Science / 40

Japan lands Hayabusa-2 spacecraft on Ryugu asteroid in successful mission

February 22, 2019

Space agency controllers will direct its approach until it is 500 metres (1,600 feet) above the asteroid's surface, after which it will be on its own because it takes 20 minutes for commands from Earth to reach the craft. Hayabusa2, which arrived into the vicinity of the Ryugu asteroid in June after a more than three-year, 3.2-billion-km journey, touched down on the rocky asteroid where it will collect samples.

Why do zebras have stripes? They make bad landing strips for flies

February 22, 2019

The video footage showed while flies slowed down substantially before landing on horses, when they approached zebras they failed to decelerate, often crashing into the zebra and ricocheting off. Now most scientists agree that the function of a zebra's stripes is to ward off biting flies. Only five flies landed on the horses dressed in zebra coats during a 30-minute period, whereas more than 60 touched down on those in the solid black and solid white coats in the same time period.

Israel's first lunar lander launched into space from Florida

February 22, 2019

NASA has a laser reflector aboard Beresheet and is offering its Deep Space Network for communication. The Beresheet mission originally was part of the Google Lunar XPrize competition and even made the final cut before the contest ended past year without a victor.

Super Snow Moon shines over Ireland tonight

February 21, 2019

Under this nomenclature, last month's total lunar eclipse was called a super blood wolf moon . 'The February 2019 supermoon is special because it will be the largest full moon gracing our night skies until 2026, ' said Emily Drabek-Maunder, astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich.

Cyclone Oma expected to linger until early next week

February 21, 2019

These conditions are then expected to extend south over the remaining southeastern Queensland coast during Thursday evening and Friday. It's expected to continue its slow track towards Brisbane , but at this stage the cyclone is expected to remain offshore.

Supermoon 2019: Super Snow Moon triggers FLOOD ALERTS and EXTREME high tides

February 21, 2019

The moon's rotation around the Earth is not in a flawless circle. When the moon is at its closest to the earth in its orbit it is called as the Supermoon . The snowfall averages for the Washington DC area for January and February are almost tied as the snowiest months of the year. The Irish super snow moon will be it's brightest from 5:10 pm local Irish time and will be visible throughout the night.

South East Queensland braces for wild weather with approach of Cyclone Oma

February 21, 2019

The category two Cyclone Oma has been on the move for the last week and is now circling towards Vanuatu, but the effects of the strong winds and rough waters could be felt in Queensland. There is a "low risk" of direct impact on Queensland, but rough conditions and coastal erosion were expected. "Reflecting on what we've done with our beach nourishment over the past two years, including sand pumping, rainbowing onto the beach, and stockpiling 3 million cubic metres on the northern part of ...

Supermoon, 2019’s Biggest and Brightest, to Light up Sky Tuesday

February 19, 2019

February's full moon reached its peak at 10:54 a.m. On Tuesday 19 February the world will be treated to a stunning full moon. Instead, check the skies Monday and Tuesday night for the best views. This February full moon is particularly noteworthy after a Black Moon in February past year. It is also known as the Hunger Moon because hunting was hard for the tribes due to the snow .

Tomorrow's 'Super Snow Moon’ Will Be The Brightest Of 2019

February 18, 2019

If you're planning to use a smartphone to photograph the moon, you can do it on Monday night as well as at moonrise (around 6 pm) on Tuesday. Astrologer Richard Nolle defined the term back in 1979 as a "new or full moon which occurs with the moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit".

School pupils strike to save the planet

February 18, 2019

Ten-year-old Zachary Hird, a pupil at Cambridge's Newnham Croft Primary School, was at the protest in Cambridge with his mother Diane Hird. Groups chanted energetically "This is what democracy looks like", "CO2, no thank you" and "Don't be a knob turn off the hob".

Well, That SNC-Lavalin Controversy Escalated Quickly (Podcast)

February 18, 2019

In January, Wilson-Raybould accepted the cabinet shuffle over to veterans affairs. SCC rules teacher's secret recording of students in school's common spaces was criminal voyeurism People can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public spaces, the Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed 9-0 in a landmark privacy judgment that convicts an Ontario high school teacher of voyeurism for using a camera pen to secretly record the faces and breasts of female students.

A Super Snow Moon Is Almost Here, so Set Your Alarms

February 18, 2019

Nasa explained: 'The Maine Farmer's Almanac first published Indian names for the full Moons in the 1930's, and according to this almanac, this was known as the Snow Moon because of the heavy snows that fall in this season. Astronomy enthusiasts in Singapore should look up to the sky early Tuesday night (19 February) to catch a glimpse of the supermoon. If you are hoping to capture a good "supermoon" photo, catching the moonrise is your best bet.

