http://www.physorg.com/space-news/ en-us PhysOrg Team PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on earth science, astronomy and space exploration. The Congo Basin -- with its massive, lush tropical rain forest -- was far different 150 million to 200 million years ago. At that time Africa and South America were part of the single continent Gondwana. The Congo Basin was arid, with a small amount of seasonal rainfall, and few bushes or trees populated the landscape, according to a new geochemical analysis of rare ancient soils. http://www.physorg.com/news177100413.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T18:34:10-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Arkansas professor and his colleagues have shown that the Earth's mantle contains the same isotopic signatures from magnesium as meteorites do, suggesting that the planet formed from meteoritic material. This resolves a long-standing debate in the field over the planet's origins. http://www.physorg.com/news177097140.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T17:39:32-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- Americans love their consumer electronics, but what happens to all the gadgets when their useful life is over? Despite being one of the largest generators of "e-waste" in the world, the U.S. has no federal policies on recycling electronic waste or handling hazardous materials from technological trash. http://www.physorg.com/news177095650.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T17:15:07-07:00 As sea-surface temperatures rise across the globe, some scientists believe that hurricane frequency and intensity may increase. A fresh technique offers promise to generate new data from long-dead storms, which could improve researchers' forecasts and make them more accurate. http://www.physorg.com/news177095065.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T17:07:52-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- A never-before-seen view of the turbulent heart of our Milky Way galaxy is being unveiled by NASA on Nov. 10. This event will commemorate the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609. http://www.physorg.com/news177092798.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T16:50:02-07:00 This year's Leonid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday, Nov. 17th. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling of meteors over North America followed by a more intense outburst over Asia. The phase of the Moon will be new, setting the stage for what could be one of the best Leonid showers in years. http://www.physorg.com/news177093817.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T16:46:47-07:00 The Voyager spacecraft are now in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, traveling toward interstellar space - the first man-made spacecraft to travel such a vast distance from Earth. http://www.physorg.com/news177092513.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T16:40:01-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM satellite has the ability to provide data that can be made into three-dimensional images. Visualizers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. used TRMM data to create a 3-D movie to better see the thunderstorms in Ida. http://www.physorg.com/news177093254.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T16:35:14-07:00 California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic, according to a new study by UC Davis doctoral student Jessica Oster and geology professor Isabel Montaņez. http://www.physorg.com/news177088772.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T15:20:55-07:00 Tropical Cyclone 4A formed yesterday, November 10 off the western coast of India in the Arabian Sea, and NASA's infrared imagery captured some high, powerful thunderstorms developing in the storm's center. http://www.physorg.com/news177086576.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T15:00:02-07:00 In an effort to plug gaps of knowledge about key ocean processes, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have been awarded nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation to develop a new breed of ocean-probing instruments. http://www.physorg.com/news177085880.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T14:41:45-07:00 When NASA's space shuttle Atlantis launches for the International Space Station on Nov. 16 it will carry a University of Colorado at Boulder butterfly experiment that will be monitored by thousands of K-12 students across the nation. http://www.physorg.com/news177084112.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T14:40:01-07:00 Neal Iverson opened his laboratory's walk-in freezer and said the one-of-a-kind machine inside could help scientists understand how glaciers slide across their beds. And that could help researchers predict how glaciers will react to climate change and contribute to rising sea levels. http://www.physorg.com/news177084249.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T14:30:01-07:00 Is there life on other planets? The Vatican has asked that age-old question over the past five days during a "study week" on astrobiology gathering leading scientists from around the world. http://www.physorg.com/news177083464.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T14:10:05-07:00 A Soyuz rocket carrying a new Russian-made module for the International Space Station blasted off on Tuesday from the Baikonur space base in Kazakhstan, television pictures showed. http://www.physorg.com/news177083298.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T13:49:54-07:00 Aerosols, very small particles suspended in the air, play an important role in the global climate balance and in regulating climate change. They are one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate change models. ESA's GlobAerosol project has been making the most of European satellite capabilities to monitor them. http://www.physorg.com/news177080138.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T12:56:02-07:00 Agricultural soils accumulate trace metals, particularly copper and zinc, as a result of their presence in wastes (sewage biosolids and manures) and fungicides that are applied over long periods of time. Regulations and guidelines for tolerable concentrations of these potentially plant-toxic elements in soils are based on the assumption that the toxic effects of the metals are substantially independent and not additive. However, additivity would imply that soil tolerance limits for each metal must be adjusted to compensate for the presence of another metal. There has been very little experimental work to date to provide a basis for determining the degree to which copper-zinc interaction in soils is additive as defined by the toxicity response in crops. http://www.physorg.com/news177076138.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T12:10:01-07:00 Tropical Storm Ida made landfall around 6:40 a.m. ET this morning on Dauphin Island, along the Alabama coastline. NASA's GOES Project created the latest image from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-12) data showed that the bulk of Ida's clouds and rain are now inland, even though Ida's center was just near the Alabama coast. http://www.physorg.com/news177076167.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T11:50:30-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- While astronomers have studied lightweight and heavyweight black holes for decades, the evidence for black holes with intermediate masses has been much harder to come by. Now, astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., find that an X-ray source in galaxy NGC 5408 represents one of the best cases for a middleweight black hole to date. http://www.physorg.com/news177073969.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T11:14:51-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of CO2 has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of CO2 having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. http://www.physorg.com/news177059550.html Space & Earth 2009-11-10T07:50:02-07:00 (AP) -- Four years after its first solar sail ended up in the ocean instead of orbit, The Planetary Society announced Monday that by the end of 2010 it will try again to launch a spacecraft that will be propelled by the subtle pressure of sunlight. http://www.physorg.com/news177020675.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T21:00:01-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- Australian marine scientists have issued an urgent call for massive and rapid worldwide cuts in carbon emissions, deep enough to prevent atmospheric CO2 levels rising to 450 parts per million (ppm). http://www.physorg.com/news177019636.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T20:20:01-07:00 NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites are keeping a close eye on Tropical Storm Ida, and both have instruments aboard that show her clouds and rains are already widespread inland over the U.S. Gulf coast states. Infrared NASA satellite imagery revealed that Ida lost the "signature shape" of a tropical cyclone, and that the storm's clouds have already spread far to the north (over land) of its center of circulation. http://www.physorg.com/news177017852.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T19:50:02-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- Climate forecasts are becoming more useful to farmers and ranchers, thanks to research by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their cooperators. http://www.physorg.com/news177009006.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T17:40:01-07:00 People love to get the big picture of hurricane alleys, and thanks to the GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., they can now get real-time satellite animations of the eastern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. http://www.physorg.com/news177001037.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T15:40:03-07:00 The world is not coming to an end on December 21, 2012, the US space agency insisted Monday in a rare campaign to dispel widespread rumors fueled by the Internet and a new Hollywood movie. http://www.physorg.com/news177001418.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T15:30:20-07:00 NASA satellites are amazing examples of technology. The TRMM satellite peers into tropical cyclones and can tell how much rain is falling per hour and where. QuikScat uses microwave technology to measure Ida's surface wind speed. The GOES-12 satellite, operated by NOAA, produces stunning visuals that are now made into movies by NASA. Both of these satellites have provided the latest views of Tropical Storm Ida today. http://www.physorg.com/news177000924.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T15:20:01-07:00 NASA and the Japanese Space Agency's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite flew over Ida and captured her rainfall when she passed by Nicaragua, Honduras and Belize this weekend. TRMM data revealed that most of the heaviest rainfall totals, as much as 11 inches, were just off the coasts of those countries, even though all of those areas dealt with flooding rains. http://www.physorg.com/news176999217.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T14:28:57-07:00 Residents of the U.S. Gulf coast thought they were getting a break this hurricane season until Ida showed up. Today, November 9, Ida is a hurricane and is headed for a landfall in the western Florida Panhandle after midnight. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-12 captured a look at Ida's extensive clouds this morning, and they stretch from Florida's west coast to eastern Texas. At 8:30 a.m. ET (7:30 CT), showers and thunderstorms had already spread into eastern Texas, Louisiana, southern Mississippi and Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. http://www.physorg.com/news176997266.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T14:20:05-07:00 The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced plans to fund research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Engineering on technologies that would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the capture and permanent safe storage, or sequestration, of carbon dioxide (CO2). The project is in collaboration with Southern Company, the parent company of Alabama Power. http://www.physorg.com/news176997779.html Space & Earth 2009-11-09T14:04:06-07:00