fishermen, sea's bounty includes plastic
Villajoyosa, Spain (AFP) Dec 3, 2015 -
At sunrise in the fishing port of Villajoyosa in eastern Spain, a fleet of traditional fishing boats sets out on the Mediterranean to hunt for cuttlefish, prawns - and plastic bottles.
Since July Spanish fishing boats have been picking up plastic waste in the Mediterranean which will be recycled into polyester fibres that will be used to make a high-end clothing line.
"We want to prese ...
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Poor nations warn climate deal will fail without money deal
Le Bourget, France (AFP) Dec 3, 2015 -
Angry developing nations warned Thursday that UN talks aimed at averting catastrophic climate change would fail unless a bitter feud over hundreds of billions of dollars was resolved.
Negotiators from 195 nations are haggling in Paris over a planned universal accord to slash greenhouse-gas emissions that trap the Sun's heat, warming Earth's surface and oceans and disrupting its delicate clim ...
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China pollution pledge hopes to soothe smog fears: analysts
Beijing (AFP) Dec 3, 2015 -
A Chinese pledge to upgrade the nation's coal-fired power plants to cut pollution is aimed mainly at soothing domestic fears over dangerous smog, rather than tackling climate change emissions, analysts said Thursday.
With negotiating teams locked in crucial talks in Paris, China's state council announced plans to reduce by 60 percent the amount of "major pollutants" coming from its coal-fire ...
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Rapid plankton growth in ocean seen as sign of carbon dioxide loading
Baltimore MD (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
A microscopic marine alga is thriving in the North Atlantic to an extent that defies scientific predictions, suggesting swift environmental change as a result of increased carbon dioxide in the ocean, a study led a by Johns Hopkins University scientist has found.
What these findings mean remains to be seen, however, as does whether the rapid growth in the tiny plankton's population is good ...
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Eyes in the sky track health of Earth's African 'lung'
Ntoum, Gabon (AFP) Dec 3, 2015 -
High in the sky, a satellite passes over the equatorial forest of west Africa, the Earth's second largest "lung" after the Amazon.
In Ntoum, a village about 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Gabon's capital Libreville, a giant satellite dish slowly swings into action, capturing key data on Africa's environmental health.
It takes in a broad sweep of 23 countries from the Sahara Desert to sout ...
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Lazy microbes are key for soil carbon and nitrogen sequestration
Vienna, Austria (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
The world's soils store on the order of 2500 gigatons of carbon, which is three times the amount in the atmosphere (or equivalent to 9170 gigatons of CO2). Yet the mechanisms behind this storage are not completely understood.
A new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that lazy, or 'cheater' microbes, which rely on those around them to make enzymes for digesting pla ...
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What kinds of stars form rocky planets
Washington DC (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
As astronomers continue to find more and more planets around stars beyond our own Sun, they are trying to discover patterns and features that indicate what types of planets are likely to form around different kinds of stars. This will hopefully inform and make more efficient the ongoing planet hunting process, and also help us better understand our own Solar System's formation.
When a star ...
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ESA station tracks Earth flyby mission
Paris (ESA) Dec 04, 2015 -
An ESA deep-space ground station will lend a helping ear as Japan's Hayabusa-2 asteroid mission visits Earth on Thursday. Hayabusa is on an audacious six-year journey to rendezvous with the 900 m-diameter asteroid Ryugu, deliver several landers, snatch a sample of material and then return to Earth in 2020.
The high-tech craft will make an Earth flyby today, a year to the day after launch, ...
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Earth-sized telescope finds clue to black hole growth
Waterloo, Canada (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
A new discovery, published in the journal Science, has greatly deepened our understanding black holes, which are believed to be the gravitational engines at the centres of most galaxies, including our own.
Using an array of telescopes that spans the globe, astronomers detected evidence of magnetic fields near Sagittarius A*, the 4.5-million-solar-mass black hole at the centre of the Milky ...
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Magnified image of faintest galaxy from early universe
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 04, 2015 -
Astronomers harnessing the combined power of NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found the faintest object ever seen in the early universe. It existed about 400 million years after the big bang, 13.8 billion years ago. The team has nicknamed the object Tayna, which means "first-born" in Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America.
Though Hubble ...
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Event Horizon Telescope reveals magnetic fields in central black hole
Boston MA (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
Most people think of black holes as giant vacuum cleaners sucking in everything that gets too close. But the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies are more like cosmic engines, converting energy from infalling matter into intense radiation that can outshine the combined light from all surrounding stars.
If the black hole is spinning, it can generate strong jets that blast acr ...
