For three weeks spread out over April and October of this year, the Suomi NPP satellite (jointly of NASA and NOAA) scanned all the Earth’s land as it appeared at night. Scientists then mapped the satellite’s data — 2.5 terabytes of it — over an earlier Blue Marble image, transforming that picture’s daytime blues, browns,…
Within the next five years, it may be possible to charge a cellphone without knowing where it is and destroy tumors no matter how deep they are within the body, using research conducted at the University of Maryland. Through an age-old technique called time reversal, a team of professors discovered how to communicate — by…
Rich countries are to blame for climate change and should take the lead in forging a global climate pact by 2015, a deadline that “must be met,” the head of the United Nations said. On the sidelines of international climate talks in Qatar, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was “only fair and reasonable that…
The towering redwood forests along California’s coast are known for the clammy fog that rolls in from the ocean almost every night. Now scientists have discovered an unwelcome stowaway in these cloud banks: mercury. Previous research had shown that fog sampled in and around Santa Cruz, California, contained the heavy metal mercury but no one…
Extroverted gorillas in captivity outlive their shy brethren, a new study of these great apes in North American zoos and sanctuaries finds. Using methods adapted from studying human personality, keepers, volunteers, researchers and other caretakers gauged 298 individual gorillas’ temperaments. These gorillas were followed over 18 years and their life spans recorded. The results revealed…
If humanity’s earthly tenure isn’t fated to end with the Mayan calendar, it is certain to end someday. It’s the sort of thing artist and author, Trevor Paglen, thinks about a lot. He knows, for example, that we homo sapiens have occupied the earth a mere .004 percent of its 4.5 billion-year history. He knows…
As far back in time as astronomers have been able to see, the universe has had some trace of heavy elements, such as carbon and oxygen. These elements, originally churned from the explosion of massive stars, formed the building blocks for planetary bodies, and eventually for life on Earth. Now researchers have peered far back…
U.S. astronomers say they’ve observed a young star with a rotating dust disk considered the youngest still-forming planetary system ever found. The infant star surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas is more than 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory reported. While just one-fifth the mass…
Palaeontologists have found what is likely to be the oldest known dinosaur, filling in a yawning evolutionary gap. A study in Biology Letters describes Nyasasaurus parringtoni, a new species from 10-15 million years before the previous earliest dinosaur specimens. It walked on two legs, measured 2-3m in length with a large tail and weighed between…
Astronomers have found a galaxy that represents a new type, and falls within the range of active galaxies known as Seyfert galaxies. It glows green because of X-rays spewing from a gigantic black hole at its center that weighs several million to billion times more than the sun. Dubbed a “green bean” galaxy, it appears…