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. Scientists have known for two decades that sulfur compounds that are produced by bacterioplankton as they consume decaying algae in the ocean cycle through two paths. In one, a sulfur compound dimethylsulfide, or DMS, goes into the atmosphere, where it leads to water droplet formation – the basis of clouds that cool the Earth. In the other, a sulfur compound goes into the ocean's food web, where it is eaten and returned to seawater. http://phys.org/news224337538.html Space & Earth Wed, 11 May 2011 13:00:09 EST news224337538 A team of University of Hawai'i at Mānoa researchers led by Ralf Kaiser, physical chemist at UH Mānoa, unraveled the chemical evolution of the orange-brownish colored atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, the only solar system body besides Venus and Earth with a solid surface and thick atmosphere. The UH Mānoa team, including Xibin Gu and Seol Kim, conducted simulation experiments mimicking the chemical reactions in Titan's atmosphere utilizing crossed molecular beams in which the consequence of a single collision between molecules can be followed. http://phys.org/news172224744.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:13:24 EST news172224744 Scientists using the Cassini spacecraft's  Magnetospheric Imaging instrument (MIMI) have detected a new, temporary radiation belt  at Saturn, located around the orbit of its moon Dione at about 377 000 km from the center of the planet. The discovery will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam by Dr Elias Roussos on Monday 14 September. http://phys.org/news172139487.html Space & Earth Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:32:31 EST news172139487 The link between declining CO2 levels in the earth's atmosphere and the formation of the Antarctic ice caps some 34 million years ago has been confirmed for the first time in a major research study. http://phys.org/news172072921.html Space & Earth Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:50:06 EST news172072921 (PhysOrg.com) -- UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere. http://phys.org/news171791091.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:45:33 EST news171791091 The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, was capable of producing amino acids, the building blocks of life, from inorganic substances. http://phys.org/news171263002.html Space & Earth Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:04:31 EST news171263002 (PhysOrg.com) -- If it has already rained, it's going to continue to pour, according to a Purdue University study of how ocean-origin storms behave when they come ashore. http://phys.org/news170515334.html Space & Earth Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:10:04 EST news170515334 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new international research effort on the Greenland ice sheet with the University of Colorado at Boulder as the lead U.S. institution set a record for single-season deep ice-core drilling this summer, recovering more than a mile of ice core that is expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate change in the future. http://phys.org/news170516207.html Space & Earth Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:10:01 EST news170516207 (PhysOrg.com) -- With a very lucky shot, scientists have captured a one-second image and the electrical fingerprint of huge lightning that flowed 40 miles upward from the top of a storm. http://phys.org/news170254828.html Space & Earth Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:01:19 EST news170254828 Mars may not be as dormant as scientists once thought. The 2004 discovery of methane means that either there is life on Mars, or that volcanic activity continues to generate heat below the martian surface. ESA plans to find out which it is. Either outcome is big news for a planet once thought to be biologically and geologically inactive. http://phys.org/news169120520.html Space & Earth Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:10:03 EST news169120520 More accurate global weather forecasts and a better understanding of climate change are in prospect thanks to a breakthrough by engineers at Queen's University Belfast's Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT). http://phys.org/news168806090.html Space & Earth Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:01 EST news168806090 Saturn's haze-enshrouded moon Titan turns out to have much in common with Earth in the way that weather and geology shape its terrain, according to two pieces of research to be presented at the XXVII General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wind, rain, volcanoes, tectonics and other Earth-like processes all sculpt features on Titan's complex and varied surface in an environment more than 100 C colder on average than Antarctica. http://phys.org/news168791012.html Space & Earth Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:10:02 EST news168791012 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. http://phys.org/news167373533.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:39:57 EST news167373533 Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, has finished building and testing the heat shield for protecting the Curiosity rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project. This heat shield is even larger than the ones used for protecting Apollo astronauts as they returned to Earth. http://phys.org/news166454521.html Space & Earth Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:23:44 EST news166454521 Through a recent modeling experiment, a team of NASA-funded researchers have found that future concentrations of carbon dioxide and ozone in the atmosphere and of nitrogen in the soil are likely to have an important but overlooked effect on the cycling of water from sky to land to waterways. http://phys.org/news166357620.