NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has set its infrared sight on a major galactic collision and witnessed not death, but a teeming nest of life. The colliding galaxies, called the Antennae galaxies, are in the process of merging together. As they churn into each other, they throw off massive streamers of stars and dark clouds of dust. Spitzer's heat-seeking eyes peered through that dust and found a hidden population of newborn stars. The new Spitzer image is reported in one of 86 Spitzer papers published in the September issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement. This special all-Spitzer issue comes just after the one-year anniversary of the observatory's launch, and testifies to its tremendously successful first year in space.
Japanese sailor and environmentalist Kenichi Horie has completed a 110-day solo voyage across the Pacific Ocean in a boat propelled by wave power to claim another world first.
A major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 hit the region of the Sea of Okhotsk early Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, but no casualties were reported.
Scientists with the US Phoenix lander will make their first analysis of Martian ice fragments in coming days but it could be the last done in one of the probe's small ovens, NASA said on its website Friday. ...
The head of the UN's Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists on Friday said only seven years remained for stabilising emissions of global-warming gases at a level widely considered safe.
A major climate change report for Australia's government on Friday recommended the rapid introduction of an emissions trading scheme to curb greenhouse gases and warned that delay could be disastrous.
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