A circular rainbow appears like a halo around an exploded star in this new view of the IC 443 nebula from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
When massive stars die, they explode in tremendous blasts, called supernovae, which send out shock waves. The shock waves sweep up and heat surrounding gas and dust, creating supernova remnants like the one pictured here. The supernova in IC 443 happened somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. (more…)
Fireworks. Downtown Miami on July 4, 2007. Image credit: Marc Averette. Source: Wikipedia
Fireworks can be spectacular. However, the gas and smoke produced by the colorful explosions carry extremely high levels of toxic particles, according to a study by Audrey Smargiassi, a professor at the Université de Montreal Department of Environmental and Occupational Health.
Smargiassi conducted one of the first studies examining the composition of the emitted gases and the concentration of the particles. In addition, her study is unique as she collected her data below the fireworks display where spectators usually stand. Previous studies usually collected data from nearby rooftops.
The study was conducted in 2007 during nine separate shows presented at La Ronde amusement park where 5.7 million spectators attend an international fireworks competition every summer. (more…)
The Earth is constantly manufacturing new crust, spewing molten magma up along undersea ridges at the boundaries of tectonic plates. The process is critical to the planet’s metabolism, including the cycle of underwater life and the delicate balance of carbon in the ocean and atmosphere.
Now, scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have observed ocean crust forming in an entirely unexpected way—one that may influence those cycles of life and carbon and, in turn, affect the much-discussed future of the world’s climate.
Working at the Guaymas basin in the Gulf of California, WHOI scientists confirmed what they suspected from brief glimpses of the area during previous missions: The inner Earth is injecting swaths of magma called sills as far as 50 kilometers away from the plate boundary, on each side of the ridge —nearly 10 times farther from such an active ocean ridge than had been observed before.(more…)
*Initial science results on comet released from University of Maryland, much more to come UMD scientists say.*
Jets Galore. This enhanced image, one of the closest taken of comet Hartley 2. Image credit: University of Maryland
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – One of the biggest comet findings coming out of the amazing images and data taken by the University of Maryland-ledEPOXI mission as it zipped past comet Hartley 2 last week is that dry ice is the ‘jet’ fuel for this comet and perhaps many others.
Images from the flyby show spectacular jets of gas and particles bursting from many distinct spots on the surface of the comet. This is the first time images of a comet have been sharp enough to allow scientists to link jets of dust and gas with specific surface features. Analysis of the spectral signatures of the materials coming from the jets shows primarily CO2 gas (carbon dioxide) and particles of dust and ice.
“Previously it was thought that water vapor from water ice was the propulsive force behind jets of material coming off of the body, or nucleus, of the comet,” said University of Maryland Astronomy Professor Jessica Sunshine, who is deputy principal investigator for the EPOXI mission. “We now have unambiguous evidence that solar heating of subsurface frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice), directly to a gas, a process known as sublimation, is powering the many jets of material coming from the comet. This is a finding that only could have been made by traveling to a comet, because ground based telescopes can’t detect CO2 and current space telescopes aren’t tuned to look for this gas,” Sunshine said.(more…)
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates 896 million barrels of conventional, undiscovered oil and 53 trillion cubic feet of conventional, undiscovered non-associated gas within NPRA and adjacent state waters. The estimated volume of undiscovered oil is significantly lower than in 2002, when the USGS estimated there was 10.6 billion barrels of oil. The new estimate, roughly 10% of the 2002 estimate, is due primarily to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of NPRA. (more…)