NASA Discovers Huge Crater Under Greenland's Ice

February 14, 2019

Of the 200 or so earthly impact craters whose existence scientists have confirmed, only two pairs are as spatially close despite forming at vastly different times. This meant that either the impact happened more than 79,000 years ago or - if it took place more recently - any impact-disturbed ice had long ago flowed out of the area and been replaced by ice from farther inland.

Nasa prepares to announce the death of the Opportunity Mars Rover

February 13, 2019

NASA's Opportunity, the Mars rover that was built to operate for just three months but kept going and going, rolling across the rocky red soil, was pronounced dead Wednesday, 15 years after it landed on the planet. Inspired, Fraeman went on to become a planetary scientist, joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and ended up deputy project scientist for Opportunity.

Mars One dreams plummet back to Earth as company goes bankrupt

February 13, 2019

In July, the company reported it had an investment from Phoenix Enterprises for up to $14 million that was meant to be used to pay for licensing fees and re-list Mars One Ventures on the stock exchange. And she said she was still excited at the idea of getting to Mars someday - perhaps by applying for NASA's space program and joining one of its missions to Earth's neighbor.

Trudeau denies his office 'directed' Jody Wilson-Raybould to help SNC-Lavalin

February 12, 2019

In a brief statement to the media, Wilson-Raybould - who is now the Veterans Affairs Minister - says she can't discuss the matter because she is bound by solicitor-client privilege. NDP MPs Charlie Angus and Nathan Cullen on Friday wrote to ethics commissioner Mario Dion, suggesting the allegations could represent a breach of a provision of the Conflict of Interest Act that prohibits public office holders from giving "preferential treatment to any person or organization".

New Horizons final Ultima Thule images reveal true shape

February 11, 2019

Objects like Ultima Thule represent an even earlier stage in that process, frozen in time for billions of years. The latest images were taken almost 10 minutes after New Horizons crossed its closest approach point, which were the final views New Horizons captured of Ultima Thule , said a NASA release on Friday.

Tom Suozzi, Moderate Democrat On Powerful Economic Committee, Backs Green New Deal

February 11, 2019

Pete Buttigieg , mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said on Sunday he supported the recently released " Green New Deal " resolution from New York Democratic Rep. "I frankly think we need to set our sights high", said the CT senator, who co-sponsored the Green New Deal resolution along with Sen. "I think that's drastic." the next student conceded.

Medals at 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be made from recycled phones, laptops

February 10, 2019

Around 5,000 gold, silver and bronze medals will be made for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo next year. As of November, about 2,400 NTT DOCOMO mobile phone operator stores and 1,594 municipal authorities across Japan were acting as collection centers for these old gadgets .

Was the Fourth Hottest Year on Record in almost 140 Years

February 09, 2019

The last five years-from 2014 to 2018-are the warmest years ever recorded in the 139 years that NOAA has tracked global heat. "Eighteen of the nineteen warmest years since record keeping began have occurred since 2001". It was the fourth highest since 1880, the earliest year for which records are available. Overall, global temperatures have risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) in the last 138 years.

Technical glitch: US: SpaceX no-load test is delayed

February 09, 2019

The Falcon 9 booster will blast off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A, which has a new crew access arm installed on the launch tower for eventual manned missions. NASA also wants to have the Crew Dragon approved to take astronauts to the ISS by late 2019. On its first test flight, the Crew Dragon will aim to make a two-week trip to the ISS without hardware hiccups.

Name of UK-built Mars rover revealed

February 09, 2019

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced today (7 February) that its rover for the upcoming ExoMars mission will be named Rosalind, after Rosalind Elsie Franklin. The team already has an orbiter in residence at the Red Planet. James Watson and Francis Crick used her research without permission and with little credit when publishing their model of the structure of DNA in 1953.

NASA's Tiny Satellites Fall Silent After Proving New Tech at Mars

February 09, 2019

Having travelled well past Mars , the twin CubeSats seem to have reached their limit, Nasa said in a statement . In a new post by NASA, scientists reveal that it's now been over a month since either of the MarCO CubeSats made contact with Earth, and nobody knows if we'll ever hear from them again.

2018 was the fourth-hottest year on record

February 08, 2019

Given that we desperately want to avoid rising above that global average temperature to avoid climate catastrophe for millions - if not billions - of people, now is the time to take climate action seriously, and begin the rapid transition of the global economy over to a low-carbon one, that relies on green, renewable energy.

‘Green New Deal’ Looks To Tackle The Scourge Of Cow Flatulence

February 07, 2019

The legislation is already backed by more than 40 House Democrats, Bloomberg reports, including House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern. "We welcome the enthusiasm that is there with the Green New Deal ", Pelosi said Thursday at a news conference.

The Milky Way really is warped - like a bent old vinyl record

February 07, 2019

Such stars are hot and massive - five to twenty times the mass of our sun and up to 100,000 times as bright. The light of these short-lived stars changes regularly, in day- to month-long cycles. From afar, the Milky Way appears like a thin rotating disk of stars, orbiting the centre every few hundred million years. This undated image provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences shows the Artist's impression of the Milky Way.

Nissan cancels X-Trail production in England

February 07, 2019

Nissan had announced its plan to build new SUV models at the Sunderland plant about a week after Clark's letter was sent. The company's official statement said that in order to support heavy investment in new technology and equipment at its Sunderland operations (where the Juke, Qashqai and Leaf models will continue to be produced) it has made a decision to consolidate the X-Trail's production in its Japanese facility.

Magnetic north is moving quickly causing compasses to show misleading directions

February 06, 2019

Changes in that underground flow can alter the Earth's magnetic field lines - and the poles where they converge. In the five years between public updates , magnetic observations from the European Space Agency's Swarm mission are studied to track the movement of the poles.

Climate change will dramatically alter colour of Earth's oceans

February 05, 2019

Dr Anna Hickman, the co-author of the research from the school of the ocean and earth science at the University of Southampton, stated, "In the same way that plants on land are green, phytoplankton are green as well, so the amount and different types of phytoplankton affect the colour of the ocean surface".

'Dangerous' Antarctic glacier has massive hole, scientists warn

February 05, 2019

Researchers expected to find some holes between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom, however, the size and "explosive growth rate" of the cavity shocked them. Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica has lost most of that ice in only the past three years - a dire forecast for sea level rise. "We are discovering different mechanisms of retreat", Milillo said.

29 killed as Polar Vortex freezes US Midwest

February 04, 2019

Meteorologists linked the brutally cold weather to the so-called polar vortex , a cap of icy air that usually circles the North Pole. The Cook County's medical examiner's office said there were four confirmed cold-related deaths this week in the Chicago area.

Living fossil from early universe: Hubble spots new galaxy near Milky Way

February 03, 2019

An worldwide team of astronomers recently used the telescope to study white dwarf stars in the NGC 6752 . They wanted to measure the age of the cluster but instead found a dwarf galaxy . You may have spotted the Triangulum Galaxy-also known as Messier 33 or NGC 598-on a particularly clear night: It's that faint, blurry object in the constellation of Triangulum (the Triangle).

China says it's even colder on the Moon than we thought

February 02, 2019

The Chang'e-4 probe switched to dormant mode during the lunar night due to the lack of solar power. Chang'e 4 is also a lander-rover combination and will explore both above and below the lunar surface after arriving at the South Pole-Aitken basin's Von Karman crater following a 27-day journey.

Huge cavity in Antarctic glacier signals rapid decay

February 01, 2019

JPL said the glacier, about the size of Florida, holds enough ice to raise ocean levels another 60 centimetres if it completely melts. Within each main region of Antarctica (East, West and the Antarctic Peninsula), ice loss has been concentrated in certain sectors over the last 40 years, the new study finds.

NASA trying to reestablish contact with Opportunity rover

February 01, 2019

Aside from showing off its metallic, boxy self and its dusty surroundings, Curiosity also managed to show off the "Rock Hall" drill site in the lower left corner of the frame. In the background, a regional dust storm is visible, a reminder of the challenges Curiosity faces as it does its pioneering work on Mars and an uncomfortable reminder of the potential fate of its cousin rover, Opportunity, which has been out of contact with NASA engineers and is feared lost after a planet-wide dust-storm ...

Brrr, big chill hits US Midwest, United States News & Top Stories

January 31, 2019

Authorities and health experts warned that frostbite and hypothermia can could set in in minutes in the extreme cold. The frigid winds were headed for the US East Coast later on Wednesday into Thursday. Much of the Chicago River was frozen over. The extreme cold was "a scary situation", because much of the housing is of poor quality, said Chris Fairbanks, energy assistance program manager for the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota.

As Chicago braced for unsafe cold, Trump joked about global warming

January 29, 2019

What the hell is going on with Global Waming (sic)? Trump has long dismissed global warming , and in late November said he wasn't among the "believers" who see climate change as a pressing problem. "People can't last outside even for minutes". Temperatures are expected to rise into the 40s and 50s throughout the Midwest over the weekend, the Weather Channel said.

Extreme Wind Chills Expected in Chicago, Midwest as 'Polar Vortex' Moves In

January 29, 2019

Look for a high around 20 degrees at midnight. The upper Midwest could be hit by -60 degrees Farenheit wind chills, and the upper Mississippi Valley could see chills as brutally cold as -55 degrees Fahrenheit. The states were deluged by up to nine inches (23 cm) of snow in some places, as a wide-reaching storm moved through. In eastern North Dakota, officials have issued travel alerts because of blowing snow.

72% of Americans are 'very worried' about climate change

January 27, 2019

But the survey found that almost half of Americans (48 percent) now believe people in the United States are being harmed by global warming "right now". About two-thirds of Americans believe that global warming is influencing the weather, in the wake of a string of deadly extreme events in the US. The highest-ever proportion, 46 percent, said they'd personally experienced the effects of global warming.

Earth's oldest discovered... on the Moon

January 27, 2019

An worldwide team of scientists associated with the Center for Lunar Science and Exploration (CLSE), part of NASA's Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, found evidence that the rock was launched from Earth by a large impacting asteroid or comet .

Prince William speaks about stigma of mental health at Davos 2019

January 26, 2019

More than ever, he warned, we are out of touch with the natural world. Kensington Palace said the duke would talk to Sir David about his decades of work highlighting the importance of the natural world. Sir David told the crowd: "We can go everywhere, we can go into the bottom of the sea, we can go into space, we can use drones, we can use helicopters, we can use macroworlds, we can speed things up, we can slow things down, we can film in the darkness - and so the natural world has never ...

SpaceX's shiny new rocket broke when it tipped over in high winds

January 26, 2019

The test hopper is a squat version of a full-scale Starship: a spaceship that's being created to send people to Mars . The tech company will instead build and test the prototype in south Texas. Musk also recently told Popular Mechanics that building with stainless steel is cheap and a fast process, while also being strong to endure the temperature changes and flying pressure through our planet's atmosphere.

What Time is the Solar Eclipse 2017? | 2017 Solar Eclipse

January 26, 2019

Hundreds of millions of people will fall under the shadow of the eclipse , since the whole country will be darkened - some parts more than others.About 12 million people live in the path of totality, according to the American Astronomical Society.

5 gene-edited monkeys cloned by China for human disease research

January 26, 2019

Other species were subsequently cloned via the method over the years but primates had until last year proven hard to clone and the team's achievement was hailed as a breakthrough. This was then replace with the nucleus from another cell in its body - from a fibroblast, a cell that creates collagen. The cell nucleus was transferred into a seedless egg.

Scientists name ancient shark species after arcade classic 'Galaga'

January 25, 2019

Christened Galagadon nordquistae , the species was remarkably small, growing to approximately 12-18 inches (30.5-45 cm) in length. "The more we discover about the Cretaceous period (145 million years to 66 million years ago) just before the non-bird dinosaurs went extinct, the more fantastic that world becomes", said Terry Gates, a lecturer at North Carolina State University.

NASA replaces astronaut on Boeing's 1st crew launch

January 25, 2019

In a new announcement, NASA reveals that it is swapping out one of the astronauts expected to participate in the very first manned flight of the Boeing Starliner ship, which will ferry travelers to and from the International Space Station .

Scientists Say That the Greenland Ice Sheet Is Melting Very Fast

January 25, 2019

The research reveals how different areas of Greenland might contribute to sea-level rise in future. Climate scientists have mostly studied the south east and north west regions for sea level rise as these have a lot of glaciers. Using data from satellites and Global Positioning System stations across Greenland, his team found that by 2012, Greenland was losing ice at four times the rate it was in 2003, and that acceleration was focused in the southwest region.

World first as meteorite captured crashing into Moon during rare lunar eclipse

January 25, 2019

Sunday's full moon was also a "supermoon"-the name given when its orbit is at its closest point to Earth, or perigee". During the super blood wolf moon total lunar eclipse on Monday, cameras pointed at the moon captured the first known sighting of a meteorite slamming into the shadow-covered moon.

'Super Blood Wolf Moon': San Diegans gaze upon lunar eclipse of supermoon

January 23, 2019

Baker Photography, who is also a graphic designer for The Wilson Times. A full moon happens several times a year while lunar eclipses happen on average twice a year, making this event extra special. Neither of these will enter the earth's shadow, thus will not be eclipsed. Sunlight passing through Earth's atmosphere lights the moon in a dramatic fashion, turning it red.

Trump says he told Sanders 'not to bother' with briefing

January 23, 2019

The White House Correspondents Association called the decision a retreat from transparency and accountability that sets a bad precedent. The reason became a little clearer after a tweet from President Trump. "Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we're like: 'The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don't address climate change and your biggest issue is, how are we gonna pay for it?'" Ocasio-Cortez said Monday.

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