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team learned of an impending solar storm directed toward Uranus, which sits about 2.5 billion miles (4 billion kilometers) from Earth.

timed their Hubble observations specifically to coincide with the solar storm, and about six weeks later, Hubble spotted the auroras flaring up in Uranus's upper atmosphere

the other seven planets, Uranus's magnetic axis is 60 degrees off from its spin axis

spin axis itself has a bizarre 98-degree tilt relative to the solar system's orbital plane

, the planet seems to roll around on its side as it orbits the sun.

Further investigations of Uranus’ auroras and magnetic field can offer insight into the dynamics of Earth’s own magnetosphere and how it interacts with the solar wind, which in turn affects our increasingly technological society.

V class asteroids: They are a far-out group of asteroids that follow a path between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, and are made of igneous, eruptive materials.

Asteroid composition has been classified in the following way:

among its investors Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, who are worth $16.7 billion and $6.2 billion

company's advisers include filmmaker and adventurer James Cameron, former NASA astronaut Tom Jones and MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager

Water can be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel

platinum-group metals it plans to extract will help lower the cost of many products here on Earth, including hand-held electronic devices and monitors for televisions and computers.

Planetary Resources is still years away from actually snatching up an asteroid and staking a cosmic claim

What the study did was show that, for the first time in history, this was now feasible using technology available in this decade

it appears feasible to identify, capture and return close to Earth an entire asteroid that is roughly 23 feet (7 meters) wide. This so-called near-Earth asteroid (NEA) would weigh in the neighborhood of 500 tons

According to the study

Placing a 500-ton asteroid in high lunar orbit would provide a unique, meaningful and affordable destination for astronaut crews in the next decade

This disruptive capability would have a positive impact on a wide range of the nation’s human space exploration interests. It would provide a high-value target in cislunar space that would require a human presence to take full advantage of this new resource.

Such a venture represents a new synergy between robotic and human missions in which robotic spacecraft retrieve significant quantities of valuable resources for exploitation by astronaut crews to enable human exploration farther out into the solar system.

Water or other material extracted from a captured volatile-rich near-Earth asteroid could be used to provide affordable spacecraft shielding against galactic cosmic rays. The extracted water could also be used for propellant to transport a shielded habitat.

This undertaking could jump-start an entire in situ resource utilization industry. The availability of a multi-hundred-ton asteroid in lunar orbit could also stimulate the expansion of international cooperation in space as agencies come together to determine how to sample and process raw material from an asteroid.

may someday have to deflect a much larger near-Earth object

the idea of exploiting the natural resources of asteroids dates back over 100 years.

the feasibility of this retrieval concept is made possible by three key developments.

Firstly, the ability to discover and characterize an adequate number of sufficiently small near-Earth asteroids for mining.

Secondly, there is evolving ability to implement sufficiently powerful solar electric propulsion systems to enable transportation of the captured asteroid.

Lastly, the proposed human presence in cislunar space in the 2020s both enables exploration and exploitation of the returned near-Earth asteroid.

NASA's findings are put in the public domain, as in the earlier cases of communication, weather and navigation satellites, for use by competing commercial enterprises

companies can then work to generate revenues — and pay taxes — while lowering the cost of access to resources for the good of all

likely not a Lyrid meteor

]ithout a trajectory, I cannot rule out a Lyrid origin, but I think it likely that it was a background or sporadic meteor

scientists have confirmed his suspicions: it's one of the more primitive types of space rocks out there, dating to the early formation of the solar system 4 to 5 billion years ago

found the first piece on Tuesday along a road between a baseball field and park on the edge of Lotus near Coloma, where James W. Marshall first discovered gold in California, at Sutter's Mill in 1848.

Robert Ward has been hunting and collecting meteorites for more than 20 years

Ward, who has found meteorites in every continent but Antarctica

CM" - carbonaceous chondrite

actually has two rocks but suspects they were part of the same small meteorite that broke on impact. Each weighs about 10 grams - about the same as two nickels

Experts say the flaming meteor was probably about the size of a minivan when it entered the Earth's atmosphere with a loud boom and about one-third of the explosive force of the atomic bomb

seen from Sacramento, Calif., to Las Vegas and parts of northern Nevada.

event of that size might happen once a year around the world

most of them occur over the ocean or an uninhabited area

most meteors you see in the night's sky are the size of tiny stones or even grains of sand, and their trail lasts all of a second or two

meteor probably weighed about 154,300 pounds

probably released energy equivalent to a 5-kiloton explosion - the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons

The boom, another expert said, was caused by the speed with which the space rock entered the atmosphere

