NewScITech

Scientists return this week to the world’s deepest known sinkhole, Cenote Zacatón in Mexico, to resume tests of a NASA-funded robot called DEPTHX, designed to survey and explore for life in one of Earth’s most extreme regions and potentially in outer space. Read the rest of this entry »

So far, astronomers have discovered about 200 planets outside our solar system, known as “extrasolar” planets. Very little is known about most of them, but for the first time, scientists have obtained new information about the atmospheres of two such planets by splitting apart the light emitted from them. Read the rest of this entry »

If indeed “a diamond is forever,” the most primitive origins of Earth’s so-called black diamonds were in deep, universal time, geologists have discovered. Black diamonds came from none other than interstellar space. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s official: The northern hemisphere of Saturn’s giant moon Titan is dotted with liquid hydrocarbon lakes. The finding vindicates a long-standing prediction that Titan, shrouded in dense nitrogen and methane clouds, should also have reservoirs of liquid—likely methane—on its surface. Read the rest of this entry »

While two late December blizzards paralyzed the Midwest, Long Islanders were enjoying mostly mild temperatures with no snow during the entire month. According to weather statistics recorded at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory since 1949, 2006 brought the warmest December on record for Long Islanders with a monthly average temperature of 40.9 (4.94 C) degrees Fahrenheit (F), as well as the warmest November, with an average temperature of 48.6 (9.22 C) degrees F. Read the rest of this entry »

Two brilliant flashes of light from nearby galaxies are puzzling astronomers and could indicate that gamma-ray bursts, which signal the birth of a black hole, are more diverse than once thought. Read the rest of this entry »

The deepest reaches of space are permeated by a cloak of infrared radiation, an uneven energy swath generated by long-dead objects from the early universe. Read the rest of this entry »

Max Planck researcher from Garching prove that giant radio telescope can deliver high-resolution images showing the cosmic mass distribution. Read the rest of this entry »

Our Solar System may have been created in a gigantic mixing process far more extensive than previously imagined, according to research published today. Read the rest of this entry »

Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will produce a 3 percent reduction in the density of Earth’s outermost atmosphere by 2017, according to a team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Pennsylvania State University (PSU). Read the rest of this entry »

Studying rocks on Mars, which are among the oldest rocks in the Solar System, could provide scientists with key evidence of how the earliest forms of life arose on Earth, say researchers writing in this month’s edition of Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. Read the rest of this entry »

An exotic theory, which attempts to unify the laws of physics by proposing the existence of an extra fourth spatial dimension, could be tested using a satellite to be launched in 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush offered Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday greater U.S. cooperation on space exploration and planned to send the head of NASA to China later this year. Read the rest of this entry »

A return mission to the moon offers the best hope of understanding life on Earth and discovering whether alien life lurks in distant corners of the universe, according to a British scientist. Read the rest of this entry »

Engineers at NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) facility are examining the feasibility of reusing portions of old NASA spacecraft systems software for new missions. One of the goals of the effort is to determine whether using that old software would actually save the agency time and money. Read the rest of this entry »