Physics Lover

india-china Tuesday, 12 February 2019  |  PTI  | Washington India and China are leading the global greening effort, which is quite contrary to the general perception worldwide, a latest NASA study said Monday, observing that the world is a greener place than it was 20 years ago. The NASA study based on data received and analysed from its satellite said that India and China are leading in greening on land. "China and India account for one-third of the greening but contain only 9 per cent of the planet's land area covered in vegetation," said lead author Chi Chen of Boston University. "That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from over exploitation," he said. The study published on February 11, in the journal Nature Sustainability said that recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India and overlaps with croplands world-wide. China alone accou...

india-china Tuesday, 12 February 2019  |  PTI  | Washington India and China are leading the global greening effort, which is quite contrary to the general perception worldwide, a latest NASA study said Monday, observing that the world is a greener place than it was 20 years ago. The NASA study based on data received and analysed from its satellite said that India and China are leading in greening on land. "China and India account for one-third of the greening but contain only 9 per cent of the planet's land area covered in vegetation," said lead author Chi Chen of Boston University. "That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in populous countries from over exploitation," he said. The study published on February 11, in the journal Nature Sustainability said that recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India and overlaps with croplands world-w...

DARK MATTER AND ENERGY RESEARCH UPDATE 09 Feb 2019 Echo location: the Lovell Telescope could be used to detect microwaves from axionic dark matter. (Courtesy: Mike Peel/Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics/University of Manchester) A powerful beam of microwaves could be fired into space to detect hypothetical dark-matter particles called axions. That is the proposal of  Pierre Sikivie  and Ariel Arza at the University of Florida, who hope to record a faint microwave “echo” from the dark matter thought to exist at higher concentrations in certain regions of the Milky Way. Axions were postulated in the 1970s to overcome a problem with the strong nuclear force, but it was later realized that they could in fact make up much of the universe’s dark matter. Unlike some other dark-matter candidates, axions have unusually well-defined properties including a mass no smaller than about a millionth of an electronvolt (eV) – to make them compatible with the observed abundance of dark matte...

DARK MATTER AND ENERGY RESEARCH UPDATE 09 Feb 2019 Echo location: the Lovell Telescope could be used to detect microwaves from axionic dark matter. (Courtesy: Mike Peel/Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics/University of Manchester) A powerful beam of microwaves could be fired into space to detect hypothetical dark-matter particles called axions. That is the proposal of  Pierre Sikivie  and Ariel Arza at the University of Florida, who hope to record a faint microwave “echo” from the dark matter thought to exist at higher concentrations in certain regions of the Milky Way. Axions were postulated in the 1970s to overcome a problem with the strong nuclear force, but it was later realized that they could in fact make up much of the universe’s dark matter. Unlike some other dark-matter candidates, axions have unusually well-defined properties including a mass no smaller than about a millionth of an electronvolt (eV) – to make them compatible with the observed abundance ...

Washington: Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest since 1880 and the planet will warm further, especially since greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise,  NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have said. Global temperatures in 2018 were 0.83 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1951 to 1980, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Globally, 2018’s temperatures ranked behind those of 2016, 2017 and 2015. The past five years are, collectively, the warmest years in the modern record. “2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend,” GISS Director Gavin Schmidt said in a statement on Wednesday. Since the 1880s, the average global surface temperature has risen about 1 degree Celsius. This warming has been driven in large part by increased emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities. ...

Washington: Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2018 were the fourth warmest since 1880 and the planet will warm further, especially since greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise,  NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have said. Global temperatures in 2018 were 0.83 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1951 to 1980, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Globally, 2018’s temperatures ranked behind those of 2016, 2017 and 2015. The past five years are, collectively, the warmest years in the modern record. “2018 is yet again an extremely warm year on top of a long-term global warming trend,” GISS Director Gavin Schmidt said in a statement on Wednesday. Since the 1880s, the average global surface temperature has risen about 1 degree Celsius. This warming has been driven in large part by increased emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activi...

By  Alison Klesman  | February 5, 2019 5:30 pm This artist’s interpretation shows the black hole MAXI J1820+070 and its companion star, along with J1820’s accretion disk (orange) and corona (blue). (Credit: Aurore Simonnet and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) Black holes pepper our universe, but like their name implies, most are invisible — until something happens to change that. That something is often material flowing into the black hole. And in March 2018, one such previously invisible black hole flared to life when a flood of matter fell inward, allowing astronomers to spot and track the event, ultimately mapping out the region close to a black hole in finer detail than ever before. That work, published January 9 in  Nature , was led by Erin Kara of the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Kara also presented the results at a press conference the same day at the 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Using NASA’s Ne...

By  Alison Klesman  | February 5, 2019 5:30 pm This artist’s interpretation shows the black hole MAXI J1820+070 and its companion star, along with J1820’s accretion disk (orange) and corona (blue). (Credit: Aurore Simonnet and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) Black holes pepper our universe, but like their name implies, most are invisible — until something happens to change that. That something is often material flowing into the black hole. And in March 2018, one such previously invisible black hole flared to life when a flood of matter fell inward, allowing astronomers to spot and track the event, ultimately mapping out the region close to a black hole in finer detail than ever before. That work, published January 9 in  Nature , was led by Erin Kara of the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Kara also presented the results at a press conference the same day at the 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Usi...

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has successfully taken measurements of the density of a mountain on the red planet and finds it more porous than originally thought. Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager to capture a set of 55 high-resolution images, which were stitched together to create this full-color self-portrait. The mosaic shows the rover at 'Rocknest,' the spot in Gale Crater where the mission's first scoop sampling took place. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems) ocks on Mars are more porous and less compacted  than scientists expected, according to a study that used data from NASA's Curiosity rover. Researchers, including those from Arizona State University (ASU) in the US, measured the density of rock layers  in 154-kilometre-wide Gale Crater on Mars. "What we were able to do is measure the bulk density of the material in Gale Crater," said Travis Gabriel, a graduate student at Arizona State University. Findings of the study...