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Astronomy / Space Science - 22.12.2016
New record set for world's most heat resistant material
New record set for world’s most heat resistant material
Researchers have discovered that tantalum carbide and hafnium carbide materials can withstand scorching temperatures of nearly 4000 degrees Celsius. These materials may enable spacecraft to withstand the extreme heat generated from leaving and re-entering the atmosphere. Dr Omar Cedillos-Barraza In particular, the team from Imperial College London discovered that the melting point of hafnium carbide is the highest ever recorded for a material.

Astronomy / Space Science - 21.12.2016
ANU helps find supercluster of galaxies near Milky Way
This is one of the biggest concentrations of galaxies in the Universe - possibly the biggest in the neighbourhood of our Galaxy. ANU Professor Matthew Colless is part of an international team of astronomers that found one of the Universe's biggest superclusters of galaxies near the Milky Way. Professor Colless said the Vela supercluster, which had previously gone undetected as it was hidden by stars and dust in the Milky Way, was a huge mass that influenced the motion of our Galaxy.

Astronomy / Space Science - 15.12.2016
Dark past of planet-eating ‘Death Star’
HIP68468, a twin star to the sun about 300 light-years away, may have swallowed one or more of its planets, based on lithium and refractory elements recently discovered near its surface. An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Chicago, has made the rare discovery of a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth's sun.

Astronomy / Space Science - 12.12.2016
Detecting weather on a gas giant exoplanet
Detecting weather on a gas giant exoplanet
Signs of powerful changing winds have been detected on an exoplanet 16 times larger than Earth, according to a team involving UCL scientists. It's the first time that weather systems have been found on a gas giant outside the solar system. Led by the University of Warwick, the researchers discovered that the gas giant HAT-P-7b, which is located over 1000 light years away, is affected by large scale changes in strong winds moving across the planet, likely leading to catastrophic storms.

Earth Sciences - Astronomy / Space Science - 06.12.2016
Researcher and amateur science sleuth find cosmic dust in cities
Researcher and amateur science sleuth find cosmic dust in cities
Scientists have found cosmic dust for the first time in urban places, on rooftops in three of the world's major cities. "When Jon first came to me I was dubious. Many people had reported finding cosmic dust in urban areas before, but when they were analysed scientists found that these particles were all industrial in origin.

Astronomy / Space Science - 06.12.2016
Saturn’s bulging core implies moons younger than thought
Saturn's moon Dione, foreground, appears darker than the moon Tethys because it has a lower surface albedo, as shown in a photograph taken from the Cassini spacecraft on March 23, 2010. At the time, Cassini was about 746,000 miles from Dione and about 1.1 million miles from Tethys. Freshly harvested data from NASA's Cassini mission reveals that Saturn's bulging core and twisting gravitational forces offer clues to the ages of the planet's moons.

Astronomy / Space Science - Life Sciences - 02.12.2016
Minimum effort for maximum effect
Ten days after astronaut Thomas Pesquet take-off into space on the Proxima mission, many questions remain about human adaptation to gravity. The research team at Inserm Unit 1093, 'Cognition, Motor Activity and Sensorimotor Plasticity' (Inserm/Université de Bourgogne), focuses on the manner in which movements that depend on this parameter are performed.

Astronomy / Space Science - 01.12.2016
Cosmic recycling strengthens stellar Spiderweb theory
Eight years ago Dr Nina Hatch , an astronomer at The University of Nottingham , identified a thin haze around a distant galaxy known as the Spiderweb galaxy. She suggested this haze was made up of rapidly forming young stars. But the problem with this research, published in the academic journal Royal Astronomical Society , was that no one knew where this young stellar population could be coming from.

Environment - Astronomy / Space Science - 30.11.2016
Snow Data from Satellites Improves Temperature Predictions
A view of the Himalayan mountains from the International Space Station. A University of Texas at Austin study found that snow data collected by satellites significantly improved seasonal temperature prediction in the Tibetan Plateau, a region bordered by the Himalayas. NASA AUSTIN, Texas - Researchers with The University of Texas at Austin have found that incorporating snow data collected from space into computer climate models can significantly improve seasonal temperature predictions.

Astronomy / Space Science - 29.11.2016
CaSSIS sends first images from Mars orbit
CaSSIS sends first images from Mars orbit
The Mars Camera, CaSSIS, on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter captured its first high resolution images of the Red Planet last week.

