Science is for Sharing

 Clouds on Venus are made concentrated sulfuric acid ...! not Water as in earth's atmosphere.... Venus experienced tremendous volcanic activity, flooding the surface with new lava and filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, causing a runaway greenhouse effect...  Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Read more: http://fettss.arc.nasa.gov/collection/details/venus-globe-1/

My colleague Mr.Sobhan Kumar Kompalli, Scientist in Space Physics Laboratory has clicked more than 100 snaps of the beautiful 'Lunar Eclipse' that entertained earthlings on 10-Dec-2011. Here is a matrix of few selected snaps by the  amateur  photographer. Also have a view of the Simulated Lunar Eclipse ( animation)  which I generated using the open source software 'Stellarium'. You are welcome to watch  the drama unfold......! Photograph by Mr.Sobhan Kumar Kompalli (sobhan1urs@gmail.com)

Global warming forces Birds to higher altitudes and not necessarily to higher latitudes.... finds a study....... birds aren't migrating as rapidly as scientists previously anticipated, based on recorded temperature increases. "However, our understanding of the response of tropical birds to warming is still poor," said German Forero-Medina, a Ph.D. student at Duke's Nicholas School who is lead author of the new study. "Moving to the north doesn't help them, because tropical temperatures do not change very much with latitude. So moving up to higher elevations is the only way to go, but there are few historical data that can serve as baselines for comparison over time." Read more: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-climate-tropical-birds-higher-elevations.html  "Elevational Ranges of Birds on a Tropical Montane Gradient Lag Behind Warming Temperatures" German Forero-Medina, John Terborgh, S. Jacob Socolar & Stuart L. Pimm. PLoS ONE,...

A new Project Aims to Predict South Asian Floods Are our Glaciers melting .... faster ....??? How it affects the nearby lakes and rivers flow and will it cause floods...? A new effort, dubbed HIMLA and led by Molly Brown of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, aims to change this by harnessing state-of-the-art, satellite-based monitoring and modeling techniques. Scientists will feed data from satellite instruments such as MODIS and ASTER into a hydrological model that will produce daily snow/water equivalence maps that will feed into other hydrological models to determine how much freshwater flows into the region’s rivers from snow and glaciers.  The ultimate goal: an early warning system for flood prediction.... Read more from NASA's blog:  http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/whatonearth/posts/post_1323195383980.html

We have seen fire in earth where gravity is dominant. Can you guess how the same fire out of same fuel would behave in zero gravity or say in space....? Read this interesting article to know more... http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/FLEX_Video.html In space, where there is no up or down, flames behave in unconventional ways. When a flame burns on Earth, heated gases rise from the fire creating a buoyant flow that draws oxygen into the flame and combustion products away from it. In space, warm gases do not rise, and molecular diffusion drives flame behavior. "In space molecular diffusion draws oxygen to the flame and combustion products away from the flame at a rate 100x slower than the buoyant flow on Earth," Dan Dietrich, project scientist, NASA's Glenn Research Center, said. Flames in space burn with a lower temperature, at a lower rate, and with less oxygen than in normal gravity. This means that materials used to extinguish ...

Waves created by lightning flashes – here shown in blue, green, and red – circle around Earth, creating something called Schumann resonance. These waves can be used to study the nature of the atmosphere they travel through. (Credit: NASA/Simoes)  At any given moment about 2,000 thunderstorms roll over Earth, producing some 50 flashes of lightning every second. Each lightning burst creates electromagnetic waves that begin to circle around Earth captured between Earth's surface and a boundary about 60 miles up. Some of the waves -- if they have just the right wavelength -- combine, increasing in strength, to create a repeating atmospheric heartbeat known as Schumann resonance. NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite has detected Schumann resonance from space. This comes as a surprise. Fernando Simões, Robert Pfaff, Henry Freudenreich. Satellite observations of Schu...

LRO Camera Team Releases High Resolution Global Topographic Map of Moon. click on the image to go to the official website and high resolution image. Source: NASA-LRO http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/lro-topo.html

It is the sea temperature, not  the air temperature that determine how fast Greenland’s ice cap melted at the end of the last ice age. The study, published in the journal Paleoceanography, was conducted by an international team of researchers headed by senior researcher Paul Knutz of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). ”Our study included analyses of the marine temperature in the upper water strata, and they indicate that the temperature during the period of deglaciation was relatively high,” says Knutz. "We can see that the high temperatures start immediately before and continued during periods when a lot of icebergs broke off from glaciers and when a lot of melt water was produced,” he adds. “Therefore we interpret the temperature anomalies as something that resulted in increased melting and a retreat of the ice cap.” Read in more detail.  http://sciencenordic.com/warm-sea-currents-caused-melting-greenland%E2%80%99s-ice

