http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (Phys.org) —A flash of light from a stellar outburst has provided a rare look at the 3-D structure of material ejected by an erupting nova. http://phys.org/news289583261.html Space & Earth Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:47:48 EST news289583261 A scientific team led by University of Louisville doctoral student Karen Collins has discovered a hot Saturn-like planet in another solar system 700 light-years away. http://phys.org/news289581631.html Space & Earth Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:20:38 EST news289581631 A strange comet-like object discovered in 2010 ended up being an asteroid that had been the victim of a head-on collision from another space rock. The object created a bit of buzz because of its mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and long, trailing streamers of dust. Named P/2010 A2 (LINEAR), the object is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and has been the focus of much study, including images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and many ground-based observatories. But over time, the asteroid's long dust tail has grown to be so long that the entire object can't fit into the field of view of most observatories. http://phys.org/news289557167.html Space & Earth Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:32:54 EST news289557167 (Phys.org) —A bright dwarf galaxy relatively close to Earth's Milky Way and trailing fireballs is the first clear example of a galaxy in the act of dying, scientists argue in new research. http://phys.org/news289554234.html Space & Earth Tue, 04 Jun 2013 08:44:00 EST news289554234 (Phys.org) —Astronomers at NASA and Pennsylvania State University have used NASA's Swift satellite to create the most detailed ultraviolet light surveys ever of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the two closest major galaxies. http://phys.org/news289501408.html Space & Earth Mon, 03 Jun 2013 18:03:36 EST news289501408 (Phys.org) —Our Solar System's Milky Way neighborhood just went upscale. We reside between two major spiral arms of our home galaxy, in a structure called the Local Arm. New research using the ultra-sharp radio vision of the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) indicates that the Local Arm, previously thought to be only a small spur, instead is much more like the adjacent major arms, and is likely a significant branch of one of them. http://phys.org/news289480211.html Space & Earth Mon, 03 Jun 2013 14:10:01 EST news289480211 (Phys.org) —NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will have two opportunities in the next few years to hunt for Earth-sized planets around the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. http://phys.org/news289486131.html Space & Earth Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:49:24 EST news289486131 Theoretical astrophysicist Avi Loeb has a pretty good idea about how the universe's first galaxies formed, but he can't wait to see if his theories are right. http://phys.org/news281348388.html Space & Earth Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:00:03 EST news281348388 To say that Alice Harding, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has a passion for pulsars is a bit of an understatement. On Jan. 24, she was named a winner of the 2013 Bruno Rossi prize together with Roger Romani of Stanford University. The award recognizes their work in establishing a theoretical framework for understanding how pulsars emit gamma rays, the most powerful form of light. http://phys.org/news279221313.html Space & Earth Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:28:39 EST news279221313 (Phys.org)—When most people think of astronomers, they envision scientists who spend time peering at stars and galaxies through telescopes on high mountain tops. Rutgers astronomer Rachel Somerville depends on those who make such observations, both from telescopes on the ground and orbiting earth in space. But her primary tool for understanding how galaxies formed billions of years ago – and how they continue to evolve in our contemporary universe – are large computers. http://phys.org/news278256437.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:27:46 EST news278256437 The American Institute of Physics (AIP) and IOP Publishing (IOP) have jointly announced the gift of a new astronomy thesaurus called the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus (UAT) to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) that will help improve future information discovery for researchers. http://phys.org/news278246955.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:50:21 EST news278246955 (Phys.org)—The spectacular barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has ranked among the biggest stellar systems for decades. Now a team of astronomers from the United States, Chile and Brazil has crowned it the largest-known spiral, based on archival data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission, which has since been loaned to the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena http://phys.org/news277058143.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:36:02 EST news277058143 Many people around the world were thrilled to see a transit of Venus in June (June 5 in the United States and June 6 in Asia, on the other side of the International Dateline), the dark silhouette of Venus passing in front of the Sun. Jay Pasachoff of Williams College (Williamstown, MA) and the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA) and Glenn Schneider (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona) organized extensive observations of the transit. With support from the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society, they observed the six-hours of the transit from the 10,000-foot mountaintop of Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii. http://phys.org/news277047508.