A mission to raise the orbit of NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is poised for launch no earlier than Tuesday, June 30, at 6:23 a.m. EDT (10:23 p.m. UTC+12), from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean.
Plasma is an ionized gas, often referred to as the fourth state of matter. Plasmas, which are created artificially by applying energy to a gas, are found in the fluorescent tubes that illuminate kitchens. However, they have many other possible applications, such as the production of graphene.
More accurate navigation systems and improved wireless communications may not come from traditional electronics, but rather from atoms. Researchers at Penn State and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new way to build tinier, smarter glass sensors filled with highly precise and stable atoms.
The subject of today's NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is an ancient inhabitant of our galaxy. This sparkling scene features a globular cluster: a collection of tens of thousands to millions of stars, all tightly bound together under the influence of gravity. There are more than 150 globular clusters in our galaxy, though there may be others still undiscovered, hidden from view by dust or densely packed fields of stars.
With the North American fire season underway, and a record number of acres already burned nationwide, NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite's three instruments are observing vegetation precursors to fires, along with plumes of smoke and their movement. These data will help scientists piece together clues that deepen their understanding of wildfires.
Traces or perforations caused by living organisms after an animal's death can be found on various dinosaur bone remains. These perforations, known as bioerosion structures, provide information that helps us understand relationships between living organisms in the past, reconstruct palaeoecosystems and improve our understanding of the fossilization process. Now, a study published in the journal Earth-Science Reviews has identified this type of perforation in bones and, for the first time, also in pieces of dermal armor (osteoderms) from titanosaurs at the Lo Hueco site (Cuenca), dating to the Late Cretaceous.
Archaeologists have uncovered an unknown stone circle that dates back at least 4,000 years to the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age and was most likely used for ritual activities.
Carbon quantum dots (CQDs) are tiny carbon-based nanomaterials that have attracted increasing attention as environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional heavy-metal quantum dots. They are lightweight, photostable and potentially biocompatible, and their light absorption and emission properties can be tuned.
Flinders University researchers, in partnership with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation, have found evidence that points to 7,000 years of Aboriginal mining of stone at Sugarloaf Hill in South Australia's Riverland. The dating formed part of the first detailed investigation into an Aboriginal chert and silcrete quarry in the Riverland region.
As drought and water uncertainty put increasing pressure on orchard systems, researchers at the USDA Agricultural Research Service's Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, West Virginia, launched a study in response to strong grower interest in how modern apple rootstocks hold up under drought stress. Apple producers have been looking for clearer, science-based answers about which rootstocks may perform better when water is limited, particularly as intensive production systems expand and weather becomes less predictable.
