http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. An international team of researchers has found a planet around another star whose orbit is steeply tilted from the plane of the star's equator, a finding that contradicts some theories about how solar systems form. http://www.physorg.com/news164466505.html Space & Earth Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:09:25 EST news164466505 By squeezing a typical metal alloy at pressures hundreds of thousands of times greater than normal atmospheric pressure, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a material that does not expand when heated, as does nearly every normal metal, and acts like a metal with an entirely different chemical composition. http://www.physorg.com/news164301757.html Physics Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:57:02 EST news164301757 Astronomers using the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) William Herschel Telescope (WHT) on La Palma have confirmed an effective way to search the atmospheres of planets for signs of life, vastly improving our chances of finding alien life outside our solar system. http://www.physorg.com/news163859396.html Space & Earth Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:30:22 EST news163859396 (PhysOrg.com) -- A long-proposed tool for hunting planets has netted its first catch -- a Jupiter-like planet orbiting one of the smallest stars known. http://www.physorg.com/news162749574.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 May 2009 17:15:01 EST news162749574 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have long wondered how tiny silicate crystals, which need sizzling high temperatures to form, have found their way into frozen comets, born in the deep freeze of the solar system's outer edges. The crystals would have begun as non-crystallized silicate particles, part of the mix of gas and dust from which the solar system developed. http://www.physorg.com/news161452743.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 May 2009 17:03:47 EST news161452743 Although engineers, scientists and manufacturers are still in the process of building all of the instruments that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, they had to figure out long ago, how it was going to "unfold" in space. That's because the Webb Telescope is so big that it has to be folded up for launch. Now, animators have made that "unfolding" come to life in two new videos. http://www.physorg.com/news161446078.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 May 2009 15:08:31 EST news161446078 The Hubble space telescope, the object of NASA's fifth and last servicing mission next week, is a veritable time machine that has revolutionized humankind's vision and comprehension of the universe. http://www.physorg.com/news161142870.html Space & Earth Sun, 10 May 2009 02:55:16 EST news161142870 Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. have created an "astro-comb" to help astronomers detect lighter planets, more like Earth, around distant stars. The Harvard group will present their findings at the 2009 Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics/International Quantum Electronics Conference. http://www.physorg.com/news160940960.html Physics Thu, 07 May 2009 18:49:52 EST news160940960 NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is about to use its last drop of the coolant that has chilled it for the past five-and-a-half years. On about May 12, give or take a week or so, the observatory is predicted to run out of the liquid helium that has run through its veins, keeping its infrared detectors at frosty operating temperatures of just a few degrees above the coldest temperature possible, called absolute zero. http://www.physorg.com/news160762028.html Space & Earth Tue, 05 May 2009 17:07:31 EST news160762028 A previously unknown, large impact basin has been discovered by the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft during its second flyby of Mercury in October 2008. The impact basin, now named Rembrandt, more than 700 kilometers (430 miles) in diameter. If the Rembrandt basin had formed on the east coast of the United States, it would span the distance between Washington, D.C., and Boston. http://www.physorg.com/news160322795.html Space & Earth Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:07:34 EST news160322795 (PhysOrg.com) -- Exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor announces the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, "e," in the system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581-d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. These amazing discoveries are the outcome of observations using the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6m ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile. http://www.physorg.com/news159520355.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:13:14 EST news159520355 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using NASA`s Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found that at least 1 in 100 white dwarf stars show evidence of orbiting asteroids and rocky planets, suggesting these objects once hosted Solar Systems similar to our own. http://www.physorg.com/news159460384.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:33:37 EST news159460384 Ice ages are the greatest natural climate changes in recent geological times. Their rise and fall are caused by slight changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun due to the influence of the other planets. But we do not know the exact relationship between the changes in the Earth's orbit and the changes in climate. New research from the Niels Bohr Institute indicates that there can be changes in the CO2 levels in the atmosphere that suddenly reach a critical turning point and with that trigger the dramatic climate changes. The results are published in the American journal Paleoceanography. http://www.physorg.com/news159448477.