This photo shows the Earth and Moon as seen from Mars. The image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on October 3, 2007. At the time the image was taken, Earth was 142 million kilometers (88 million miles) from Mars, giving the HiRISE image a scale of 142 kilometers (88 miles) per pixel, an Earth diameter of about 90 pixels and a moon diameter of 24 pixels. The phase angle is 98 degrees, which means that less than half of the disk of the Earth and the disk of the moon have direct illumination. We could image Earth and moon at full disk illumination only when they are on the opposite side of the sun from Mars, but then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail. You can see a larger view of the image here. Source: NASA Posted in Space Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

This Mola Mola or Ocean Sunfish is one of the largest and stangest animals found in the sea. The Mola Mola is the world's largest bony fish. As the National Geographic video below describes it - the Mola Mola looks like a "massive swimming head." The Mola Mola can weigh up to 4,000 pounds. It can gain over sixty million times its birthweight. For more on this strange fish check out the listings on Fishbase.org, OceanLight.com and Wikipedia. The Ocean Sunfish website also has lots of facts, photos and news. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

Scientists have managed to capture an electron in motion on film for the first time. MSNBC reports that scientists used very short pulses of intense laser light called attosecond pulses and a stroboscope to film the electron. Previously it was impossible to photograph electrons because of their extreme speediness, so scientists had to rely on more indirect methods. These methods could only measure the effect of an electron's movement, whereas the new technique can capture the entire event. Extremely short flashes of light are necessary to capture an electron in motion. A technology developed within the last few years can generate short pulses of intense laser light, called attosecond pulses, to get the job done. "It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10-18 seconds long, or, expressed in another way: an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe," said Johan Mauritsson of Lund University in Sweden. Using another laser, scientists can guide the motion of the electron to capture a collision between an electron and an atom on film. Here's the video. The electron's movements shown in the film correspond to a single wavelength of light so the speed has been slowed down greatly so the human eye can observe the motion. The video can also be found here on the Attosecond Physics and High-Order Harmonic Generation website. See also this post on the Curious Cat blog. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

Researchers collecting specimens off Antarctica have found strange creatures. Creatures like giant sea spiders, tunicates and organisms looking like slender glass were all found. Researchers also described a strange looking fish with "funny dangling bits" around their mouth. They saw thousands of creatures and as many as a quarter them were previously undiscovered. You can see some of them in the video clip below. An article in the Telegraph also has photos of the tunicates and a giant scale worm. Last year a psychedelic octopus was discovered in the in frigid waters off Antarctica. Unfortunately, global warming may allow sharks and crabs to come and eat many of these defenseless ocean lifeforms. "Sharks are going to arrive in Antarctica as long as the warming trend continues, a bit more slowly than crabs - crabs are going to get there first," said Professor Cheryl Wilga of the University of Rhode Island (URI), US. "But once they do get there they are capable of eating the organisms that live there." Professor Wilga said the arrival of sharks and shell-crushing bony fishes would lead to dramatic changes in the number and proportions of species found there. Shrimp, ribbon worms and brittle stars are likely to be the most vulnerable to population declines. Dr Sven Thatje of the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, UK, said animals living in shallow water in Antarctica were unique on Earth today because they evolved in a very cold environment over tens of millions of years. Posted in Oceans Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

