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. (PhysOrg.com) -- Jasper Kirkby, a physicist at CERN and colleagues have built an experimental climate chamber to measure the impact of cosmic rays on aerosol creation to mimic the creation of clouds in Earth's atmosphere. So far, as the team describes in their paper published in Nature, there appears to be some evidence of aerosol creation, but not enough to account for cloud formation, and thus there’s no evidence yet to show that cosmic rays have an impact on global temperatures. http://phys.org/news233481014.html Physics Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:20:01 EST news233481014 Italian researchers using data from the satellite PAMELA have proven that theories showing there ought to be a ring of antiprotons encircling the Earth due to cosmic rays colliding with nuclei in the upper atmosphere are correct. Piergiorgio Picozza from the University of Rome, Tor Vergata, and a host of colleagues have published the results of their findings in arXiv. http://phys.org/news231753994.html Physics Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:06:51 EST news231753994 Cosmic rays are really sub-atomic particles, being mainly protons (hydrogen nuclei) and occasionally helium or heavier atomic nuclei and very occasionally electrons. Cosmic ray particles are very energetic as a result of them having a substantial velocity and hence a substantial momentum. http://phys.org/news227180112.html Space & Earth Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:40:01 EST news227180112 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Voyager probes are truly going where no one has gone before. Gliding silently toward the stars, 9 billion miles from Earth, they are beaming back news from the most distant, unexplored reaches of the solar system. http://phys.org/news226853599.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:53:43 EST news226853599 (PhysOrg.com) -- The largest and most complex scientific instrument yet to be fitted to the International Space Station was installed today. Taken into space by the Space Shuttle, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer will sift ten thousand cosmic-ray hits every minute, looking for nature’s best-kept particle secrets. http://phys.org/news225114293.html Physics Fri, 20 May 2011 12:45:15 EST news225114293 The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer will revolutionize what we know about invisible cosmic rays the same way NASA's Hubble Space Telescope rewrote what we know about the visible universe says the intellectual force behind the instrument. The AMS is to launch on space shuttle Endeavour in April. http://phys.org/news224935000.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 May 2011 10:57:24 EST news224935000 For the first time, scientists have an almost complete sky map of high-energy cosmic rays. http://phys.org/news223614848.html Physics Tue, 03 May 2011 04:14:26 EST news223614848 (PhysOrg.com) -- Some chemical elements appear much more abundantly in nature than others, which is partly due to how the elements originally formed. Scientists know that the light elements (hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and traces of lithium) were produced by fusion in the early Universe. Today, lithium, beryllium, and boron are constantly being produced in cosmic rays, while the heavier elements (up to iron) are formed by fusion in stars. Elements heavier than iron are formed by supernovae. http://phys.org/news222594526.html Physics Thu, 21 Apr 2011 08:49:38 EST news222594526 (AP) -- So now Japan's radioactive fallout is showing up in milk on the U.S. West Coast. Not to worry, though. It turns out that traces of radioactivity are in many foods we eat, the air we breathe and the water we swim in. http://phys.org/news220853169.html Medicine & Health Fri, 01 Apr 2011 05:06:29 EST news220853169 In a paper to be published in the April 10, 2011, issue of The Astrophysical Journal, scientists on NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, including lead author Nathan Schwadron and others from the University of New Hampshire, isolate and resolve the mysterious "ribbon" of energy and particles the spacecraft discovered in the heliosphere – the huge bubble that surrounds our solar system and protects us from galactic cosmic rays. http://phys.org/news220796760.html Space & Earth Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:26:32 EST news220796760 The discovery of a pattern of X-ray "stripes" in the remains of an exploded star may provide the first direct evidence that a cosmic event can accelerate particles to energies a hundred times higher than achieved by the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth. http://phys.org/news220183673.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:08:13 EST news220183673 The Sun has been in the news a lot lately because it's beginning to send out more flares and solar storms. Its recent turmoil is particularly newsworthy because the Sun was very quiet for an unusually long time. Astronomers had a tough time explaining the extended solar minimum. New computer simulations imply that the Sun's long quiet spell resulted from changing flows of hot plasma within it. http://phys.org/news218294599.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:23:52 EST news218294599 NASA and the National Science Foundation launched a scientific balloon on Monday, Dec. 20, to study the effects of cosmic rays on Earth. It was the first of five scientific balloons scheduled to launch from Antarctica in December. http://phys.org/news212230670.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Dec 2010 08:58:02 EST news212230670 The National Science Foundation has signed a five-year, $34.5-million agreement with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to operate a unique telescope--a cubic kilometer in volume--buried in the Antarctic ice sheet between 1,400 meters and 2,400 meters deep. http://phys.org/news209726186.html Physics Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:16:45 EST news209726186 (PhysOrg.com) -- An instrument that uses cosmic rays to measure the moisture content in soil ultimately could prompt major improvements in weather forecasting and irrigation practices, and provide a wealth of new data about land density and the impacts of climate change. The University of Arizona's Marek Zreda is leading the project. http://phys.org/news209229755.html Space & Earth Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:50:01 EST news209229755 (PhysOrg.com) -- Panspermia is a mechanism for spreading organic material throughout the galaxy, but the destructive effects of cosmic rays and ultraviolet light tend to mean most