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:15:35 EST news159448477 (PhysOrg.com) -- The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower. http://www.physorg.com/news157820871.html Space & Earth Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:08:26 EST news157820871 (AP) -- President Barack Obama will find out two things as he studies how to make the White House more environmentally friendly: http://www.physorg.com/news157533249.html Space & Earth Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:14:42 EST news157533249 Einstein@Home, based at the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee (UWM) and the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI) in Germany, is one of the world's largest public volunteer distributed computing projects. More than 200,000 people have signed up for the project and donated time on their computers to search gravitational wave data for signals from unknown pulsars. http://www.physorg.com/news157113935.html Space & Earth Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:45:58 EST news157113935 An imaging coronal spectrograph called SPICE (Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment), designed by scientists and engineers at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder has been selected by ESA and NASA for the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter mission to explore the innermost regions of the solar system from the closest distances to the Sun ever attempted. Solar Orbiter will be positioned at a unique vantage point, about one-fourth the distance of the Earth from the Sun. http://www.physorg.com/news156956348.html Space & Earth Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:59:54 EST news156956348 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA scientists analyzing the dust of meteorites have discovered new clues to a long-standing mystery about how life works on its most basic, molecular level. http://www.physorg.com/news156523757.html Chemistry Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:50:05 EST news156523757 As part of its education and public outreach efforts, the story of NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission has been chronicled in a space show premiering this month at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The show also is being distributed free of charge and will be opening shortly in planetaria worldwide. http://www.physorg.com/news155474197.html Space & Earth Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:16:47 EST news155474197 An asteroid of a similar size to a rock that exploded above Siberia in 1908 with the force of a thousand atomic bombs whizzed close past Earth on Monday, astronomers said on Tuesday. http://www.physorg.com/news155287963.html Space & Earth Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:33:05 EST news155287963 (PhysOrg.com) -- "With lots of methane in the atmosphere, it becomes clear why Pluto's atmosphere is so warm," says Emmanuel Lellouch, lead author of the paper reporting the results. http://www.physorg.com/news155220047.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:41:26 EST news155220047 (PhysOrg.com) -- The patterns of missing asteroids are like the footprints of wandering giant planets preserved in the asteroid belt. http://www.physorg.com/news154802620.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:44:17 EST news154802620 A green-tinged comet is now buzzing by Earth, and the best chance to see this space oddball might be Monday night. http://www.physorg.com/news154623859.html Space & Earth Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:05:13 EST news154623859 (PhysOrg.com) -- Space scientists from the University of Leicester are keeping a close eye on a ‘green comet` fast approaching the Earth - reaching its nearest point to us on February 24. http://www.physorg.com/news154342687.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:59:08 EST news154342687 At a meeting in Washington last week, NASA and ESA officials decided to first pursue a mission to study Jupiter and its four largest moons, and plan for another mission to visit Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and Enceladus. http://www.physorg.com/news154190705.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:45:51 EST news154190705 (PhysOrg.com) -- Diamond-like carbon films created at Sandia National Laboratories are helping probe the far boundaries of the solar system as part of a NASA mission to study how the sun's solar wind interacts with the interstellar medium - the matter that exists between the stars within a galaxy. http://www.physorg.com/news154022294.html Physics Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:58:54 EST news154022294 (PhysOrg.com) -- Launched in September of 2007, and propelled by any one of a trio of hyper-efficient ion engines, NASA's Dawn spacecraft passed the orbit of Mars last summer. At that time, the asteroid belt (where Dawn's two targets, asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres reside), had never been closer. In early July the spacecraft began to lose altitude, falling back towards the inner solar system. Then on October 31, 2008, after 270 days of almost continuous thrusting, the ion drive turned off. http://www.physorg.com/news153759402.html Space & Earth Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:57:28 EST news153759402 A team of French and Italian astronomers have devised a new method for measuring the size and shape of asteroids that are too small or too far away for traditional techniques, increasing the number of asteroids that can be measured by a factor of several hundred. This method takes advantage of the unique capabilities of ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). http://www.physorg.com/news152962650.html Space & Earth Wed, 04 Feb 2009 09:42:03 EST news152962650 (PhysOrg.com) -- Transiting exoplanets are routinely detected when they pass in front of their parent star as viewed from the Earth, which only happens by chance. The transit event causes a small drop in the observed starlight, which can then be detected. Fifty-five exoplanets have been detected this way since the observation of the first transiting planet HD 209458 b in 1999. http://www.physorg.com/news151168570.html Space & Earth Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:16:10 EST news151168570 Asteroids are hunks of rock that orbit in the outer reaches of space, and scientists have generally assumed that their small size limited the types of rock that could form in their crusts. But two newly discovered meteorites may rewrite the book on how some asteroids form and evolve. Researchers from the Carnegie Institution, the University of Maryland, and the University of Tennessee report in the January 8th edition of Nature that these meteorites are ancient asteroid fragments consisting of feldspar-rich rock called andesite. Similar rocks were previously known only from Earth, making these samples the first of their kind from elsewhere in the Solar System. http://www.physorg.com/news150557683.html Space & Earth Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:34:43 EST news150557683