A team of researchers from the UK's University College London (UCL) and New York's Stony Brook University have discovered the 70 million-year-old fossil of a massive dinosaur-eating frog in Madagascar. The scientists have named the frog Beelzebufo, meaning "the frog from hell." The frog weighed 4kg and had a body length of up to 40cm. It also had a squat body, huge head and wide mouth. Professor Susan Evans, UCL Anatomy & Developmental Biology, said the frog would have been the size of a squashed beach-ball. Evans said, "This frog, a relative of today's Horned toads, would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth. If it shared the aggressive temperament and 'sit-and-wait' ambush tactics of living Horned toads, it would have been a formidable predator on small animals. Its diet would most likely have consisted of insects and small vertebrates like lizards, but it's not impossible that Beelzebufo might even have munched on hatchling or juvenile dinosaurs." The find is also interesting because it sheds new light on a debate about how the earth's land masses used to be arranged. The frog find gives credence to a theory that Madagascar was once linked to India and South America. Professor Evans said, "Our discovery of a frog strikingly different from today's Madagascan frogs, and akin to the Horned toads previously considered endemic to South America, lends weight to the controversial paleobiogeographical model suggesting that Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent and South America were linked well into the Late Cretaceous. It also suggests that the initial spread of such beasts began earlier than that proposed by recent estimates." The BBC and National Geographic also have stories on the ancient frog predator. Photo source: Stony Brook University Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

The Associated Press is reporting in the video below that endangered Loggerhead Turtles having been washing up on beaches in the UK and Ireland. These younger Loggerhead turtles may have been carried across the Atlantic Ocean by the Gulf Stream. Residents are being advised not to put the turtles back into the water becasue the colder water can be a shock to their system. Wildlife officials in the UK are attempting to collect the turtles in the hopes that they can be rehabilitated and eventually returned to the ocean. Loggerhead turtles are protected by international treaties and agreements as well as national U.S. laws. The NOAA fisheries website has a detailed entry on Loggerhead turtles. Wikipedia's entry includes links to more Loggerhead resources. Posted in Animals Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

A rare string of powerful February tornadoes killed dozens of people and destroyed homes and businesses in the Mid-South. Wikipedia has been keep track. Currently, they show over fifty tornadoes in four states: Alabama, Arkanas, Kentucky and Tennessee. The death toll stands at 59. On Deadline has some links including this one that shows damage in the hard hit Union University. You can read some of the reports filed by the National Weather Service here and here. As you can see here and on the chart on the above right the early outbreak has put 2008 way above the norm for this time of year. This Nightly News video show footage of some of the damage and investigates why some people didn't know these deadly tornadoes were on the way. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

A new school in Chicago - The Latin School of Chicago - is opening with an impressive green roof from American Hydrotech. The green roof atop the Latin School is among a growing number of schools nationally that have incorporated green roofs into their building designs. The 5,500-square-foot green roof combines a high-performance waterproof membrane with lightweight green roof technology. The green roof is also accessible to students and faculty as a learning environment. "The plantings will be fully established in about a year and I'm excited to see what the classes can fully do with it," Deb Sampey, middle school director, says. "Its first connection with the curriculum will probably be with our 8th grade and high school astronomy classes. But classes might also come up here for creative writing projects and just sit in this space and be inspired on a beautiful day." More details about the green roof were described in a press release: The multiple components of the Latin School green roof include a waterproofing membrane, insulation, and drainage/moisture retention elements, which are all part of a Garden Roof Assembly supplied by American Hydrotech, Inc. Hydrotech, founded in 1977 and based in Chicago, is a leader in the development, production and distribution of premium waterproofing and related construction products. Last year, the company?s green roof for the Ballard Library in Seattle, Washington, was included in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Top 10 Green Projects of 2006. The Latin School's new green roof, in addition to its aesthetic qualities, offers multiple environmental benefits. Plants on the roof work to keep the structure's temperature down, save on heating and cooling costs, reduce stormwater runoff, extend the useful life of the roof and reduce the urban heat island effect. "Chicago is at the forefront of the green roof movement in the United States and the Latin School is now an active participant in this movement," says Edward J. Jarger, regional manager of American Hydrotech. "We're very pleased the school selected our Garden Roof technology and we anticipate this will become a model for other schools nationwide." Founded in 1888, The Latin School of Chicago serves a diverse community of 1,101 students in junior kindergarten through twelfth grade from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. The school worked with the award-winning architectural firm of Nagle Hartray Danker Kagan McKay Penney to design a building that is in keeping with the feel of the neighborhood while providing first-class educational amenities and sound green design. In addition to the green roof, the building provides significant green space, including private gardens on the ground level. Recycled materials were used throughout the building when feasible and specially-treated windows and sunshades have been installed to reduce the building's use of natural resources to heat and cool the facility. Green buildings are a growing trend. Eventually there will be many buildings that have green roofs. There will even be green skyscrapers that behave more like an ecosystem than an environmentally-unfriendly steel fortress. Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds Read more…