First images of the Asteroid which came close to earth has been released... You can watch the video Team of astronomers decided to animate an entire sequence of their high-resolution radar images of YU55 to make a short movie clip from the data from  Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California. you can watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIwX0Qeid9o&feature=colike Courtesy: Nasa You can download the first images video http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=119737731

A super Black material has been invented which is able to absorb 99% UV, VIS, IR radiation. This close-up view (only about 0.03 inches wide) shows the internal structure of a carbon-nanotube coating that absorbs about 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that strikes it. A section of the coating, which was grown on smooth silicon, was purposely removed to show the tubes' vertical alignment. (Credit: Stephanie Getty, NASA Goddard) More details visit:  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-super-black-material-absorbs-multiple-wavelength.html or check SPIE Optics and Photonics.

An Asteroid named   2005 YU55 will have a flyby near earth and moon on 8-Nov-2011. NASA scientists will track asteroid 2005 YU55 from the agency's Deep Space Network. At the point of closest approach, it will be no closer than 324,600 kilometers or 0.85 the distance from the moon to Earth. Look at this animation. More details and videos: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/overview/yu55.html   http://youtu.be/ucuegbwT8MU 

It's early winter time.... and now look at Himalayan slopes..... Hazy.......    click this link for detailed information.... http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=76343 Image courtesy: Nasa Earth Observatory

Check this latest paper discussing how the influence on Southern Hemisphere climate of the Antarctic ozone hole is slowly dissipating and will be progressively overtaken by human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases... Ozone depletion over the past three to four decades has had a marked impact on Antarctic and Southern Ocean climate.   However, this will shortly be overwhelmed by the influence of greenhouse gases..... discusses this study...... http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n11/full/ngeo1296.html http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-greenhouse-gases-overpower-ozone-hole.html NATURE GEOSCIENCE | REVIEW Signatures of the Antarctic ozone hole in Southern Hemisphere surface climate change. David W. J. Thompson, Susan Solomon, Paul J. Kushner, Matthew H. England, Kevin M. Grise & David J. Karoly Nature Geoscience 4, 741–749 (2011) doi:10.1038/ngeo1296

Here is the link to see the Mapped mosaics are daily images by NOAA seeries of satellites. The data are from the AVHRR instrument on NOAA/ESA’s polar orbiting satellites (NOAA-16, 17, 18, 19, and METOP-A). Here is the link and descriptions http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/imagery/mosaics.html

Climate models have a hard time representing clouds accurately because they lack the spatial resolution necessary to accurately simulate the clouds.... Livermore scientists and international collaborators have developed a new tool that will help scientists better represent the clouds observed in the sky in climate models. Stephen Klein, who along with LLNL's Yuying Zhang and other collaborators have developed the Cloud-Feedback-Model Intercomparison Project Observation Simulator Package (COSP). The COSP is now used worldwide by most of the major models for climate and weather prediction, and it will play an important role in the evaluation of models that will be reviewed by the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Klein said. More information: More information about the COSP appears in the August issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS2856.1

The discovery that 'neutrinos travel faster than light' has recently in our Headlines.... Many questioned it's sanctity.... and were looking for possible errors.... check this page on my blog....   http://akmnscience.blogspot.com/2011/09/faster-than-light-questions-relativity.html Now an independent experiment confirms that subatomic particles have wrong energy spectrum for superluminal travel. check this  http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.3763 Title: A search for the analogue to Cherenkov radiation by high energy neutrinos at superluminal speeds in ICARUS Look at this NEWS published by Nature http://goo.gl/0fkOb doi:10.1038/news.2011.605 Finding puts brakes on faster-than-light neutrinos

Scientists have examined data from 1972 to 2008 and came up with striking observations...... They found the observed sea-lev el rise (1.8 ± 0.2 mm yr−1 from tide gauges alone and 2.1 ± 0.2 mm yr−1 from a combination of tide gauges and altimeter observations)  The largest contributions come from ocean thermal expansion (0.8 mm yr−1) and the melting of glaciers and ice caps (0.7 mm yr−1), with Greenland and Antarctica contributing about 0.4 mm yr−1. The aerosol forcing, inferred as a residual in the atmospheric energy balance, is estimated as −0.8 ± 0.4 W m−2 for the 1980s and early 1990s. It increases in the late 1990s, as is required for consistency with little surface warming over the last decade. This increase is likely at least partially related to substantial increases in aerosol emissions from developing nations and moderate volcanic activity. for details, abstract and full length paper http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL048794.shtml Church, J. A., N. J...

NASA and Japan released a significantly improved version of the most complete digital topographic map of Earth. Data users can download the ASTER global digital elevation model at: https://lpdaac.usgs.gov / or http://www.ersdac.or.jp/GDEM/E/4.html . For more information about ASTER, visit: http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ . For more information on NASA's Terra mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/terra .