Astronomy / Space Science - 29.11.2016
First views of Mars show potential for ESA's new orbiter
First views of Mars show potential for ESA’s new orbiter
ESA's new ExoMars orbiter has tested its suite of instruments in orbit for the first time, hinting at a great potential for future observations. The Trace Gas Orbiter, or TGO, a joint endeavour between ESA and Roscosmos, arrived at Mars on 19 October. Its elliptical orbit takes it from 230'310 km above the surface to around 98 000 km every 4.2 days.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 24.11.2016
Artwork inspired by gravitational wave discovery
A large oil painting inspired by the first ever detection of gravitational waves is to be unveiled at Cardiff University. Penelope Cowley, a local artist who specialises in bringing art and science together, will present her work at the University's School of Physics and Astronomy, along with a video showcasing a unique artistic spin on the discovery.

Earth Sciences - Astronomy / Space Science - 23.11.2016
New hazard caused by volcanic eruptions discovered
Scientists approach the broken, steaming ground around the Cordón Caulle vent, which was hugely uplifted during the 2011 eruption. Little of the slope seen behind the black lava flow would have been visible before the uplift occurred. Courtesy of Dr Hugh Tuffen. Research has identified, for the first time, a new type of hazard caused by explosive volcanic eruptions.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 21.11.2016
A Stellar Circle of Life
A snapshot of the stellar life cycle has been captured in a new portrait from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA). A cloud that is giving birth to stars has been observed to reflect X-rays from Cygnus X-3, a source of X-rays produced by a system where a massive star is slowly being eaten by its companion black hole or neutron star.

Astronomy / Space Science - Physics - 21.11.2016
How to monitor global ocean warming - without harming whales
How to monitor global ocean warming - without harming whales
Most of the extra heat trapped by human-generated emissions is ending up in the oceans. But tracking the temperature of the world's oceans to monitor the change is trickier than it might seem. While satellites monitor surface temperature, measuring the ocean's interior temperature poses a logistical challenge.

Earth Sciences - Astronomy / Space Science - 18.11.2016
Chicxulub: a unique crater to elucidate planetary surfaces
Chicxulub: a unique crater to elucidate planetary surfaces
The fall of an asteroid in the Yucatán Peninsula (Mexico) 66 million years ago is believed to have caused the extinction of dinosaurs. It also created the Chicxulub impact crater, the only such crater on Earth that still has a peak ring – a type of structure commonly found, in contrast, on the surface of several objects in the Solar System.

Astronomy / Space Science - 17.11.2016
Bright Radio Bursts Probe Hidden Matter
Bright Radio Bursts Probe Hidden Matter
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are mysterious flashes of radio waves originating outside our Milky Way galaxy. A team of scientists, jointly led by Caltech postdoctoral scholar Vikram Ravi and Curtin University research fellow Ryan Shannon, has now observed the most luminous FRB to date, called FRB 150807.

Astronomy / Space Science - 17.11.2016
Saturn's gravity uncovered by satellite images
Saturn’s gravity uncovered by satellite images
Scientists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) are part of an international team that has discovered minute fluctuations in Saturn's gravitational field using several thousand images of the planet's moons obtained by the Cassini probe. Thursday 17 November 2016 The results help provide a better understanding of the internal structure of the planet, and hopefully answer the question of what lies at the centre of Saturn - whether it has a large rocky core or if its density is much lower.

Astronomy / Space Science - 16.11.2016
Probing Greenland's ice sheet for future satellites
Probing Greenland’s ice sheet for future satellites
With a helicopter the sole feature on the vast expanse of ice and her only way back to warmth and safety, polar scientist Anna Hogg must have thought, 'What on Earth am I doing out here'' as she set to taking ice samples. Anna and fellow scientist Andrew Shepherd, from the University of Leeds in the UK, spent two days extracting long cylindrical ice cores and using instruments to probe the ice sheet as part of an international effort to develop new space technology to monitor our changing polar environment.

Physics - Astronomy / Space Science - 10.11.2016
Simulations Show Swirling Rings, Whirlpool-Like Structure in Subatomic 'Soup'
Simulations Show Swirling Rings, Whirlpool-Like Structure in Subatomic ’Soup’
International team including Berkeley Lab researcher surprised by complex dynamics in model of quark-gluon plasma At its start, the universe was a superhot melting pot that very briefly served up a particle soup resembling a 'perfect,' frictionless fluid. Scientists have recreated this 'soup,' known as quark-gluon plasma, in high-energy nuclear collisions to better understand our universe's origins and the nature of matter itself.
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