SciByte

Astronomers have discovered a probable dwarf planet that orbits the Sun far beyond Pluto

Together with Sedna, a similar extreme object discovered a decade ago, the find is reshaping ideas about how the Solar System came to be

been searching for more objects like Sedna for more than 10 years now.

The object journeys 80 to 452 AU from the sun, never approaching Neptune (30 AU) or Pluto (39.5 AU).

The new world is roughly 450 kilometers across, just one-fifth Pluto's diameter

If Pluto were as big as a basketball, Sedna would be a softball and the new world a mere golf ball

The rover experienced a partial cleaning of dust from its solar panels

Combined, the seasonal effect and multiple dust-cleaning events have increased the amount of energy available each day from the rover's solar array by more than 70 percent compared with two months ago

Opportunity rover on Mars has gotten a 70% boost in power over the past few weeks

A good portion of that comes from the fact that its springtime in Mars’ southern hemisphere where Oppy now sits

so the Sun is now shining longer and higher in the sky.

A new study

has developed a new drug that can manipulate the body's natural signalling and energy systems, allowing the body to attack and shut down cancerous cells.

ZL105,

NASA’s Curiosity rover has just pulled into

terrain chock full of curvy rock outcrops at Kimberly that’s suitable for contact science and drilling action

The robot’s arm has been deployed to investigate the most scientifically productive spots

images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a new channel in the southern hemisphere region of Terra Siernum that appeared between November 2010 and May 2013.

this particular feature is likely not due to that liquid

Gully or ravine landforms are common on Mars, particularly in the southern highlands

Coca-Cola

In 1886, the first batch of Coca Cola was brewed over a fire in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. John Pemberton had created the concoction as a cure for "hangover," stomach ache and headache. He advertised it as a "brain tonic and intellectual beverage," and first sold it to the public a few weeks later on 8 May. Coke contained cocaine as an ingredient until 1904, when the drug was banned by Congress.

Hoyle coined “Big Bang”

In 1949, Fred Hoyle unintentionally coined the term “Big Bang” as a household name, in a scripted radio broadcast on the BBC Third Programme. His talk was printed in the The Listener (7 Apr 1949). He compared his own belief in a “steady state” universe, saying, “earlier theories … were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past.” He repeated its use in a 1950 broadcast published in The Listener (9 Mar 1950): “One [idea] was that the Universe started its life a finite time ago in a single huge explosion… This big bang idea seemed to me to be unsatisfactory.” His critics found the “big bang” term pejorative, yet Hoyle has said his intention was to make a vivid description for the radio audience. The term stuck

Alaska earthquake

In 1965, south central Alaska was rocked by North America's greatest earthquake. (At 8.3-8.5 on the Richter scale, it released over twice the energy of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.) Its epicenter was near Price William Sound, along a 1,000 km thrust fault where the Pacific plate subducts under the North american plate. The earthquake tilted at least 120,000 sq km. Some landmasses were thrust up locally as high as 25 m; elsewhere land sank as much as 2.5m. The shock was felt over almost 1,300,000 sq km. Extensive coastal damage resulted from submarine landslides and tsunamis which caused 122 of the 131 deaths. Property damage cost was about $311 million. Tsunami damage reached Crescent City, Calif. Tens of thousands of aftershocks indicated that the region of faulting extended about 1,000 km.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and Reading University have demonstrated that, after over 1,500 years frozen in Antarctic ice, moss can come back to life and continue to grow

The team,

observed moss regeneration after at least 1,530 years frozen in permafrost

A recent analysis of a star in the south hemisphere constellation of Centaurus has highlighted the role that amateurs play in assisting with professional discoveries in astronomy.

The stats for

the binary system weighs in at a combined 39 solar masses, has a radius of over 1,300 times that of our Sun, and is a million times as luminous

The first terrestrial discovery of ringwoodite confirms the presence of massive amounts of water 400 to 700 kilometers beneath Earth's surface

Ringwoodite is a form of the mineral peridot, believed to exist in large quantities under high pressures in the transition zone

Ringwoodite has been found in meteorites but, until now, no terrestrial sample has ever been unearthed because scientists haven't been able to conduct fieldwork at extreme depths

Q: Can you explain the theory of cosmic inflation that you first put forth in 1980?

usually describe inflation as a theory of the "bang" of the Big Bang

describes the propulsion mechanism that drove the universe into the period of tremendous expansion that we call the Big Bang