Aquarius Yields NASA's First Global Map of Ocean Salinity The first global map of the salinity, or saltiness, of Earth’s ocean surface produced by NASA's new Aquarius instrument reveals a rich tapestry of global salinity patterns, demonstrating Aquarius' ability to resolve large-scale salinity distribution features clearly and with sharp contrast. Image credit: NASA/GSFC/JPL-Caltech › Full image and caption http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aquarius/news/aquarius20110922.html

New computer model better explains workings of tsunamis scientists have been working nearly blind in trying to understand how tsunamis work once they reach shore. Now, Frederic Dias from University College in Dublin and his team of mathematical and computer scientists have developed a computer simulation that they believe explains how tsunamis work once they reach shore. They have described their findings in Physical Review Letters. More information:  Local Run-Up Amplification by Resonant Wave Interactions, Phys. Rev. Lett.  107, 124502 (2011)  DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.124502 http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-tsunamis.html

Deforestation in the rainforests of West Africa reduces rainfall over the rest of the forest, according to new University of Leeds research published in Geophysical Research Letters. The study shows that changing land use from forest to crop land reduces rainfall over neighbouring trees by around 50% due to changes in the surface temperature which affects the formation of rain clouds. More information: 'How does local tropical deforestation affect rainfall' by L Garcia-Carreras and Douglas J Parker is published in Geophysical Research Letters doi:10.1029/2011GL049099 http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049099.shtml http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-deforestation-rainfall-africa.html

    As the Moon blots out the Sun during a solar eclipse, the patch of the Earth that is cast into darkness cools. Meanwhile, the surrounding regions continue to receive the full brunt of the Sun's energy.     This temperature difference causes waves in the atmosphere to build up behind the leading edge of the moon's shadow, like the bow wave of a ship.    Although scientists have hypothesized about the moon's atmospheric wake since the 1970's, it wasn't until a July 22, 2009 eclipse in Japan and Taiwan that they observed the phenomenon directly. Read details: http://news.discovery.com/earth/moon-makes-waves-during-eclipse-111007.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1 The research was published in Geophysical Research Letters. J. Y. Liu of the National Central University of Taiwan led the research.

Here is how SOLSTICE and EQUINOX mean in reality. Equinox ==== Sun's rays fall equally in both Hemisphere..... Solstice  ==== Sun's rays falls on more area in summer hemisphere. I have made this Equinox-Solstice matrix for simple and clear understanding. We were all familiar with the cartoon graphics..... now this is the reality... These images are by Meteosat in VIS channel. Image courtesy:Dundee Satellite Receiving station.

Three U.S.-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace, a stunning revelation that suggests the cosmos will eventually freeze to ice. Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess of the United States and US-Australian Brian Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize Tuesday for their research on supernovae, the Nobel jury said. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Saul Perlmutter would share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess. Working in two separate research teams during the 1990s - Perlmutter in one and Schmidt and Riess in the other - the scientists raced to map the universe's expansion by analyzing a particular type of supernovas, or exploding stars. They found that the light emitted by more than 50 distant supernovas was weaker than expected, a sign that the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate, the academy ...

A NASA-led study has documented an unprecedented depletion of Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic last winter and spring caused by an unusually prolonged period of extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere. Left: Ozone in Earth's stratosphere at an altitude of approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) in mid-March 2011, near the peak of the 2011 Arctic ozone loss. Red colors represent high levels of ozone, while purple and grey colors (over the north polar region) represent very small ozone amounts. Right: chlorine monoxide – the primary agent of chemical ozone destruction in the cold polar lower stratosphere – for the same day and altitude. Light blue and green colors represent small amounts of chlorine monoxide, while dark blue and black colors represent very large chlorine monoxide amounts. The white line marks the area within which the chemical ozone destruction took place. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech  published online Sunday, Oct. 2, in the journal...

Water Vapour is in Excess of Saturation in the Atmosphere of Mars,  reveals the results from the SPICAM spectrometer on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. It measured the altitudinal profile of water vapour in the martian atmosphere..... Here is the published paper: "Evidence of Water Vapor in Excess of Saturation in the Atmosphere of Mars", by L. Maltagliati, F. Montmessin, A. Fedorova, O. Korablev, F. Forget, and J.-L. Bertaux, published in the 30 September 2011 issue of Science. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6051/1868.abstract Read a very good report here: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-supersaturation-martian-atmosphere.html

Recently, a group of physicists have been working to measure the neutrinos generated from a particle accelerator at CERN. This group discovered neutrinos arriving faster than would have been expected and they appear to be traveling faster than the speed of light itself, but they draw no definitive conclusions.  CNGS – CERN neutrinos to Gran Sasso The CNGS project sends muon neutrinos from CERN to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS), 732 km away in Italy. A proton beam from the  Super Proton Synchrotron  at CERN is directed onto a graphite target Source:  http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CNGS-en.html (official website) Read the Press Release OPERA experiment reports anomaly in flight time of neutrinos from CERN to Gran Sasso http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html Here is the submitted paper http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897 Download PDF  http://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897v1 Physicists wary of junk...