Meteorites enter Earth's upper atmosphere at somewhere between 22,000 mph and 44,000 mph - faster than the speed of sound, thus creating a sonic boom.

friction between the rock and the air is so intense that "it doesn't even burn it up, it vaporizes

neurons are classified into two groups according to the type of chemical they produce: excitatory, who produce chemicals that increase communication between neurons, and inhibitory, who have the opposite effect, decreasing communication

Scientists knew that inhibitory cells enable us to refine our memories, to make them specific to a precise set of information

findings explain for the first time how this happens at the molecular and cell levels

very little research has been done on inhibitory neurons, partly because they are very difficult to study

In the laboratory, we simulated the formation of a new memory by using chemicals

measured the electrical activity within the network of cells

cells where we had removed CREB, we saw that the strength of the electrical connections was much weaker

scientists found that a factor called "CREB" plays a key role in adjusting gene expression and the strength of synapses in inhibitory neurons

when we increased the presence of CREB, the connections were stronger

This new understanding of the chemical functioning of the brain may one day lead to new treatments

we are unfortunately many years away from developing new treatments from this information."

Data gathered during low-altitude flights in and around the Los Angeles basin in May 2010 suggest that the region's 9.9 million autos generate about 62 metric tons of ammonia each day

ammonia emissions from dairy farms in the eastern portion of the basin—home to about 298,000 cattle—range between 33 and 176 metric tons per day

Ammonia emissions from the dairy farms are concentrated, boosting atmospheric levels of the gas to more than 100 times background levels, so efforts to curb the farms' emissions (perhaps by feeding the animals different diets) might reduce smog more than those targeting cars.

By measuring the rise of the flare's brightness, the scientists calculated the rate at which the star's gas was getting sucked into the black hole

helped reveal at what point and time the black hole had begun disrupting the star, revealing how powerful its gravitational field was and thus its mass.

estimate the black hole's mass to be 3 million suns

like we are gathering evidence from a crime scene

analyzed the spectrum of the ejected gas — that is, the specific colors making up its light

using data from the Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona

and the spectrum of the gas revealed it was mostly helium.

unique spectral fingerprint

fact there was mostly helium and very little hydrogen in the gas suggests "the slaughtered star had to have been the helium-rich core of a stripped star

This likely happened when the star went through the red giant phase, where it expanded to 100 times its original radius

it puffed up like that, it became vulnerable to the gravitational tidal forces of the black hole, and it would have been very easy to strip off the tenuous hydrogen envelope

the star then had to approach much closer, 100 times closer in, before it was completely disrupted by the black hole

The flight was previously delayed from an April 30 launch date to allow more time for tests of Dragon's flight software. The new delay is also meant to allow for further checkouts.

UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science

Working on the assumption that large groups of public non-experts can be trained to recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists

School of Medicine at UCLA

found that a small group of non-experts playing the game (mostly undergraduate student volunteers) was collectively able to diagnosis malaria-infected red blood cells with an accuracy that was within 1.25 percent of the diagnostic decisions made by a trained medical professional.

The game, which can be accessed on cell phones and personal computers, can be played by anyone around the world, including children

if you carefully combine the decisions of people — even non-experts — they become very competitive

if you just look at one person's response, it may be OK, but that one person will inevitably make some mistakes. But if you combine 10 to 20, maybe 50 non-expert gamers together, you improve your accuracy greatly in terms of analysis

could potentially help overcome limitations in the diagnosis of malaria

current gold standard for malaria diagnosis involves a trained pathologist using a conventional light microscope to view images of cells and count the number of malaria-causing parasites

process is very time-consuming, and given the large number of cases in resource-poor countries, the sheer volume presents a big challenge

significant portion of cases reported in sub-Sahara Africa are actually false positives, leading to unnecessary and costly treatments and hospitalizations

t the same platform could be applied to combine the decisions of minimally trained health care workers to significantly boost the accuracy of diagnosis, which is especially promising for telepathology, among other telemedicine field

By training hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of members of the public to identify malaria through UCLA's crowd-sourced game, a much greater number of diagnoses could be made more quickly — at no cost and with a high degree of collective accurac

research group created an automated algorithm for diagnosing the same images using computer vision, as well as a novel hybrid platform for combining human and machine resources toward efficient, accurate and remote diagnosis of malaria.

Before playing the game, each player is given a brief online tutorial and an explanation of what malaria-infected red blood cells typically look like using sample images

one of the major challenges will be the skepticism of traditional microscopists, pathologists and clinical laboratory personnel, not to mention malaria experts, who will initially view with suspicion a gaming approach in malaria diagnostics

analysis presented online May 2 in Nature indicates that at the time of engulfment, the star was just a helium-rich core, the remainder of a former red giant

The black hole

weighing about 3 million solar masses, had probably already snacked on the star’s outer layers during a previous close encounter.

the black hole spat some of the stellar material into space

followed elongated orbits that eventually dumped them back into the black hole, producing the observed, months-long flare.

