http://www.physorg.com/space-news/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on earth science, astronomy and space exploration. (AP) -- A spacewalking astronaut put aside the impending birth of his daughter and blazed through his first-ever venture outside the International Space Station on Saturday. http://www.physorg.com/news178009250.html Space & Earth Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:33:55 EST news178009250 On the beach at Monster, bulldozers painstakingly turn sand dredged from the bottom of the North Sea bed into dunes in an ambitious effort to safeguard the Netherlands from flooding. http://www.physorg.com/news177946209.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:10:02 EST news177946209 (PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and scrutinizing the Saturnian system. http://www.physorg.com/news177927581.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:20:02 EST news177927581 From a devastating food crisis in Guatemala to water cuts in Venezuela, El Nino has compounded drought damage across Latin America this year. http://www.physorg.com/news177921078.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:50:11 EST news177921078 A proposed space mission that aims to measure dark energy could also detect planets that current surveys are unable to find. http://www.physorg.com/news177874211.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:00:05 EST news177874211 (AP) -- A pair of spacewalking astronauts, one of them a surgeon, hustled through antenna and cable work outside the International Space Station on Thursday and even whipped off an extra chore. http://www.physorg.com/news177847217.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:48:03 EST news177847217 Arnie Miller, University of Cincinnati professor of paleontology in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, and co-author Michael Foote of the University of Chicago publish their research in the Nov. 20 issue of Science with their paper, "Epicontinental Seas Versus Open-Ocean Settings: The Kinetics of Mass Extinction and Origination." http://www.physorg.com/news177873594.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:23:28 EST news177873594 (PhysOrg.com) -- Sometimes you really can believe your eyes. That's what NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) is telling researchers about a controversial phenomenon on the sun known as the "solar tsunami." http://www.physorg.com/news177872248.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:00:58 EST news177872248 (PhysOrg.com) -- Much of our planet's mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth's chemical cycles were different from today's. Using geochemical clues from rocks nearly 3 billion years old, a group of scientists including Andrey Bekker and Doug Rumble from the Carnegie Institution have made the surprising discovery that the creation of economically important nickel ore deposits was linked to sulfur in the ancient oxygen-poor atmosphere. http://www.physorg.com/news177863954.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:30:01 EST news177863954 (PhysOrg.com) -- Roughly 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, North America's vast assemblage of large animals -- including such iconic creatures as mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, ground sloths and giant beavers -- began their precipitous slide to extinction. http://www.physorg.com/news177864298.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:45:49 EST news177864298 (PhysOrg.com) -- A research group at Kyoto University has discovered that shocks are the primary energy sources that excite the galactic wind region of starburst galaxy NGC 253. Their images of the center of this galaxy, bright with intense star formation, have generated findings that substantially increase our meager knowledge of the physical properties of galactic winds and move us closer to understanding galaxy evolution. http://www.physorg.com/news177783331.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:20:03 EST news177783331 Astronomers have found that the extrasolar planet HAT-P-7b has a retrograde or highly tilted orbit. Studying such planets is important in understanding the diversity of planetary systems and assessing current models of how planets migrate. The findings could help astrobiologists in the search for habitable planets beyond our solar system. http://www.physorg.com/news177783167.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:30:19 EST news177783167 The Dutch government said Wednesday it had approved the experimental below-ground storage of excess CO2 to curb damaging emissions, dismissing concerns of residents who live on top of the project. http://www.physorg.com/news177784093.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:28:54 EST news177784093 (PhysOrg.com) -- A recently published Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study of a naturally bioreduced sediment sample from a former uranium mill tailings site reveals insights that enhance understanding of the long-term persistence of uranium in groundwater. The study provides the first-ever evidence of a useful pyrite mineral formation within the sample. http://www.physorg.com/news177778022.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:49:17 EST news177778022 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study of Antarctica's past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages (interglacials) may have been higher than previously thought. The latest analysis of ice core records suggests that Antarctic temperatures may have been up to 6°C warmer than the present day. http://www.physorg.com/news177773495.