organisms would be destroyed or arrive on a new world broken and dead. Now Paul S. Wesson, a visiting researcher at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Canada, suggests the information contained within damaged organic material could seed new life. He terms this process necropanspermia. http://phys.org/news208762898.html Space & Earth Fri, 12 Nov 2010 07:50:01 EST news208762898 The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) destined for the International Space Station already is collecting cosmic ray signatures, even as it sits in a work stand at the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said Prof. Samuel Ting, the principal investigator for the program. http://phys.org/news207394205.html Physics Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:30:29 EST news207394205 As the last ice age was ending, about 13,000 years ago, a final blast of cold hit Europe, and for a thousand years or more, it felt like the ice age had returned. But oddly, despite bitter cold winters in the north, Antarctica was heating up. For the two decades since ice core records revealed that Europe was cooling at the same time Antarctica was warming over this thousand-year period, scientists have looked for an explanation. http://phys.org/news203171437.html Space & Earth Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:30:48 EST news203171437 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bacteria collected from rocks taken from the cliffs at the tiny English fishing village of Beer in Devon, have survived on the outside surface of the International Space Station for 553 days. The bacteria, known as OU-20, resemble cyanobacteria called Gloeocapsa. http://phys.org/news201938033.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 Aug 2010 06:54:16 EST news201938033 This month physicist Juan Collar and his associates are taking their attempt to unmask the secret identity of dark matter into a Canadian mine more than a mile underground. http://phys.org/news200742616.html Physics Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:50:34 EST news200742616 (PhysOrg.com) -- Though still under construction, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole is already delivering scientific results - including an early finding about a phenomenon the telescope was not even designed to study. http://phys.org/news199468476.html Space & Earth Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:55:11 EST news199468476 Cosmic rays are made of protons, scientists found as they used a vast array of telescopes arranged across the Utah desert. Each telescope in the 67-unit arrangement sees the sky with a multifaceted eye. It’s no wonder they call it Fly’s Eye. http://phys.org/news197217643.html Physics Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:41:16 EST news197217643 (PhysOrg.com) -- Deep in a mine 230 stories underground, physicists are trying to detect dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up nearly a quarter of the universe. Last December, tantalizing rumors of a major discovery by the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) set the physics world abuzz. The Caltech collaborators describe their experiment. http://phys.org/news196531263.html Physics Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:20:01 EST news196531263 An international team including scientists from Princeton University has detected subatomic particles deep within the Earth's interior. The discovery could help geologists understand how reactions taking place in the planet's interior affect events on the surface such as earthquakes and volcanoes. Someday, scientists may know enough about the sources and flow of heat in the Earth to predict events like the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland. http://phys.org/news196344059.html Physics Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:01:22 EST news196344059 (PhysOrg.com) -- In May a University of Maryland-led team of scientists reported some previously unknown features in the energy spectra of cosmic ray nuclei, which have been studied for almost 100 years. Cosmic rays were discovered in 1912 with an electroscope carried on a manned hot air balloon. http://phys.org/news194779899.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:32:17 EST news194779899 (PhysOrg.com) -- ARIANNA, a proposed array of detectors for capturing the most energetic cosmic rays, is being tested in Antarctica with a prototype station built last December on the Ross Ice Shelf by a Berkeley Lab team. By detecting neutrino-generated signals bounced off the interface of water and ice beneath the shelf, scientists hope to pinpoint the still unidentified sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. http://phys.org/news190976193.html Physics Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:58:05 EST news190976193 Stefan Funk wants to improve ground-based gamma ray imaging systems. Today's best instruments have their limits, Funk noted, and newer, more sensitive equipment is required to enter the next stage of astrophysical research. A physicist with the joint SLAC/Stanford Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Funk received funding for a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project to develop components capable of boosting gamma ray telescope speed and precision while keeping costs down. http://phys.org/news190393764.html Physics Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:30:02 EST news190393764 Two decades of atomic bomb testing in the atmosphere are yielding an unexpected bonus for consumers, scientists reported here today at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). It's a new test to determine whether that Bordeaux or burgundy is from a fine vintage year and commands premium price or actually is a counterfeit vin ordinaire or cheap plonk worth much less. http://phys.org/news188453382.html Chemistry Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:10:29 EST news188453382 Europe's third space freighter will be named after Italian physicist Edoardo Amaldi, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday. http://phys.org/news187961431.html Space & Earth Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:30:45 EST news187961431 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Borexino collaboration of about 80 scientists from six countries, who have been working with a detector buried 1.5 km beneath the Gran Sasso mountain near l'Aquila in Italy have detected geo-neutrinos, which are electron antineutrinos created by radioactive decays inside the Earth's mantle and crust. http://phys.org/news187946006.html Physics Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:14:02 EST news187946006