|  Scientists abandon highly publicized claim about cosmic find NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists who made headlines last March by announcing that they'd found long-sought evidence about the early universe are now abandoning that claim. Read More » Evidence for Cosmic Inflation Theory Bites the (Space) Dust  | Two groups of scientists announced today (Jan. 30) that a tantalizing signal — which some scientists claimed was "smoking gun" evidence of dramatic cosmic expansion just after the birth of the universe — was actually caused by something much more mundane: interstellar dust. In the cosmic inflation announcement, which was unveiled in March 2014, scientists with the BICEP2 experiment, claimed to have found patterns in light left over from the Big Bang that indicated that space had rapidly inflated at the beginning of the universe, about 13.8 billion years ago. But in a statement today, scientists with the European Space Agency said that data from the agency's Planck space observatory has revealed that interstellar dust caused more than half of the signal detected by the Antarctica-based BICEP2 experiment. "Unfortunately, we have not been able to confirm that the signal is an imprint of cosmic inflation," Jean-Loup Puget, principal investigator of the HFI instrument on Planck at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, said in the statement.
| Read More » Americans Will Vote for Climate-Loving Politicians, New Poll Suggests Most Americans support government action to combat the effects of global warming and will likely vote for candidates who put forth a promising stance on environmental issues, a new poll has found. The telephone poll — conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future — surveyed 1,006 adults across the nation from Jan. 7 to 22. Participants were asked questions such as whether they think climate change is human-caused, if global warming is perceived as a serious threat and if they have strong opinions on the matter. Respondents were also probed about government-related issues, including whether they think the government should limit greenhouse gases and how a candidate's opinion on climate change affects their vote. Read More » NASA satellite to map soil moisture poised for launch An unmanned Delta 2 rocket is being prepared for launch on Saturday to put a NASA satellite into orbit that is expected to improve drought monitoring and flooding forecasts. The 127-foot-tall (39-metre) rocket, built and flown by United Launch Alliance, is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 6:20 a.m. PST (1420 GMT). Launch originally was planned for Thursday but was delayed 24 hours due to high winds, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, postponed the flight for one more day so that technicians could repair insulation on the rocket that had become detached during Thursday's launch attempt. Read More » Mars Fossils? Curiosity Rover Team Questions Report on Potential Microbe Traces  | Scientists on the Curiosity team have brought into question a recent report about potential trace fossils in the NASA Mars rover's images of the Gillespie rock outcrop. Astrobiology Magazine reached out to the team and to the study's author for further comments. In a paper published last month in the journal Astrobiology, geobiologist Nora Noffke drew attention to features in Martian rocks that she suggested bore striking resemblance to trace fossils of microbial mats on Earth. As Curiosity's project scientist Ashwin Vasavada explained to other news outlets (including Space.com), the team had evaluated the features as non-biological, likely having been shaped by erosion or the transport of sand in water.
| Read More » Super Bowl in Space: Astronauts May Watch the Big Game in Orbit  | When more than 100 million people on Earth tune in for the Super Bowl kick-off this Sunday, NASA's astronauts in space will probably be sleeping. But two the American astronauts living and working on the International Space Station are football fans, and at least one of them says he hopes to wake up in time to see the end of the Super Bowl matchup between the New England Patriots or the Seattle Seahawks. "Regrettably, our bedtime, or at least my bed time is quite early," the station's commander, NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, said in an interview with reporters earlier this week. There are no microwaves or ovens on the space station, and definitely no grills.
| Read More » Fugitive Shipwreck Hunter Captured After 2 Years on the Lam  | Tommy Thompson — a famous shipwreck hunter who located a Gold Rush-era wreck, and then became embroiled in a long legal drama over the spoils — has been captured in Florida after more than two years in hiding. "I haven't been out of Florida since 2005 because I'm sensitive to materials that are north," Thompson said, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
| Read More » Who's Who? Centuries-Old Owl Mix-Up Fixed  | Once mistaken for another species of owl, the golden-eyed "desert tawny owl" is now finally getting its due. In a new report, researchers examined the plumage and body shape of owl specimens from museums around the world that had previously been thought to be members of a species called Hume's owl. The researchers also analyzed the owls' mitochondrial DNA, and found it was about 10 percent different from that of the Hume's owl, which is properly known as species Strix butleri. "We reinvestigated it using all techniques available to us, and realized — especially based on the fact that there were massive genetic differences between Hume's type and specimens from elsewhere — that it was pretty obvious that there were two species involved," said Guy Kirwan, a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and co-author of the new report.
| Read More » Quantum Experiment Helps Prove Einstein's Theory of Relativity Building a quantum computer can sometimes yield unexpected benefits — like providing the right environment to demonstrate that Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity is, in fact, correct. The experiment used partially entangled atoms that were a byproduct of an attempt to build quantum computers. Special relativity is a cornerstone of modern physics, and was formulated by Einstein in 1905. Since relativity says the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, space should look the same in every direction, no matter what. Read More » NASA Launches Satellite to Get the Dirt on Earth's Dirt  | NASA launched its newest Earth-observing mission Saturday (Jan. 31), sending a satellite to the ultimate height to study the dirt below our feet. The space agency's new Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite (SMAP) satellite successfully launched to space atop an unmanned United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force base in California at 9:22 a.m. EST (1422 GMT). SMAP is designed to map the moisture levels in topsoil around the world to help scientist better predict droughts, floods and other weather factors. The spacecraft soared into space and deployed its solar arrays after a flawless launch, NASA officials said.
| Read More » Rocket blasts off with NASA satellite to track climate change  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - An unmanned Delta 2 rocket lifted off from California on Saturday carrying a NASA satellite to measure how much water is in Earth's soil, information that will help weather forecasting and tracking of global climate change. The tiny amount of soil moisture links the planet's overall environmental systems – its water, energy and carbon cycles - as well as determines whether particular regions are afflicted with drought or flooding. "It's the metabolism of the system," NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory lead scientist Dara Entekhabi told reporters at a prelaunch news conference.
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