|  Polar Vortex, Part II? Nah, It's Just Winter  | Face it — "polar vortex" is fun to say. "It's always there and always will be there," said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Md. "There's always a polar vortex." The polar vortex is a winter weather pattern that circles the Arctic, spinning west to east, trapping cold air in the high latitudes. Researchers named the polar vortex in the 1950s (there is a similar vortex over Antarctica, just FYI).
| Read More » Strange Metal Asteroid Targeted in Far-Out NASA Mission Concept  | One of the strangest objects in the solar system may get its first closeup in the coming years. A team of scientists is mapping out a mission to the huge metallic asteroid Psyche, which is thought to be the exposed iron core of a battered and stripped protoplanet. The proposed mission would reveal insights about planet formation processes and the early days of the solar system, its designers say, and would also afford the first-ever good look at an odd class of celestial objects. "This is the first metal world humankind will have ever seen," team member Lindy Elkins-Tanton, director of the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, told SPACE.com last month at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting in San Francisco.
| Read More » Night Sky Comes Alive in Breathtaking Time-Lapse Video 'Ancients'  | The pristine night sky — chock full of gleaming stars and awe-inspiring views of our Milky Way galaxy — comes to life in a magnificent time-lapse video shot from northern Chile. The amazing time-lapse video of the cosmos above Chile traces the cycle of sunset to night to sunrise, with incredible shots of the starry night sky. The video was painstakingly created by filmmaker Nicholas Buer, who entitled it "Ancients." "Time-lapse astrophotography is actually a fairly simple process," Buer told SPACE.com in an email.
| Read More » Ancient 'Big Freeze' Rapidly Wiped Out European Forests  | A major cold age that descended on Earth nearly 13,000 years ago is linked with a widely studied and debated mass extinction of large mammals, such as ground sloths, in North America. But the effects of this so-called "Big Freeze" weren't limited to North America: New research shows that forests throughout Europe vanished within two centuries of the onset of this frigid time. Researchers have suggested these centuries of cold helped wipe out most of the large mammals in North America as well as the so-called Clovis people, which archaeologists had long thought were the first Americans. The Big Freeze affected not only North America, but also Europe.
| Read More » Strange Ball Lightning Caught on High-Speed Video  | A video recorded by accident of ball lightning in China is now shedding light on the phenomenon's mysterious origins, researchers say. Ball lightning typically appears during thunderstorms and usually hovers near the ground, drifting over the Earth at a few miles per hour, but it has also been seen on ships and even within airplanes. Over the centuries, people have reported thousands of sightings of ball lightning. Still, it remained uncertain whether natural ball lightning really happened in the way that the experiments suggested.
| Read More » SpaceX Tests Parachutes for Manned Dragon Space Capsule (Video)  | With an eye toward ferrying American astronauts to space, the commercial spaceflight company SpaceX dropped a human-rated version of its Dragon capsule into the Pacific Ocean to test out its parachutes, NASA announced. Video of the SpaceX parachute test off the coast of Morro Bay, Calif., shows a Dragon capsule being cut loose from a helicopter flying 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) above the ocean. Two drogue parachutes and three main parachutes successfully deployed to guide the Dragon's descent, and the 12,000-lb. (5,443-kg) spacecraft was brought back to shore. NASA unveiled the video on Jan. 17.
| Read More » Blood Test Has Potential to Catch Pancreatic Cancer Early Pancreatic cancer could be identified in its early stages with a test that looks for genetic material in the blood, according to preliminary research from Denmark. Because patients in the study already had pancreatic cancer, it's not known if the test is accurate enough to detect cancer in its early stages, before it has been diagnosed. And the test had a high false-positive rate, meaning that the test incorrectly identified many healthy patients as having cancer. "The test could thereby [help us] diagnose more patients with pancreatic cancer, some of them at an early stage, and thus have a potential to increase the number of patients that can be operated on and possibly cured of pancreatic cancer," the researchers from Herlev Hospital in Copenhagen wrote in the Jan. 22 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Read More » Analysis - Syngenta risks fresh China corn dispute with unapproved trait  | By Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) - Syngenta AG is pressing ahead with U.S. sales of a new corn trait that is not approved in China, fueling concerns of another jarring GMO trade quarrel with the world's fastest-growing food importer. While the U.S. grain industry lobbies the Chinese government to stop rejecting cargoes of corn containing another unauthorized genetically modified Syngenta strain, farmers in the Midwest are weighing whether to take a chance on the Swiss-based company's new product, engineered to combat pests called rootworms. Syngenta, the world's largest crop chemicals company, said its Agrisure Duracade trait will be available for planting for the first time this year in "limited quantities" after U.S. authorities cleared it for sale and cultivation last year. But the planting of Duracade threatens new disruptions - and millions of dollars in losses - for global grain traders if the strain gets mixed into the mainstream supply chain and prompts another round of rejections from China, as some analysts fear.