Researchers scouting potential landing sites for NASA's next Mars rover mission are using new data from a powerful mineral-mapping camera to narrow the site selection. When NASA Mars Program officials and members of the Mars science community gather in California next week to pare down the list of candidate landing sites for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), they can refer to 125 new images from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). The images and accompanying analysis products are available on the CRISM Web site at http://crism.jhuapl.edu/msl_landing_sites/........ Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Thursday, July 17, 2008 Source: Space Telescope Science Institute Three Red Spots Mix it Up on Jupiter A new sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among three red spots clustered together in Jupiter's... Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 Source: University of Arizona Phoenix Mars Lander Rasps Frozen Layer, Collects Sample TUCSON, Ariz. Read more…

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PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 Source: University of Maryland Scientists Find Rings of Jupiter Are Shaped in Shadow COLLEGE PARK, Md. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 Source: British Antarctic Survey New discovery at Jupiter could help protect Earth-orbit satellites Radio waves accelerate electrons within Jupiter's magnetic field in the same way as they do on Earth Radio waves accelerate electrons within... Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 Source: American Geophysical Union Novel spots found on Jupiter WASHINGTON-- Scientists have observed unexpected luminous spots on Jupiter caused by its moon Io. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Thursday, January 24, 2008 Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory Giant Storm Eruption at Jupiter Unearths a Buried Past Scientists around the globe have observed an astonishing and rare change in Jupiter's atmosphere -- a huge disturbance churning in the middle northern... Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 Source: Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres Tunguska catastrophe: Evidence of acid rain supports meteorite theory Moscow/Bologna/Halle. The Tunguska catastrophe in 1908 evidently led to high levels of acid rain. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Thursday, July 10, 2008 Source: European Parliment Reliable space assets needed for an independent European Security and Defence Policy Security and defence The European Union needs a common approach to defending its interests in space, says an own-initiative report by... Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Friday, July 4, 2008 Source: European Space Agency Herschel acoustic and vibration tests Herschel acoustic and vibration tests The Herschel spacecraft is now undergoing a series of mechanical tests at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Friday, July 4, 2008 Source: Science and Technology Facilities Council STFC announces ambitious BP1.906bn science funding programme The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) on Thursday 3 July announced a three-year BP1. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Friday, July 4, 2008 Source: European Commission GALILEO: the procurement for the first constellation of the European navigation satellites will now start Today the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA) have launched the procurement of the first... Read more…

STATUS REPORT Date Released: Thursday, July 3, 2008 Source: Ulysses hanging on valiantly The Ulysses spacecraft, whose mission was expected to end on 1 July 2008, is hanging on valiantly as spacecraft controllers wait for a sign of the fuel freeze that would end the mission. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Thursday, July 3, 2008 Source: European Space Agency Rosetta awakes from hibernation for asteroid encounter Spacecraft controllers have just awoken Rosetta from hibernation to prepare for its encounter with asteroid (2867) Steins on 5 September. Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 Source: European Space Agency Procurement of full Galileo System Begins Today, the European Commission - with the support of ESA - is launching the procurement of Galileo, a global navigation system composed of 30 dedicated navigation satellites... Read more…

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 Source: European Southern Observatory Austria to join ESO on 1 July 2008 Today, at a ceremony in Vienna, the Austrian Minister for Science and Research, Johannes Hahn and the ESO Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, signed the formal Accession... Read more…