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:00:01 EST news166357620 (PhysOrg.com) -- Fifty million years ago, the North and South Poles were ice-free and crocodiles roamed the Arctic. Since then, a long-term decrease in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has cooled the Earth. Researchers at Yale University, the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of Sheffield now show that land plants saved the Earth from a deep frozen fate by buffering the removal of atmospheric CO2 over the past 24 million years. http://phys.org/news165674929.html Space & Earth Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:10:01 EST news165674929 Lunar eclipses are well-documented throughout human history. The rare and breathtaking phenomena, which occur when the moon passes into the Earth's shadow and seemingly changes shape, color, or disappears from the night sky completely, caught the attention of poets, farmers, leaders, and scientists alike. http://phys.org/news163690552.html Space & Earth Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:36:18 EST news163690552 (PhysOrg.com) -- Cloud chasers studying Saturn's moon Titan say its clouds form and move much like those on Earth, but in a much slower, more lingering fashion. http://phys.org/news163266644.html Space & Earth Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:51:38 EST news163266644 Virgin Galactic owned by Sir Richard Branson completed a successful test on May 28, 2009 of its hybrid nitrous oxide motor designed by Scaled Composites and a subcontractor Sierra Nevada Corporation. The innovative hybrid motor is the largest of its kind in the world and offers safety features including a kill switch allowing the spaceship to glide back to Earth and perform a conventional runway touch down. http://phys.org/news162884806.html Space & Earth Sun, 31 May 2009 06:16:59 EST news162884806 (AP) -- Atlantis' astronauts tenderly dropped the Hubble Space Telescope overboard Tuesday, sending the restored observatory off on a new voyage of discovery and bidding it farewell on behalf of the planet. http://phys.org/news161937231.html Space & Earth Tue, 19 May 2009 09:52:22 EST news161937231 (PhysOrg.com) -- Groundbreaking Victoria University research shows that ocean acidification may have no negative effect on tropical corals and local sea anemones - in fact it may improve photosynthesis. http://phys.org/news161877580.html Biology Mon, 18 May 2009 15:00:20 EST news161877580 (PhysOrg.com) -- Geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question - an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice ages may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth. http://phys.org/news160910438.html Space & Earth Thu, 07 May 2009 10:21:43 EST news160910438 (Physorg.com) -- Since its launch last June, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a new class of pulsars, probed gamma-ray bursts and watched flaring jets in galaxies billions of light-years away. Today at the American Physical Society meeting in Denver, Colo., Fermi scientists revealed new details about high-energy particles implicated in a nearby cosmic mystery. http://phys.org/news160659605.html Space & Earth Mon, 04 May 2009 12:41:03 EST news160659605 (PhysOrg.com) -- Observations from NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft have allowed scientists to reveal for the first time the speed, trajectory, and three-dimensional shape of solar explosions known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. http://phys.org/news160162452.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:34:44 EST news160162452 Plants absorbed carbon dioxide more efficiently under the polluted skies of recent decades than they would have done in a cleaner atmosphere, according to new findings published this week in Nature. http://phys.org/news159626551.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:43:01 EST news159626551 (PhysOrg.com) -- Heading into a period of the Martian year prone to major dust storms, the team operating NASA's twin Mars rovers is taking advantage of eye-in-the-sky weather reports. http://phys.org/news159122161.html Space & Earth Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:36:47 EST news159122161 New Rochelle, April 16, 2009-Solar energy and winds, collisions with asteroids and comets, and changing magnetic fields have all altered the environment of Mars, a planet that may have been able to support life during its history, as documented in a special collection of papers published in the current issue of Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert. http://phys.org/news159106484.html Space & Earth Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:15:08 EST news159106484 (PhysOrg.com) -- Together with the MAGIC-I telescope, MAGIC-2 allows stereoscopic observations using these two largest gamma-ray telescopes. Astronomers can explore sources of very-high energy gamma rays. The astrophysical study of particle acceleration processes in celestial objects could lead to fundamental insights into the dynamics of the so-called non-thermal Universe. http://phys.org/news159026790.html Space & Earth Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:07:16 EST news159026790 (PhysOrg.com) -- Twin NASA spacecraft have provided scientists with their first view of the speed, trajectory, and three-dimensional shape of powerful explosions from the sun known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. This new capability will dramatically enhance scientists' ability to predict if and how these solar tsunamis could affect Earth. http://phys.org/news158940323.html Space & Earth Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:06:02 EST news158940323 Where does space begin? Scientists at the University of Calgary have created a new instrument that is able to track the transition between the relatively gentle winds of Earth's atmosphere and the more violent flows of charged particles in space - flows that can reach speeds well over 1000 km/hr. And they have accomplished this in unprecedented detail. http://phys.org/news158503800.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:50:27 EST news158503800