news 2013

Researchers in Vienna shed light on the interplay of a worm's inner clocks For a long time, molecular chronobiology has almost exclusively focused on circadian rhythms that are driven by the changes of day and night and hence follow the daily cycle of the sun. However, especially in the sea, the cradle of evolution, organisms set their pace also according to the moon.

Within its first three months on Mars, NASA's Curiosity Rover saw a surprising diversity of soils and sediments along a half-kilometer route that tell a complex story about the gradual desiccation of the Red Planet. "We made this discovery literally with the very first laser shot on the Red Planet," said Roger Wiens, leader of the ChemCam instrument team.

Intense molecular hydrogen formation shown in near infrared image of the reflection nebula IC 63 in the constellation Cassiopeia. The white bars represent polarization seen toward stars in the background of the nebula. The largest polarization shows the most intense emission, demonstrating that hydrogen formation influences alignment of the dust grain with a magnetic field.

Two million years ago a supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy erupted in an explosion so immensely powerful that it lit up a cloud 200,000 light years away, a team of researchers led by the University of Sydney has revealed. The finding is an exciting confirmation that black holes can 'flicker', moving from maximum power to switching off over, in cosmic terms, short periods of time.

Astronomers have discovered enormous smooth shapes that look like vapour trails in a gigantic galaxy cluster. These 'arms' span half a million light years and provide researchers with clues to a billion years of collisions within the "giant cosmic train wreck" of the Coma cluster. Coma is like a giant cosmic train wreck where several clusters have collided with each other.

Much attention is paid to melting sea ice in the Arctic. But less clear is the situation on the other side of the planet. Despite warmer air and oceans, there's more sea ice in Antarctica now than in the 1970s - a fact often pounced on by global warming skeptics. The latest numbers suggest the Antarctic sea ice may be heading toward a record high this year.

Is your cable television on the fritz? One explanation, scientists suspect, may be the weather - the weather in space, that is. MIT researchers are investigating the effects of space weather - such as solar flares, geomagnetic storms and other forms of electromagnetic radiation - on geostationary satellites, which provide much of the world's access to cable television, Internet services and global communications.

Scientists at the University of Leeds have solved a 300-year-old riddle about which direction the centre of the Earth spins. The Earth’s inner core, made up of solid iron, ‘superrotates’ in an eastward direction – meaning it spins faster than the rest of the planet – while the outer core, comprising mainly molten iron, spins westwards at a slower pace.

New research has revealed that more ice leaves Antarctica by melting from the underside of submerged ice shelves than was previously thought, accounting for as much as 90 per cent of ice loss in some areas. Iceberg production and melting causes 2,800 cubic kilometres of ice to leave the Antarctic ice sheet every year.

Cambridge, MA - In 2005 the Hubble Space Telescope spotted unusually small galaxies densely packed with red stars in the distant, young universe. They were nicknamed "red nuggets," not only because they are small and red but also their existence challenged current theories of galaxy formation, making them precious in astronomers' eyes.

11 September 2013 Offering new insights into our fragile polar regions, ESA's CryoSat mission has provided three consecutive years of Arctic sea-ice thickness measurements, which show that the ice continues to thin. Although satellites have witnessed a downward trend in the extent of sea ice over the last two decades, it is essential to have accurate information on the mass or volume of ice being lost.

Data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft reveal that neutral interstellar atoms are flowing into the solar system from a different direction than previously observed. Interstellar atoms flow past the Earth as the solar system passes through the surrounding interstellar cloud at 23 kilometers per second (50,000 miles per hour).

Cambridge, MA - Astronomers are constantly on the hunt for ever-colder star-like bodies, and two years ago a new class of objects was discovered by researchers using NASA's WISE space telescope. However, until now no one has known exactly how cool their surfaces really are - some evidence suggested they could be room temperature.

04 Sep 2013 Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO's New Technology Telescope to explore more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our galaxy. They have found that butterfly-shaped members of this cosmic family tend to be mysteriously aligned — a surprising result given their different histories and varied properties.

2 September 2013 EU Member States have begun their independent testing of the most accurate and secure signal broadcast by the four Galileo navigation satellites in orbit. Transmitted on two frequency bands with enhanced protection, the Public Regulated Service (PRS) offers a highly accurate positioning and timing service, with access strictly restricted to authorised users.

Astronomers working with NASA'S Chandra X-ray Observatory have seen the giant black hole Sagittarius A* rejecting it's 'food' of vast gas clouds as they aren't sufficiently cool enough for it to swallow. Sgr A* is one of very few black holes where we can actually witness the process Q. Daniel Wang The giant black hole at the centre of the Milky Way appears to be on a severe diet.

Researchers find material ejects itself before black hole can devour it. For years, scientists have observed that the black hole at the center of our galaxy has a surprisingly small appetite. While the black hole, named Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star), is 4 million times as massive as the sun, it is unusually inactive for its size, devouring very little of the surrounding gas and other galactic material.

d The Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment is designed to provide new understanding of neutrino oscillations that can help answer some of the most mysterious questions about the universe. Shown here are the photomultiplier tubes in the Daya Bay detectors. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt) The international Daya Bay Collaboration has announced new results about the transformations of neutrinos – elusive, ghostlike particles that carry invaluable clues about the makeup of the early universe.

Star formation is an even more intense and dynamic process than previously thought, according to research based on data from one of the world's newest and most powerful telescopes. As stars form in clouds of gas and dust, they shoot powerful jets of gas and other raw material outward. Analysis of fresh high-resolution images of fast-moving emissions from a well-known protostar refines the existing picture of the outflows' size, shape, and motion, and shows that they are moving at greater velocities than previously measured, researchers report Aug.

Paper: "The Roche Limit for Close-orbiting Planets: Minimum Density, Composition Constraints, and Application to the 4.2 hr Planet KOI 1843.03" MIT team discovers an exoplanet that orbits its star in 8.5 hours. In the time it takes you to complete a single workday, or get a full night's sleep, a small fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year.