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:38:55 EST news277047508 Spacetime may be less like foamy quantum beer and more like smooth Einsteinian whiskey, according to research led by physicist Robert Nemiroff of Michigan Technological University being presented today at the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif. http://phys.org/news276985447.html Space & Earth Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:25:53 EST news276985447 (Phys.org)—Astronomers have discovered hundreds of previously-unknown sites of massive star formation in the Milky Way, including the most distant such objects yet found in our home Galaxy. Ongoing studies of these objects promise to give crucial clues about the structure and history of the Milky Way. http://phys.org/news276960548.html Space & Earth Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:30:03 EST news276960548 (Phys.org)—Research by University of Arizona astronomy professor Rodger Thompson finds that a popular alternative to Albert Einstein's theory for the acceleration of the expansion of the universe does not fit newly obtained data on a fundamental constant, the proton to electron mass ratio. http://phys.org/news276969783.html Physics Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:03:09 EST news276969783 In 2004 the Supernova Cosmology Project based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used the Hubble Space Telescope to find a tantalizing supernova that appeared to be almost 10 billion light-years distant. But researchers had to wait years until a new camera was installed on the Hubble before they could confirm the spectrum and light curve of supernova SCP-0401—the supernova furthest back in time useful for precise measures of the expansion history of the universe. http://phys.org/news276958641.html Space & Earth Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:30:01 EST news276958641 (Phys.org)—Researchers using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) have captured new images of a ring of gas and dust seven light-years in diameter surrounding the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and of a neighboring cluster of extremely luminous young stars embedded in dust cocoons. http://phys.org/news276893550.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:53:20 EST news276893550 (Phys.org)—Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have probed the stormy atmosphere of a brown dwarf, creating the most detailed "weather map" yet for this class of cool, star-like orbs. The forecast shows wind-driven, planet-sized clouds enshrouding these strange worlds. http://phys.org/news276892892.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:42:00 EST news276892892 (Phys.org)—Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a large asteroid belt around the star Vega, the second brightest star in northern night skies. The scientists used data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, in which NASA plays an important role. http://phys.org/news276892707.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:38:39 EST news276892707 (Phys.org)—Our Milky Way is a spiral galaxy—a pinwheel-shaped collection of stars, gas and dust. It has a central bar and two major spiral arms that wrap around its disk. Since we view the Milky Way from the inside, its exact structure is difficult to determine. http://phys.org/news276885831.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:43:57 EST news276885831 (Phys.org)—Two University of Texas at Arlington researchers want to bridge the gap between what is known about exploding stars and the remnants left behind thousands of years later. So they're trying something new—using SNSPH, a complex computer code developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. http://phys.org/news276879068.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:51:27 EST news276879068 (Phys.org)—NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, set its X-ray eyes on a spiral galaxy and caught the brilliant glow of two black holes lurking inside. http://phys.org/news276858303.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:05:27 EST news276858303 (Phys.org)—Comets trailing wispy tails across the night sky are a beautiful byproduct of our solar system's formation, icy leftovers from 4.6 billion years ago when the planets coalesced from rocky rubble. http://phys.org/news276797567.html Space & Earth Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:12:58 EST news276797567 (Phys.org)—The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are beginning to find Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there. http://phys.org/news276796465.html Space & Earth Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:54:40 EST news276796465 (Phys.org)—The surprising discovery of a massive outburst in a neighboring galaxy is giving astronomers a tantalizing look at what likely is a powerful belch by a gorging black hole at the galaxy's center. The scientists were conducting a long-term study of molecules in galaxies, when one of the galaxies showed a dramatic change. http://phys.org/news276773745.html Space & Earth Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:00:01 EST news276773745 (Phys.org)—Jupiter, the mythical god of sky and thunder, would certainly be pleased at all the changes afoot at his namesake planet. As the planet gets peppered continually with small space rocks, wide belts of the atmosphere are changing color, hotspots are vanishing and reappearing, and clouds are gathering over one part of Jupiter, while dissipating over another. The results were presented today by Glenn Orton, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting in Reno, Nev. http://phys.org/news269714974.html Space & Earth Wed, 17 Oct 2012 17:49:53 EST news269714974 Among the oddities of the outer solar system are the middle-sized moons of Saturn, a half-dozen icy bodies dwarfed by Saturn's massive moon Titan. According to a new model for the origin of the Saturn system, these middle-sized moons were spawned during giant impacts in which several major satellites merged to form Titan. http://phys.org/news269704182.html Space & Earth Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:00:15 EST news269704182 (Phys.org)—In 1986, when Voyager swept past Uranus, the probe's portraits of the planet were "notoriously bland," disappointing scientists, yielding few new details of the planet and its atmosphere, and giving it a reputation as a bore of the solar system. http://phys.org/news269703526.html Space & Earth Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:38:56 EST news269703526 (Phys.org)—Scientific modeling methods that predicted climate change on Earth have been found to be accurate on Mars as well, according to a paper presented at an international planetary sciences conference Tuesday. http://phys.org/news269629797.html Space & Earth Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:10:16 EST news269629797