SciByte

The first Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of another star has been confirmed by observations with both the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory

The initial discovery, made by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, is one of a handful of smaller planets found by Kepler and verified using large ground-based telescopes

his Earth-sized planet, one of five orbiting this star, which is cooler than the Sun, resides in a temperate region where water could exist in liquid form

Young adults who used marijuana only recreationally showed significant abnormalities in two key brain regions that are important in emotion and motivation

This is the first study to show casual use of marijuana is related to major brain changes

the degree of brain abnormalities in these regions is directly related to the number of joints a person smoked per week

This discovery opens up the possibility that environmental and/or genetic factors may hinder or suppress a specific brain activity that the researchers have identified as helping us prevent distraction.

doctoral student

made the discovery during his master's thesis research

The SpaceX 3 Dragon commercial cargo freighter successfully arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Easter Sunday morning, April 20

The mission is the company’s third cargo delivery flight to the station.

The Dragon vehicle loaded with nearly 2.5 tons of science experiments

First Chinese satellite

In 1970, the People's Republic of China became the fifth nation with a satellite in orbit with the launch of DFH-1, from Jiuquab Satellite Launch Center. It had a design life of 15 days, and for propaganda, it transmitted the Communist China national anthem, The East is Red (in Chinese "Dongfanghong," hence the initials DFH). It had a 72-face polyhedral shape, 1-m diam., mass 173-kg. It was followed by on 3 Mar 1971 by a second DFH named SJ-1 (Practice-1). The first four nations with satellites in space were the USSR (Sputnik on 4 Oct 1957), the U.S. (Explorer-I on 31 Jan 1958), France (Astrix-1 on 26 Nov 1965 and Japan (Osumi 5, 11 Feb 1970). After China, Britain launched its Prospero satellite on 28 Oct 1972)

Hubble Space Telescope

In 1990, the $2.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in space from the Space Shuttle Discovery into an orbit 381 miles above Earth. It was the first major orbiting observatory, named in honour of American astronomer, Edwin Powell Hubble. It was seven years behind schedule and nearly $2 billion over budget. In orbit, the 94.5-in primary mirror was found to be flawed, giving blurred images and reduced ability to see distant stars. However, correcting optics were successfully installed in 25 Dec 1993. The telescope 43-ft x 14-ft telescope now provides images with a clarity otherwise impossible due to the effect of the earth's atmosphere. Instrument packages capture across the electromagnetic spectrum.

On April 29th, an annular solar eclipse occurs over a small D-shaped 500 kilometre wide region of Antarctica

2014 has the minimum number of eclipses possible in one year, with four: two partial solars and two total lunars

This month’s solar eclipse is also a rarity in that it’s a non-central eclipse with one limit

Researchers

have for the first time used electrical pulses delivered from a cochlear implant to deliver gene therapy, thereby successfully regrowing auditory nerves

The research also heralds a possible new way of treating a range of neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease, and psychiatric conditions such as depression through this novel way of delivering gene therapy.

surface of the Red Planet during night sky imaging.

The Curiosity rover has captured the first images of asteroids even taken by a Human probe from the

two asteroids caught in the same night time pointing on the Red Planet. Namely, asteroids Ceres and Vesta.

Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE)

A "brown dwarf" star that appears to be the coldest of its kind—as frosty as Earth's North Pole—has been discovered

Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object's distance at 7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our Sun

Brown dwarfs start their lives like stars, as collapsing balls of gas, but they lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight

-- as frosty as Earth's North Pol

Supernova

In 1006, Chinese and Arabic astronomers noted a supernova. The speed of the still-expanding shock wave was measured nearly a millenium later.* This is was history's brightest "new star" ever recorded, at first seen to be brighter than the planet Venus. It occurred in our Milky Way galaxy, appearing in the southern constellation Lupus, near the star Beta Lupi. It was also recorded by observers in Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Egypt and Iraq. From the careful descriptions of the Chinese astronomers of how the light varied, that it was of apparently yellow color and visible for over a year, it is possible that the supernova reached a magnitude of up to -9. Modern measurements of the speed of the shock wave have been used to estimate its distance

Van Allen radiation belts

In 1958, the discovery of the powerful Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth was published in the Washington Evening Star. The article covered the report made by their discoverer James. A. Van Allen to the joint sysmposium of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society in Washington DC. He used data from the Explorer I and Pioneer III space probes of the earth's magnetosphere region to reveal the existence of the radiation belts - concentrations of electrically charged particles. Van Allen (born 7 Sep 1914) was also featured on the cover of the 4 May 1959 Time magazine for this discovery. He was the principal investigator on 23 other space probes