Such disruption events are rare, thought to occur only once every 10,000 years per galaxy

can help astronomers spot otherwise hidden black holes.

even more significant observation was that this material also contained an extremely low proportion of carbon, which matched very closely that of the Earth and the other rocky planets orbiting closest to our own Sun

first time that such low proportions of carbon have been measured in the atmospheres of white dwarf stars

clear evidence that these stars once had at least one rocky exoplanet which they have now destroyed

must also pinpoint the last phase of the death of these worlds.

atmosphere of a white dwarf is made up of hydrogen and/or helium

heavy elements that come into their atmosphere are dragged downwards to their core and out of sight within a matter of days

astronomers must literally be observing the final phase of the death of these worlds as the material rains down on the stars at rates of up to 1 million kilograms every second.

clear evidence that these stars once had rocky exoplanetary bodies which have now been destroyed

appear much like the cardboard 3D glasses you get at the movie theatre, but instead of red and blue lenses, they will have either black mylar or Baader filter film.

inspect the edges carefully to make sure they are sealed and no sunlight can enter

do not use them in conjunction with binoculars or a telescope

meant strictly for use with your eyes

Concentrating sunlight with an optical aid and hoping the glasses will be enough to block the Sun’s harmful rays is taking a chance at blinding yourself

. If you plan on filming

now is the time to practice

Make sure well in advance of exactly what time the transit starts in your area

times are given on an astronomical standard – Universal Time. If you are unsure of how to convert, try the Time Zone Converter to assist you.

mimic a technique that is already being used to sample the atmospheres of giant planets outside our solar system passing in front of their stars

astronomers already know the chemical makeup of Venus's atmosphere

test whether this technique will have a chance of detecting the very faint fingerprints of an Earth-like planet, even one that might be habitable for life, outside our solar system that similarly transits its own star. , Venus is an excellent proxy because it is similar in size and mass to our planet.

use an arsenal of Hubble instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, to view the transit in a range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. During the transit, Hubble will snap images and perform spectroscopy, dividing the sunlight into its constituent colors, which could yield information about the makeup of Venus's atmosphere.

observe the moon for seven hours, before, during, and after the transit

compare the data

need the long observation because they are looking for extremely faint spectral signatures

Only 1/100,000th of the sunlight will filter through Venus's atmosphere and be reflected off the moon.

astronomers only have one shot at observing the transit, they had to carefully plan how the study would be carried out

Hubble will need to be locked onto the same location on the moon for more than seven hours

roughly 40 minutes of each 96-minute orbit of Hubble around the Earth

55 Cancri e was first discovered in 2004 and is not a habitable world

The world is about twice the width of Earth and is super-dense, with about eight times the mass of Earth.

until now, scientists have never managed to detect the infrared light from the super-Earth world.

pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope

Spitzer first detected infrared light from an alien planet in 2005

that world was "hot Jupiter," a gas giant planet much larger than 55 Cancri e that orbited extremely close to its parent star

other telescopes have performed similar feats

Spitzer's view of the 55 Cancri e is the first time the light from a rocky super-Earth type planet has been seen

Since the discovery of 55 Cancri e, astronomers have pinned down increasingly strange features about the planet

already knew it was part of an alien solar system containing five exoplanets centered on the star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer

But 55 Cancri e stood out because it is ultra-dense and orbits extremely close to its parent star

26 times closer than the distance between Mercury and our own sun

observations revealed that the star-facing side of 55 Cancri e

temperatures reaching up to 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (1,726 degrees Celsius).

likely a dark world that lacks the substantial atmosphere needed to warm its nighttime side

the planet is oozing

Past observations of the planet by the Spitzer Space Telescope have suggested that one-fifth of 55 Cancri e is made up of lighter elements, including water

the extreme temperatures and pressures on 55 Cancri e would create what scientists call a "supercritical fluid" state

Supercritical fluids can be imagined as a gas in a liquid state, which can occur under extreme pressures and temperatures

On Earth, water can become a supercritical fluid inside some steam engines.

This graphic illuminates the process by which astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have for the first time detected the light from a super-Earth planet, the alien world of 55 Cancri e 41 light-years from Earth.

planet is likely a rocky world covered with water in a supercritical fluid state and topped off with a steam blanket

could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away

detailed in the Astrophysical Journal

Spitzer Space Telescope launched in 2003

telescope engineers modified several settings on the observatory to optimize its alien planet vision

conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago