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Scientists Detect ‘Dark Lightning’ Energy Burst Linked to Visible Lightning
Apr. 24, 2013 — Researchers have identified a burst of high-energy radiation known as ‘dark lightning” immediately preceding a flash of ordinary lightning. The new finding provides observational evidence that the two phenomena are connected, although the exact nature of the relationship between ordinary bright lightning and the dark variety is still unclear, the scientists said.
“Our results indicate that both these phenomena, dark and bright lightning, are intrinsic processes in the discharge of lightning,” said Nikolai Østgaard, who is a space scientist at the University of Bergen in Norway and led the research team.
He and his collaborators describe their findings in an article recently accepted in Geophysical Research Letters — a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Dark lightning is a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules. Researchers refer to such a burst as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.
Read more:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130424210319.htm
Curiosity Chills Out In Safe Mode While NASA Analyzes Computer Glitch
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity paused its work over the weekend and is chilling in safe mode on Mars, while engineers on Earth try to resolve a computer glitch. The rover switched to a backup computer, but operations are on hiatus while NASA engineers work on the problem.
Last week, engineers noticed a glitch in the flash memory on one of the rover’s two computers. Curiosity had normal communications with Earth on Wednesday, Feb. 27, but like an annoying Facebook friend, it updated its status yet included no actual information. In the status update, engineers learned the rover did not go to sleep when planned, and when they started diagnosing the problem, they realized the main A-side computer had some corrupted files.
NASA’s Van Allen Probes Reveal a New Radiation Belt Around Earth
Feb. 28, 2013 — NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission has discovered a previously unknown third radiation belt around Earth, revealing the existence of unexpected structures and processes within these hazardous regions of space.
Previous observations of Earth’s Van Allen belts have long documented two distinct regions of trapped radiation surrounding our planet. Particle detection instruments aboard the twin Van Allen Probes, launched Aug. 30, quickly revealed to scientists the existence of this new, transient, third radiation belt.
The belts, named for their discoverer, James Van Allen, are critical regions for modern society, which is dependent on many space-based technologies. The Van Allen belts are affected by solar storms and space weather and can swell dramatically. When this occurs, they can pose dangers to communications and GPS satellites, as well as humans in space.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130228155430.htm
NASA Rover Confirms First Drilled Mars Rock Sample
Feb. 20, 2013 — NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. No rover has ever drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior.
Transfer of the powdered-rock sample into an open scoop was visible for the first time in images received Wednesday at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time the drill collected a sample as it bore into the rock,” said JPL’s Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer for Curiosity. “Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown.”
The drill on Curiosity’s robotic arm took in the powder as it bored a 2.5-inch (6.4-centimeter) hole into a target on flat Martian bedrock on Feb. 8. The rover team plans to have Curiosity sieve the sample and deliver portions of it to analytical instruments inside the rover.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130220161133.htm
Mars Orbiter Reveals Evidence Of Underground Lakes – And Possibly Life
The find has raised hopes that life may have once existed on the planet – and might even still be there.
Nasa said that the image “adds to an increasingly complex picture” of our nearest neighbouring planet.
Researchers analysed data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft as it looked down on the floor of the McLaughlin Crater, which is 57 miles in diameter and over 1.4 miles deep.
The picture showed that the crater was once deep enough to let underground water flow into its interior.
Never-Before-Seen Stage of Planet Birth Revealed
CREDIT: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S. Casassus et al.
Large gas giant planets appear to be clearing a gap in the disk of material surrounding the star, and using gravity to channel material across the gap to the interior, helping the star to grow. Theoretical simulations have predicted such bridges between outer and inner portions of disks surrounding stars, but none have been directly observed until now.
Read more: http://www.space.com/19100-alien-planet-birth-alma-telescope.html
Largest Quasar Ever Discovered Burns 100 Times Brighter Than Entire Milky Way
Astronomers have found a galaxy whose super-luminous nucleus–called a quasar–is burning 100 times as much energy as the entire Milky Way galaxy.
Though theory has long predicted that quasars this powerful should exist, the newly-discovered object, known as SDSS J1106+1939, is by far the most energetic ever observed. The quasar is powered by a supermassive black hole that lies at its center.
Planck spots hot gas bridging galaxy cluster pair
Planck spots hot gas bridging galaxy cluster pair
20 November 2012
ESA’s Planck space telescope has made the first conclusive detection of a bridge of hot gas connecting a pair of galaxy clusters across 10 million light-years of intergalactic space.
Planck’s primary task is to capture the most ancient light of the cosmos, the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB. As this faint light traverses the Universe, it encounters different types of structure including galaxies and galaxy clusters – assemblies of hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity.
If the CMB light interacts with the hot gas permeating these huge cosmic structures, its energy distribution is modified in a characteristic way, a phenomenon known as the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effect, after the scientists who discovered it.
This effect has already been used by Planck to detect galaxy clusters themselves, but it also provides a way to detect faint filaments of gas that might connect one cluster to another.
In the early Universe, filaments of gaseous matter pervaded the cosmos in a giant web, with clusters eventually forming in the densest nodes.
Much of this tenuous, filamentary gas remains undetected, but astronomers expect that it could most likely be found between interacting galaxy clusters, where the filaments are compressed and heated up, making them easier to spot.
Read more: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Planck/SEMRT791M9H_0.html
Curiosity Rover’s Secret Historic Breakthrough? Speculation Centers on Organic Molecules
- By Adam Mann
- November 20, 2012 |
Much of the internet is buzzing over upcoming “big news” from NASA’s Curiosity rover, but the space agency’s scientists are keeping quiet about the details.
The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.
“This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” Grotzinger told NPR in an segment published Nov. 20. Curiosity’s SAM instrument contains a vast array of tools that can vaporize soil and rocks to analyze them and measure the abundances of certain light elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen – chemicals typically associated with life.
The mystery will be revealed shortly, though. Grotzinger told Wired through e-mail that NASA would hold a press conference about the results during the 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 3 to 7. Because it’s so potentially earth-shaking, Grotzinger said the team remains cautious and is checking and double-checking their results. But while NASA is refusing to discuss the findings with anyone outside the team, especially reporters, other scientists are free to speculate.
Read more:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/curiosity-historic-news-organics/
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