2008 Lunar Eclipse
Thats right star gazers, the first total lunar eclipse of 2011 occurs Wednesday at about 1:24p.m. EDT (1724 GMT) and will last until 7:00 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT). This eclipse will be visible Wednesday evening for eastern South America, western Europe, and the west coast of Africa. Thursday in the wee hours of the morning this eclipse will be visible to central Siberia, eastern Mongolia, northeast China, (more…)
Dawn spacecraft captured the images used in the video below as it approached the 330 mile diameter giant asteroid Vesta, the second largest object in the asteroid belt (with the largest object being the dwarf planet Ceres, the other target of Dawn’s mission): (more…)
This supernova remnant combines infared and x-ray observation.
It has been thought that we might already know all there is to know about how a stellar explosion occurs. Published Wednesday in the June edition of Nature, Caltech postdoctoral scholar Robert Quimby and his colleagues explained that there are indications of a new class of supernovae; a class 10 times brighter than any other exploding star studied. This indication was discovered when Robert Quimby, an astronomer at the California Institute of technology, found there were abnormalities with the elements in a handful of recently exploded stars.
What we know about how a supernova occurs is what astronomers call the chemical finger print. The chemical finger print of a supernova tells us what the supernova is made of, how far away the supernova is, and what happens when the supernova occurs. Looking at supernovae from a more generalized perspective astronomers have categorized them into being either white dwarf or massive star explosions with no hydrogen in their spectra, or they are exclusively massive stars that (more…)
Yesterday, together with his colleagues, Mark Davis from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena published their findings of a study in Nature magazine on the method that they developed to deliver short sequences of RNA to human melanomas, interrupting the replication process of the cancerous cells. (more…)
When is a mammal really a reptile? When it is a Myotragus balearicus, of course! Although extinct, the discovery of a goat that was cold-blooded is a very interesting find. Myotragus balearicus lived on a Mediterranean island (now Majorca), with scarce resources, so they did what all good reptiles do – they adjusted their growth rate and metabolism.
A balloon-borne telescope has delivered video images of the sun’s bubbling, gassy surface in details we’ve never before been able to see.
In a proposal reminiscent of Noah’s Ark, scientists plan to collect DNA sequences for 10,000 vertebrate species, approximately one for every vertebrate genus. The Genome 10K Project, or “genome zoo”, will be analyzed to reveal evolutionary changes that took place, leading to the species here today.
The quest for the ability to grow back organs and limbs, the “holy grail” of regenerative medicine, took a giant leap forward recently. Physorg.com reported Tuesday that researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies recently identified an essential cellular pathway that unlocks certain gene expression patterns that are last seen in humans only during embryonic development. The source of this amazing new discovery? The zebrafish, a cousin to the minnow that is often found in aquariums.
Zebrafish
Izpisúa Belmonte, a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory, (more…)
With more than 17,000 species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, all in danger of going extinct, it seems appropriate to gaze upon some incredible photos of nature’s beauty now and then.
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