Glasgow astronomers explain hot star disks
Astronomers have been puzzled for decades as to how the rings of hot gas surrounding certain types of star are formed. Now a team of scientists from the Universities of Glasgow and Wisconsin believe they have found the answer. The team studied a type of young, hot star, known as a "Be star", that has a disk of glowing gas around it, similar to the... view more... (2002-11-01)
Key process for space outpost proved on 'vomit comet' ride
Flying high over the Gulf of Mexico, researchers from NASA and Case Western Reserve University found a key to unlocking oxygen from the surface of the moon. view more (2009-09-25)
Fuzziness on the road to physics' grand unification theory
Leave it to hypothesized gravity to weigh down what physicists have thought for 30 years. If theoretical physicists, led by the University of Oregon's Stephen Hsu, are right, the idea that nature's forces merge under grand unification has grown fuzzy. view more (2008-10-07)
Astronaut health on moon may depend on good dusting
Lunar dust could be more than a housekeeping issue for astronauts who visit the moon. Their good health may depend on the amount of exposure they have to the tiny particles. view more (2008-05-14)
Cosmologists aim to observe first moments of universe
During the next decade, a delicate measurement of primordial light could reveal convincing evidence for the popular cosmic inflation theory, which proposes that a random, microscopic density fluctuation in the fabric of space and time gave birth to the universe in a hot big bang approximately 13.7 billion years ago. view more (2009-02-17)
Magnetic Fields Play Larger Role in Star Formation than Previously Thought
he simple picture of star formation calls for giant clouds of gas and dust to collapse inward due to gravity, growing denser and hotter until igniting nuclear fusion. In reality, forces other than gravity also influence the birth of stars. New research shows that cosmic magnetic fields play a more important role in star formation than previously... view more... (2009-09-10)
'Rocket Science' to help Britain's elderly
Helping an elderly person up the stairs may not seem rocket science - but look again, perhaps it is. Scientists studying the effects of space flight on humans are applying their findings to the elderly population on earth after discovering that the effects of micro-gravity on astronauts are greatly similar to the effects of ageing. Researchers at... view more... (2004-01-09)
Pulsar find boosts hope for gravity-wave hunters
Neutron star pairs may merge and give off a burst of gravity waves about six times more often than previously thought, scientists report in today's issue of the journal Nature [4 December]. If so, the current generation of gravity-wave detectors might be able to register such an event every year or two, rather than about once a decade - the most... view more... (2003-12-02)
Dark energy may be vacuum
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen's Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute have brought us one step closer to understanding what the universe is made of. As part of the international collaboration ESSENCE they have observed distant supernovae (exploding stars), some of which emitted the light we now see more than half the age... view more... (2007-01-17)
Lisa And The Search For Elusive Gravity Waves
For almost 100 years, scientists have been searching for direct evidence of the existence of gravity waves - faint ripples in the fabric of spacetime predicted in Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity. view more (2005-03-31)
Rivers on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, resemble those on Earth
Recent evidence from the Huygens Probe of the Cassini Mission suggests that Titan, the largest moon orbiting Saturn, is a world where rivers of liquid methane sculpt channels in continents of ice. view more (2005-12-06)
Simulation Reveals How Body Repairs Balance
Your body goes to a lot of trouble to make sure you stay upright. But when the brain's neural pathways are impaired through injury, age or illness, muscles are deprived of the detailed sensory information they need to perform the constant yet delicate balancing act required for normal movement and standing. view more (2007-09-26)
Researchers find a potential key to human immune suppression in space
Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center have identified a set of key immune-response genes that do not turn on in a weightless environment. The discovery is another clue in the effort to solve an almost 40-year-old mystery: why the human immune system does not function well in the weightlessness of space. view more (2005-10-13)
Rosetta closes in on Earth - a second time
ESA's comet chaser, Rosetta, is on its way to its second close encounter with Earth on 13 November. The spacecraft's operators are leaving no stones unturned to make sure Earth's gravity gives it the exact boost it needs en route to its destination. view more (2007-11-09)
Method of predicting clear air turbulence could make flights smoother in the future
It comes blasting out of the blue on your airplane flight: sudden bumpiness and sometimes even a violent plummeting. It arrives without warning, and it can be more than frightening, since it causes tens of millions of dollars in injury claims every year. view more (2008-10-01)
Ultrafast star escapes black hole
Galactic nuclei are the cores of galaxies, groups of thousands to millions of stars that are held together by gravity. As stars in the nucleus are so close together, interactions readily occur. view more (2006-10-05)
Dwarf galaxies need dark matter too, U-M astronomers say
Stars in dwarf spheroidal galaxies behave in a way that suggests the galaxies are utterly dominated by dark matter, University of Michigan astronomers have found. view more (2007-10-25)
Satellites unlock secret to northern India's vanishing water
Using NASA satellite data, scientists have found that groundwater levels in northern India have been declining by as much as one foot per year over the past decade. Researchers concluded the loss is almost entirely due to human activity. view more (2009-08-13)
Dark energy existed in infant universe
Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have discovered that dark energy, a mysterious repulsive force that makes the universe expand at an ever-faster rate, is not new but rather has been present in the universe for most of its 13-billion-year history. view more (2006-11-17)
Hubble finds ring of dark matter
Astronomers have long suspected the existence of the invisible substance of dark matter as the source of additional gravity that holds together galaxy clusters. view more (2007-05-16)
|
|
