|  Double the Trouble Found Under Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano  | Hawaii's big, booming eruptions are born from just under Kilauea volcano's peak, a new study confirms. The results suggest that Kilauea volcano also taps a deeper source, because the shallower magma chambers are too tiny to account for all of the lava that has streamed across the island's surface since 1983. "The amount of magma is very small," said lead study author Aaron Pietruszka, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist based in Denver. The size of both magma chambers adds up to less than half a cubic kilometer (0.12 cubic miles) of molten rock, Pietruszka told Live Science.
| Read More » Doctor Who Was Possibly Exposed to Ebola Receives Experimental Vaccine Although it's not certain that the needle or gloves were contaminated with the Ebola virus, it's possible that the experimental vaccine may have helped him avoid contracting the deadly disease. The man's case does suggest that this vaccine "can be used as a postexposure treatment, like the rabies vaccine," Thomas W. Geisbert, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, who was not involved in the case report, told Live Science in an email. But two other experimental treatments for Ebola, called ZMapp and TKM-Ebola, "are, by a very large margin, the lead candidate[s]" for treating people exposed to Ebola, because these are the only treatments that have been shown in experiments to completely protect nonhuman primates that have been exposed to Ebola, Geisbert said. Read More » Astronomers find star speeding out of the galaxy The star, known as US 708, is traveling at about 746 miles (1,200 km) per second, fast enough to actually leave the Milky Way galaxy in about 25 million years, said astronomer Stephan Geier with Germany-based European Southern Observatory, which operates three telescopes in Chile. US 708 is not the first star astronomers have found that is moving fast enough to escape the galaxy, but it is the only one so far that appears to have been slingshot in a supernova explosion. Before it was sent streaming across the galaxy, US 708 was once a cool giant star, but it was stripped of nearly all of its hydrogen by a closely orbiting partner. Read More » Hubble captures quadruple image of ancient exploding star By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and a naturally occurring cosmic magnifying lens captured surprising multiple images of the same exploded ancient star, research published on Thursday shows. The four images captured by Hubble were caused by light taking different paths around a massive galaxy cluster located between the exploded star and the Earth-orbiting telescope. By chance, the supernova, which exploded about 9 billion years ago, was aligned with the intervening galaxy cluster being used during a Hubble observation period in 2011. "The supernova team was looking at these image and bam, up popped not one, not two, not three, but four images," said astronomer Jennifer Lotz, with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Read More » Amid Record-Breaking Poaching, Wildlife Experts Seek to Smash a Black Market  | Eight months ago, you could probably walk a few blocks from here, the Central Park Zoo, and find ivory for sale at a shop on Madison Avenue. But not anymore: Last year, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a ban on commercial sales and purchases of ivory and rhinoceros horn. That ban was just one in a series of encouraging signs that lawmakers and law enforcement are serious about stopping illegal wildlife trade around the world. Meanwhile, wildlife crime experts and diplomats were gathered here, at the Central Park Zoo, to deliver a call to action to end the illegal wildlife trade, amid grim outlooks for animals like elephants and rhinos that are killed for their tusks and horns.
| Read More » See Live Views of Dwarf Planet Ceres Friday in Slooh Observatory Webcast  | An observatory will celebrate the planned arrival of a NASA spacecraft at Ceres by streaming live images of the dwarf planet live online Friday (March 6). NASA's Dawn mission is expected to arrive at Ceres — the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — Friday. In honor of the historic arrival, the online Slooh Community Observatory will host a 45 minute webcast featuring live views of Ceres starting at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) at its website: http://main.slooh.com/. "The mission should tell us a great deal about the history and composition of this enigmatic dwarf planet.
| Read More » NASA Spacecraft Set for Historic Arrival at Dwarf Planet Ceres Today  | NASA's Dawn probe is just hours away from making spaceflight history. Dawn is scheduled to slip into orbit around Ceres — the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and Ceres — the closest dwarf planet to Earth — at about 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) on Friday (March 6). If all goes according to plan, Dawn will become the first spacecraft ever to visit a dwarf planet, and the first to circle two different objects beyond the Earth-moon system. So Dawn's observations should shed light on the solar system's early days and the processes that led to the formation of worlds such as Earth.
| Read More » Being Gay Not a Choice: Science Contradicts Ben Carson Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and presidential hopeful, recently apologized for a statement in which he said being gay is "absolutely" a choice. In an interview on CNN, the potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate commented that "a lot of people who go into prison, go into prison straight, and when they come out they're gay, so did something happen while they were in there? Read More » 170-Year-Old Shipwreck Beer Smells Gross  | If hints of soured milk and burnt rubber, or a "goaty" taste sound delightful to you, then brews that were aged for 170 years at the bottom of the Baltic Sea might just be your thing. Scientists recently opened two bottles of beer from a shipwreck off the coast of Finland to get a profile of the 19th century brews. The bottles came from 165 feet (50 meters) below the surface of the Baltic, from the wreckage of a schooner that sank near Finland's Aland Islands in the 1840s. In 2010, divers found 150 bottles of champagne at the wreck, as well as five beer bottles, though one did not survive the journey back to land.
| Read More » 'Chappie': How Realistic Is the Film's Artificial Intelligence?  | The new film "Chappie" features an artificially intelligent robot that becomes sentient and must learn to navigate the competing forces of kindness and corruption in a human world. Directed by Neill Blomkamp, whose previous work includes "District 9" and "Elysium," the film takes place in the South African city of Johannesburg. One of these robots, named "Chappie," receives an upgrade that makes him sentient. Yet, while today's technology isn't quite at the level of that in the film, "We definitely have had major aspects of systems like Chappie already in existence for quite a while," said Wolfgang Fink, a physicist and AI expert at Caltech and the University of Arizona, who did not advise on the film.
| Read More » NASA Dawn Probe Enters Orbit Around Dwarf Planet Ceres, a Historic First  | The year of the dwarf planet has begun. NASA's Dawn probe arrived at Ceres today (March 6) at about 7:39 a.m. EST (1239 GMT), becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a dwarf planet. Dawn's observations over the next 16 months should lift the veil on Ceres, which has remained largely mysterious since its 1801 discovery, mission team members say. "It's really going to be exciting to see what this exotic, alien world looks like," Dawn mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, told Space.com in late January.
| Read More » U.S. spacecraft reaches dwarf planet Ceres for 16-month study  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A U.S. space probe slipped into orbit around Ceres, a miniature planet beyond Mars believed to be left over from the formation of the solar system, NASA said on Friday. Launched in 2007, the Dawn spacecraft made a 14-month tour of the asteroid Vesta before steering itself toward Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn shifted its path to allow itself to be captured by Ceres' gravity at 7:39 a.m. EST, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a dwarf planet.
| Read More » Fewer Americans Say Vaccines Are Crucial The percentage of Americans who consider vaccines crucial for children has declined slightly in the past decade, according to a new survey. And 30 percent of Americans now say they've heard "a great deal" about the disadvantages of vaccines, compared to 15 percent who said that in 2001. The percentage of Americans who say they consider vaccines to be worse than the diseases they prevent has not changed much in 14 years: 9 percent of Americans held this view in 2015, compared with 6 percent in 2001. Only 6 percent of Americans say they think vaccines cause autism, while 41 percent say that vaccines do not cause autism, and 52 percent said they were unsure. Read More » | |