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:32:16 EST news177773495 The oceans play a key role in regulating climate, absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the air. Now, the first year-by-year accounting of this mechanism during the industrial era suggests the oceans are struggling to keep up with rising emissions -- a finding with potentially wide implications for future climate. The study appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news177772960.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:23:43 EST news177772960 (PhysOrg.com) -- Just as many people are surprised to find themselves packing on unexplained weight around the middle, astronomers find the evolution of bulges in the centres of spiral galaxies puzzling. A recent NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 4710 is part of a survey that astronomers have conducted to learn more about the formation of bulges, which are a substantial component of most spiral galaxies. http://www.physorg.com/news177764242.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:58:27 EST news177764242 (AP) -- The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday. http://www.physorg.com/news177759813.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:44:18 EST news177759813 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, is chilled out, sporting a sunshade and getting ready to roll. NASA's newest spacecraft is scheduled to roll to the pad on Friday, Nov. 20, its last stop before launching into space to survey the entire sky in infrared light. http://www.physorg.com/news177698029.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:20:01 EST news177698029 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have collaborated to create a Web site where Internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars. http://www.physorg.com/news177699754.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:03:57 EST news177699754 (PhysOrg.com) -- While politicians debate the best ways to cut global carbon dioxide emissions, researchers at Idaho National Laboratory's Center for Advanced Energy Studies are charging ahead on a strategy to defuse the CO2 the world already produces. They want to inject the greenhouse gas deep underground, where it would react with rocks and remain, entombed, for thousands of years. http://www.physorg.com/news177686379.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:40:02 EST news177686379 The strongest evidence yet that the rise in atmospheric CO2 emissions continues to outstrip the ability of the world's natural 'sinks' to absorb carbon is published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. http://www.physorg.com/news177686530.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:23:40 EST news177686530 (PhysOrg.com) -- "One of the major problems in modern astrophysics is the fact that we still do not know exactly what kinds of stellar system explode as a Type Ia supernova," says Patrick Woudt, from the University of Cape Town and lead author of the paper reporting the results. "As these supernovae play a crucial role in showing that the Universe's expansion is currently accelerating, pushed by a mysterious dark energy, it is rather embarrassing." http://www.physorg.com/news177676554.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:36:27 EST news177676554 (PhysOrg.com) -- Space shuttle Atlantis and its six-member crew began an 11-day delivery flight to the International Space Station on Monday with a 2:28 p.m. EST launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle will transport spare hardware to the outpost and return a station crew member who spent more than two months in space. http://www.physorg.com/news177615671.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:41:47 EST news177615671 (PhysOrg.com) -- Massive, bright clouds of tiny ice particles hover above the darkened rings of Saturn in an image captured by the Cassini spacecraft on Sept. 22, 2009, around the time of Saturn's equinox. http://www.physorg.com/news177615491.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:40:13 EST news177615491 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has successfully completed a series of autonomous "drop" tests of a robotic lander test article - in a record 10 months - to demonstrate the ability to perform a controlled landing on the moon or other airless planetary bodies. http://www.physorg.com/news177614572.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:23:23 EST news177614572 PIC=32536:left]Increasing temperatures at high altitudes are fueling the post-1950 growth spurt seen in bristlecone pines, the world's oldest trees, according to new research. http://www.physorg.com/news177608541.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:30:01 EST news177608541 A dangerous level of carbon dioxide and methane gas haunts Lake Kivu, the freshwater lake system bordering Rwanda and the Republic of Congo. http://www.physorg.com/news177606996.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:50:02 EST news177606996 (PhysOrg.com) -- It's the year 2060, and 75 percent of drivers in the Greater Los Angeles area have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that emit only water vapor. http://www.physorg.com/news177606050.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:01:40 EST news177606050 (PhysOrg.com) -- The constellation of Orion is a hotbed of massive star formation, most prominently in the Great Nebula that sits in Orion's sword. The glowing gas of the Nebula is powered by a group of young massive stars, but behind it is a cluster of younger stars and clumps of gas. Still gathering together under gravity's pull, these gas clumps will eventually ignite into stars. http://www.physorg.com/news177602620.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:05:26 EST news177602620