| Read More » Why Sloths Leave the Trees to Poop  | "Important interspecific interactions — between sloths, their moths and algae -— seem to be reinforcing, or even dictating, important aspects of sloth behavior, especially their ritualized behavior of descending the tree to defecate," wildlife ecologist Jonathan Pauli of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, leader of the study published today (Jan. 21) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, told LiveScience in an email. The sloths consume the algae, which is rich in fatty compounds and gives them energy.
| Read More » Neutrino Telescopes Launch New Era of Astronomy  | The recent discovery of neutrino particles bombarding Earth from outer space has ushered in a new era in neutrino astronomy, scientists say. Neutrinos are produced when cosmic rays interact with their surroundings, yielding particles with no electrical charge and negligible mass. Scientists have wondered about the source of cosmic rays since they were discovered, and finding cosmic neutrinos could provide clues about the origin of the mysterious rays. In November, a team of scientists announced the discovery of cosmic neutrinos by the giant IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica.
| Read More » Mysterious Mars Rock Looks Like 'Jelly Donut,' Defies Explanation (Photos)  | A mystery rock on Mars that suddenly appeared in front of NASA's Opportunity rover may look like a tasty donut, but it is like nothing ever seen on the Martian surface before. The rock, which scientists now call "Pinnacle Island," is white on the outside, red in the middle and appeared after Opportunity had just finished a short drive. "It looks like a jelly donut," said Steve Squyres, the rover's lead scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., during a recent NASA event marking Opportunity's 10th year on Mars.
| Read More » Elephant Mystery at Ancient Syrian Battle Solved  | Researchers have now found that Eritrean elephants, which live in the northeastern portion of Africa, are savanna elephants, and are not related to the more diminutive forest elephants that live in the jungles of central Africa. In the third century B.C., the Greek historian Polybius described the epic Battle of Raphia, which took place around 217 B.C. in what is now the Gaza Strip, as part of the Syrian Wars. During these wars, Seleucid ruler Antiochus III the Great fought against Ptolemy IV Philopator, the fourth ruler of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt, whose last leader was Cleopatra. The matchup included tens of thousands of troops, thousands of cavalry and dozens of war elephants on each side.
| Read More » Fewer Women Seeking Help for Infertility Among women who are having trouble becoming pregnant, a smaller percentage are now getting medical help for infertility compared with three decades ago, according to a new government report. Studies have found that the use of assisted reproduction techniques, such as in vitro fertilization, has increased dramatically over the last decade, giving the impression that infertility services in general are on the rise, said study researcher Anjani Chandra, a demographer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But infertility services, as defined in the study, also includes less costly and complex options, such as asking a doctor about the best days to have intercourse, and using drugs to stimulate ovulation. "Our data come from surveys asking women about their experience with infertility services, and it tells us a somewhat different story," Chandra told LiveScience. Read More » World's Largest Offshore Wind Farm Seen From Space  | Giant wind turbines appear as white specks across the Thames Estuary in the United Kingdom, in this satellite photo of the London Array, the world's largest offshore wind farm, released today (Jan. 21). The London Array's 175 wind turbines can generate a maximum of 630 megawatts of power, which is enough to power 500,000 homes, according to NASA officials. The Landsat 8 satellite, operated jointly by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, captured this image of the London Array on April 28, 2013. The white dots visible in the photo are wind turbines, and the wakes of several boats can also be seen.
| Read More » Marijuana vs. Alcohol: Which Is Really Worse for Your Health? The question of whether alcohol or marijuana is worse for health is being debated once again, this time, sparked by comments that President Barack Obama made in a recent interview with The New Yorker magazine. Both alcohol consumption and pot smoking can take a toll on the body, showing both short- and long-term health effects, though alcohol has been linked to some 88,000 deaths per year, according to the CDC, while for a number of reasons those associated with marijuana use are harder to come by. That isn't going to happen with marijuana," said Ruben Baler, a health scientist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "The impact of marijuana use is much subtler." Read More » 2013 Ties for 4th Hottest Year on Record  | In 2013, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average of 57 F (13.9 C), according to the annual climate report released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In a separate analysis, scientists at NASA came up with slightly different results, finding that the global temperature from 2013 tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year on record. The two agencies use "slightly different methods, but overall, their trends show close agreement," a statement from NASA noted. Climate scientists attribute the bulk of this warming to the buildup of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere due to emissions from industry, power and transportation.
| Read More » Tasty Life: Leopard Teeth, Calf Bones Found in Ruins Near Pyramids  | TORONTO — The remains of a mansion that likely held high-ranking officials some 4,500 years ago have been discovered near Egypt's Giza Pyramids. The house, containing at least 21 rooms, is part of a city that dates mainly to the time when the pyramid of Menkaure (the last of the Giza Pyramids) was being built. "The other thing that is just amazing is almost all the cattle are under 10 months of age … they are eating veal," said Richard Redding, the chief research officer of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, at a recent symposium held here by the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. From his sample of 100,000 bones from the nearby mound, Redding said he couldn't find a cow bone that was older than 18 months and found few examples of sheep and goat bones.
| Read More » Matter of Mystery: Antimatter Beam Could Help Solve Physics Puzzle  | A new experiment at a Swiss physics laboratory has, for the first time, successfully produced a stream of antimatter hydrogen atoms that could help answer a fundamental physics question. The new achievement, which is detailed today (Jan. 21) in the journal Nature Communications, brings scientists a step closer to understanding why humans, stars and the universe are made of matter, rather than of its strange cousin, antimatter. "It's one of the fundamental questions of physics: We just don't know why we exist," said study co-author Stefan Ulmer, a physicist at science research institute RIKEN in Japan. When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate and form energy.
| Read More » Snowy Super Bowl? Too Early to Make the Call | The winter storm that barreled across the Northeast yesterday (Jan. 21) may have football fans anxious to know the weather forecast for this year's Super Bowl, scheduled for Feb. 2 at New Jersey's open-air MetLife Stadium. This is due, in part, to lingering computational limitations, but more so to the chaotic nature of global weather patterns, Mitch Moncrieff, a researcher at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colo., told LiveScience. Whereas near-term weather predictions within a few days can be made based on local or regional weather patterns, longer-term predictions must take into account weather patterns occurring across the planet, along with all the different ways those conditions may interact with one another and change through time, Moncrieff said. They must also factor in how oceanic conditions may change and affect weather patterns through time.
| Read More » Cosmic Lagoon Shines in Spectacular Views from Very Large Telescope (Video)  | New photos taken by a telescope in Chile put the Lagoon Nebula — a giant cloud of gas and dust located 5,000 light-years from Earth — on rosy display. The Lagoon Nebula (also called Messier 8) is about 100 light-years across and harbors young stars that shine brightly in the image, according to European Southern Observatory officials. The VLT Survey Telescope in Chile captured the picture, taken as part of a sweeping set of surveys designed to unlock mysteries of the universe. You can watch a video flythrough of the new Lagoon Nebula image from ESO, based on the new VLT telescope images.
| Read More » Starry Night: The Seven Sisters Shine Brilliantly in New Pleiades Photo  | When two Michigan-based astrophotographers combined their skills to capture the Pleiades star cluster, the results are nothing short of stunning.
| Read More » Mystery white rock inexplicably appears near NASA Mars rover  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Scientists are stumped as to how a rock mysteriously appeared in images taken two weeks apart by NASA's Mars rover Opportunity. The rover, which landed in an area known as Meridiani Planum a decade ago, is exploring the rim of a crater for signs of past water. Oddly, it showed a bright white rock, about the size of a doughnut, where only barren bedrock had appeared in a picture taken two weeks earlier. "Much of the rock is bright-toned, nearly white," NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.
| Read More » Love Really Is Sweet, Science Reveals Jealousy fails to bring out bitter or sour tastes, despite metaphors that suggest it might, researchers report in the December 2013 issue of the journal Emotion. That love alters one's sensory perceptions and jealousy does not is important to psychologists who study what are called "embodied" metaphors, or linguistic flourishes people quite literally feel in their bones. But "just because there is a metaphor does not necessarily imply that we will get these kind of sensations and perception effects," said study researcher Kai Qin Chan, a doctoral candidate at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. After seeing previous research on emotional metaphors, like the studies linking loneliness to coldness and heaviness to importance, Chan and his colleagues wanted to expand the question. Read More » Water Found on Dwarf Planet Ceres, May Erupt from Ice Volcanoes  | Astronomers have discovered direct evidence of water on the dwarf planet Ceres in the form of vapor plumes erupting into space, possibly from volcano-like ice geysers on its surface. Using European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, scientists detected water vapor escaping from two regions on Ceres, a dwarf planet that is also the largest asteroid in the solar system. "This is the first clear-cut detection of water on Ceres and in the asteroid belt in general," said Michael Küppers of the European Space Agency, Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain, leader of the study detailed today (Jan. 22) in the journal Nature.
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