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LISA Pathfinder carries advanced NASA thruster tech
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 04, 2015 -
The LISA Pathfinder spacecraft is on its way to space, having successfully launched from Kourou, French Guiana (Dec. 3 local time/Dec. 2 PST). On board is the state-of-the-art Disturbance Reduction System (DRS), a thruster technology developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
LISA Pathfinder, led by the European Space Agency (ESA), is designed to test technologies ...
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Space mission to test gravitational wave detector lifts off
London, UK (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
The LISA Pathfinder mission was successfully this week and is now on its way to demonstrate technology for observing gravitational waves from space. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, predicted a century ago by Einstein in his theory of general relativity. Einstein's theory predicts that these fluctuations are generated by massive objects that can create large distortion ...
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Rotational movies of Pluto and Charon
Boulder CO (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
It's amazing that we've come such a long way in our exploration of the Pluto system, and it's only been five months since the close flyby of New Horizons. From the exceptionally young ice-covered plain informally named Tombaugh Regio on Pluto to the deep canyons cut into Charon, the terrains we're seeing are just amazing. Everyone, from the mission scientists to the general public, seems to be h ...
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NASA team discover how water escapes from Saturn
Missoula MT (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
A University of Montana professor who studies astrophysics has discovered how water ions escape from Saturn's environment. His findings recently were published in the journal Nature Physics. UM Professor Daniel Reisenfeld is a member of the Cassini research team. Cassini is a NASA-managed probe that studies Saturn. It has been in orbit continuously collecting data since 2004.
One of the in ...
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Space Training Transformation is underway
Peterson AFB CO (SPX) Dec 02, 2015 -
The Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) Commander, General John Hyten, as the Space Professional Functional Authority, directed implementation of a more robust Undergraduate Space Training Air Force Specialty Course and the transfer of space weapon system specific training responsibility to AFSPC by the beginning of Fiscal Year 2016 (FY16). This transfer took place, as scheduled, on 1 Oct 2015.
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Russian Strategic Missile Forces to Receive New ICBMs in 2015
Moscow (Sputnik) Dec 02, 2015 -
Russia's Strategic Missile Forces will receive more than 50 modern pieces of weaponry in 2015, including intercontinental ballistic missiles and launch platforms, Strategic Missile Forces' press spokesman Col. Igor Egorov said Tuesday.
"More than 50 modern pieces of weaponry, military and special equipment, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, autonomous launch platforms, mobile ...
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Intelsat General applies best defense is a good offense to prevent jamming
McLean VA (SPX) Dec 02, 2015 -
When encountering satellite jamming, organizations try to resolve the problem diplomatically. But until that process and standards can be streamlined, diplomacy will be secondary to technology that can combat jamming through prevention and source identity.
"I feel the best solution for the industry is through developing mitigation technologies because the diplomatic channels available to r ...
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Letter to Mars? Royal Mail works it out for British boy, 5
London (AFP) Dec 4, 2015 -
Britain's Royal Mail has turned to NASA for help after a five-year-old boy wrote in asking how much it would cost to post a letter to Mars.
But Oliver Geddings probably won't be able to send a letter to outer space as the price - Pounds 11,602.25 ($18,000, 16,000 euros) - is well beyond the reach of most children's pocket money.
In its reply to Oliver, who wants to become an astronaut, the R ...
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UAE, Russia agree to cooperate in space industry
Abu Dhabi UAE (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to build a strategic partnership in the field of space exploration.
The MoU was inked by Chairman of the UAE Space Agency Khalifa Mohammed Al-Rumaithi and General Director of the Russian Federal Space Agency ROSCOMOS Igor Komarov.
The deal allows for extensive cooperation in space policy, ...
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Shedding light on particle acceleration in solar flares
Newark NJ (SPX) Dec 04, 2015 -
For scientists studying the impacts of space weather, one of the central mysteries of solar flares - the colossal release of magnetic energy in the Sun's atmosphere that erupts with the force of millions of hydrogen bombs - is the means by which these explosions produce radiation and accelerate particles to nearly the speed of light within seconds. The most powerful blasts dispatch energized par ...
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Couture in Orbit: from spacewalk to catwalk
Paris (ESA) Dec 04, 2015 -
ESA and the Science Museum in London are working with four leading fashion schools around Europe to design clothes for the space age with their 'Couture in Orbit' project.
Between 2014 and 2016, five ESA astronauts from the UK, France, Italy, Denmark and Germany are visiting the International Space Station. To mark the missions, European fashion schools from the astronauts' home countries ...
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Dawn spiraling in towards Ceres
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 04, 2015 -
An intrepid interplanetary explorer is now powering its way down through the gravity field of a distant alien world. Soaring on a blue-green beam of high-velocity xenon ions, Dawn is making excellent progress as it spirals closer and closer to Ceres, the first dwarf planet discovered. Meanwhile, scientists are progressing in analyzing the tremendous volume of pictures and other data the probe ha ...
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