Lightning research links specific atmospheric conditions to exuberant,...
A new study led by Florida Institute of Technology Professor Ningyu Liu has improved our understanding of a curious luminous phenomenon that happens 25 to 50 miles above thunderstorms.
View ArticleSpaceX close to figuring out rocket failure during launch
SpaceX still is trying to figure out what caused its rocket to break apart during liftoff nine days ago, but is getting close to an answer, the company's chief executive said Tuesday.
View ArticleStratospheric accomplice for Santa Ana winds and California wildfires
Southern Californians and writers love to blame the hot, dry Santa Ana winds for tense, ugly moods, and the winds have long been associated with destructive wildfires.
View ArticleScientists study atmosphere of Venus through transit images
Two of NASA's heliophysics missions can now claim planetary science on their list of scientific findings. A group of scientists used the Venus transit - a very rare event where a planet passes between...
View ArticleMaking Europe sweat
In 2003, Europe experienced a record-breaking summer, and many people feel that this summer is headed the same way. In the midst of this heatwave, the scientific journal Nature Geoscience has published...
View ArticleIs old rock really as 'solid as a rock'?
In the course of billions of years continents break up, drift apart, and are pushed back together again. The cores of continents are, however, geologically extremely stable and have survived up to 3.8...
View ArticleThe DAVINCI spacecraft
It's no secret that there has been a resurgence in interest in space exploration in recent years. Much of the credit for this goes to NASA's ongoing exploration efforts on Mars, which in the past few...
View ArticleHow TIMED flies: Unexpected trends in carbon data
NASA's TIMED mission, short for Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics, has confirmed a surprisingly fast carbon dioxide increase in Earth's upper atmosphere, raising questions...
View ArticleScientists are the first to simulate 3-D exotic clouds on an exoplanet
Scientists have catalogued nearly 2,000 exoplanets around stars near and far. While most of these are giant and inhospitable, improved techniques and spacecraft have uncovered increasingly smaller...
View ArticleVast forest fires in Indonesia spawn ecological disaster
For farmer Achmad Rusli, it was a season of smoke: Ten weeks without sunlight for his oranges, guavas and durians, thanks to deliberately set forest fires that burned a chunk of Indonesia the size of...
View ArticleClimate study finds evidence of global shift in the 1980s
Planet Earth experienced a global climate shift in the late 1980s on an unprecedented scale, fuelled by anthropogenic warming and a volcanic eruption, according to new research published this week.
View ArticleTracking down the 'missing' carbon from the Martian atmosphere
Mars is blanketed by a thin, mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere—one that is far too thin to prevent large amounts of water on the surface of the planet from subliming or evaporating. But many researchers...
View ArticleEngraved schist slab may depict paleolithic campsites
A 13,000 year-old engraving uncovered in Spain may depict a hunter-gatherer campsite, according to a study published December 2, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Marcos García-Diez from...
View ArticleLISA Pathfinder en route to gravitational wave demonstration
ESA's LISA Pathfinder lifted off earlier today on a Vega rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on its way to demonstrate technology for observing gravitational waves from space.
View ArticleMinXSS CubeSat launches to ISS to study Sun's soft X-rays
On Dec. 4, the bread loaf-sized Miniature X-Ray Solar Spectrometer, or MinXSS, CubeSat is scheduled to rocket to space alongside thousands of pounds of supplies and science experiments destined for the...
View ArticleSatellite's last days improve orbital decay predictions
Scientists are learning more about how the upper atmosphere and ionosphere affect space satellites as well as communications and navigation here on Earth, thanks to new data from a U.S. Air Force...
View ArticleAuroral mystery solved: Sudden bursts caused by swirling charged particles
Auroras are dimly present throughout the night in polar regions, but sometimes these lights explode in brightness. Now Japanese scientists have unlocked the mystery behind this spectacle, known as...
View ArticleInsights into the origins of sodium and other metallic layers in the Earth's...
Takuo Tsuda, assistant professor, Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, discusses recent work. The Earth's atmosphere is critical for the existence of mankind. A close inspection of reveals...
View ArticleSaturn and Enceladus produce the same amount of plasma
The first evidence that Saturn's upper atmosphere may, when buffeted by the solar wind, emit the same total amount of mass per second into its magnetosphere as its moon, Enceladus, has been found by...
View ArticleTeam measures lightning-produced ozone with Lidar
Scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) have used UAH's Rocket-city Ozone (O3) Quality Evaluation in the Troposphere (RO3 QET) Lidar to measure ozone that was chemically produced by...
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