I am sharing a beautiful video uploaded by NASA yesterday 26th Sep. in youtube. It was a real observation from the International Space Station on 17th of this month. First you see the beautiful 'Aurora Australis' and then you can see forest fires in land. If you look more keen, you can see also the air-glow too.... You can find more information here. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=52287 http://t.co/gbfh7Zhk

                World Space Week  Resource Material prepared by our Team has been uploaded in the official WEBsite. here is it . http://www.vssc.gov.in:8080/ wsw2011/index.jsp http://www.vssc.gov.in:8080/ wsw2011/wswatschools.html Download PDF http://www.vssc.gov.in:8080/ wsw2011/downloads/WSW_2011_ Resourcematerial.pdf http://www.vssc.gov.in:8080/ wsw2011/downloads/WSW_ Handbook.pdf Materials for Media already sent...  ...... will be published/ relayed soon...! Celebrate the 'Golden jubilee of Human Space Flight'

click image Photographed by the Expedition 28 crew aboard the International Space Station, this image shows the moon, the Earth's only natural satellite, at center with the limb of Earth near the bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of the Earth's atmosphere. The troposphere ends abruptly at the tropopause, which appears in the image as the sharp boundary between the orange- and blue-colored atmosphere. The silvery-blue noctilucent clouds extend far above the Earth's troposphere. Image Credit: NASA http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2068.html

This is how Solstice and Equinox look like ....... ....... a wider perspective.... ......view from space. Equinox ------ Sun overhead equator ---- sunlight falls equally in both Hemispheres. Solstice  ------ Sun is overhead northern/ southernmost position ---- sunlight falls maximum in Summer Hemispheres. I have taken the selected days visible imagery from Meteosat and arranged them in a 2x2 matrix..... Image courtesy: Dundee Satellite Receiving Station. (Isn't it better and give real information than the long used Inspiration obtained from: Seeing Equinoxes and Solstices from Space http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=52248

China is launching a Space module this month.........  to initiate building its own space station...... By 2016 plans to put a laboratory into orbit...!! Space station set up by 2020. Read more: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-china-space-station-module.html

How about taking part in World Space Week Competitions....? Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre VSSC, the lead centre of ISRO coordinates World Space Week activities in Kerala to motivate students  and teachers. Many competitions for School children...... Mars Habitat design competition for College Students...! http://www.vssc.gov.in:8080/wsw2011/index.html http://www.vssc.gov.in:8080/wsw2011/essay.html http://www.vssc.gov.in:8080/wsw2011/mars_habitat_design.html SPACE QUIZ                   As part of the World Space Week celebrations, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram is organising a Space Quiz during first week of October 2011.                  Students of Class 10,11 and 12 can participate. Only one team is allowed to represent a school.                   Schools can send the details of the particip...

Why should humans go to Space ........?                                 Exploration is the inquisite nature of human mind, which has historically led to the discovery of new continents and development of new habitats. Looking back, without these discoveries and advances, living on Earth would have been completely different from what we see today. Rapid developments in human race, limitations in resources on Earth, and the potential threat from weapons of mass destruction necessitates that we will have to boldly go far beyond the Earth's boundaries if the human race has to continue for thousands of years forward. More importantly, space explorations hold the key to unravel the secrets behind the origin and evolution of life and environment surrounding us. These drive the quest for space exploration and colonization. Where else can earthlings colonize?               ...

NASA announced on 14 Sep 2011,development of the Space Launch System (SLS) -- an advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle that will help take human exploration beyond Earth's orbit. The SLS rocket will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system.  Have a look at this animation and related links... A step closer to travel in space...!!! http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/sls1.html# http://anon.nasa-global.edgesuite.net/HD_downloads/HLV_Launch_anim.mov http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/914111

Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) is conducting a   ‘Mars Habitat Design Competition’    for the college students of Kerala in connection with World Space Week celebrations from October 4 to 10,  Check this link for the official website http://www.vssc.gov.in/ http://www.vssc.gov.in/internet/compRepository/spaceweek/mars_habitat_design_competition.htm Take part in this interesting and creative competition ........ Let your   imagination   spread wings and fly to Mars..... and beyond..... Best Wishes 

Have a look at these Astronomical photography which won the awards recently...! Marvelous indeed...! click on the image to reach the Nature's website (slide show)with all those snaps.! courtesy: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110909/full/news.2011.529/slideshow/1.html?identifier=1