Today's Reuters Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News:
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Former U.S. astronaut Poindexter dies in watercraft accident
Mon,2 Jul 2012 01:28 PM PDT
Reuters -  CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Alan Poindexter, a two-time space shuttle astronaut, has died after a personal watercraft accident in Pensacola, Florida, NASA said on Monday. Poindexter, 50, was riding WaveRunners with his two sons in Little Sabine Bay at Pensacola Beach on Sunday when the accident occurred, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said. Poindexter and his 22-year-old son Samuel were riding on one WaveRunner and his older son, 26-year-old Zachary, was on another, spokesman Stan Kirkland said. ...
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Best evidence yet found for "God particle:" U.S. physicists
Mon,2 Jul 2012 01:05 PM PDT
Reuters -  BATAVIA, Illinois (Reuters) - Physicists at a U.S. laboratory said on Monday they have come tantalizingly close to proving the existence of the elusive subatomic Higgs boson - often called the "God particle" because it may bring mass and order to the universe. The announcement by the Fermi National Accelerator Lab outside Chicago came two days before physicists at CERN, the European particle accelerator near Geneva, are set to unveil their own findings in the Higgs hunt. CERN houses the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ...
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New NASA spaceship arrives in Florida for test flight
Mon,2 Jul 2012 12:29 PM PDT
Reuters - CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An Orion space capsule being developed to fly astronauts to asteroids, the moon and eventually to Mars arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a 2014 test flight, NASA said on Monday. The spacecraft, built by Lockheed-Martin is targeted for launch aboard an unmanned Delta 4 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, adjacent to the NASA spaceport. Though designed to carry a crew of four, Orion will make its first two flights unmanned. "It's not a PowerPoint chart. ... Full Story | Top |
Rise in sea level can't be stopped: scientists
Sun,1 Jul 2012 10:02 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - Rising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next several hundred years, even if deep emissions cuts lower global average temperatures, but they can be slowed down, climate scientists said in a study on Sunday. A lot of climate research shows that rising greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for increasing global average surface temperatures by about 0.17 degrees Celsius a decade from 1980-2010 and for a sea level rise of about 2.3mm a year from 2005-2010 as ice caps and glaciers melt. ...
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Soyuz spacecraft ends mission with smooth landing
Sun,1 Jul 2012 08:05 AM PDT
Reuters -  MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz capsule landed on the Kazakh steppes on Sunday, safely delivering a trio of astronauts who helped to dock the first privately owned spacecraft during a six-month stint on the International Space Station. The descent capsule, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, touched down with its parachute in a cloud of dust at 0814 GMT. The crew left the space station early on Sunday after serving 183 days in orbit, often sharing their experiences with the public via blogs and Twitter. ...
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Cosmic discovery week ahead for science, perhaps
Sun,1 Jul 2012 05:30 AM PDT
Reuters -  GENEVA (Reuters) - It has been fancifully dubbed the angel of creation and, to the particular scorn of physicists, the god particle. The Higgs Boson is said to have appeared out of the chaos of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago and turned the flying debris from that primeval explosion into galaxies, stars, and planets. Its formal discovery, according to a broad scientific consensus, would be the greatest advance in knowledge of the universe in decades. ...
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Enjoy the long weekend, if only for second
Fri,29 Jun 2012 04:22 AM PDT
Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - The world is about to get a well-earned long weekend but don't make big plans because it will only last an extra second. A so-called 'leap second' will be added to the world's atomic clocks as they undergo a rare adjustment to keep them in step with the slowing rotation of the earth. To achieve the adjustment, on Saturday night atomic clocks will read 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before moving on to midnight Greenwich Mean Time. Super-accurate atomic clocks are the ultimate reference point by which the world sets its wrist watches. ... Full Story | Top |
China hails space mission's success as crew returns to Earth
Thu,28 Jun 2012 09:50 PM PDT
Reuters - BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Shenzhou 9 spacecraft returned to Earth on Friday, ending a mission that put the country's first woman in space and completed a manned docking test critical to its goal of building a space station by 2020. The spacecraft's gumdrop-shaped return capsule descended to Earth by parachute and touched down shortly after 10 a.m. EDT (0200 GMT) in China's northwestern Inner Mongolia region with its three-member crew, including female astronaut Liu Yang. Beijing has hailed the nearly two-week mission as a technical breakthrough for the country's growing space program. ... Full Story | Top |
West's wildfires a preview of changed climate: scientists
Thu,28 Jun 2012 06:14 PM PDT
Reuters - (Reuters) - Scorching heat, high winds and bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic wildfires in the U.S. West that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists said on Thursday. "What we're seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like," Princeton University's Michael Oppenheimer said during a telephone press briefing. "It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster ... This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future. ... Full Story | Top |
Saturn's largest moon likely has an underground ocean
Thu,28 Jun 2012 05:04 PM PDT
Reuters - CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found strong evidence for an ocean of water beneath the frozen crust of Saturn's largest moon Titan, scientists said Thursday. The finding propels Titan into a short list of places including Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's smaller moon Enceladus suspected of harboring underground seas. "The evidence is strong that Titan is squishy," said planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine, with Cornell University. The evidence was put together during six passes over Titan by Cassini, which is orbiting Saturn, between 2004 and 2011. ... Full Story | Top |
Privately owned telescope to hunt for killer asteroids
Thu,28 Jun 2012 02:55 PM PDT
Reuters - CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A California space research group plans to build, launch and operate a privately funded space telescope to hunt for asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth, project managers said on Thursday. The B612 Foundation - named after a fictional planet in the book "The Little Prince" - is counting on private donors to raise money for the wide-angle, infrared telescope and its operations, estimated at a few hundred million dollars. The goal is to chart 500,000 asteroids that fly relatively close to Earth. ... Full Story | Top |
Scientists develop spray-on battery
Thu,28 Jun 2012 09:56 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists in the United States have developed a paint that can store and deliver electrical power just like a battery. Traditional lithium-ion batteries power most portable electronics. They are already pretty compact but limited to rectangular or cylindrical blocks. Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have come up with a technique to break down each element of the traditional battery and incorporate it into a liquid that can be spray-painted in layers on virtually any surface. ...
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World awaits latest in hunt for Higgs particle
Thu,28 Jun 2012 03:54 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON/GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists hunting the Higgs subatomic particle will unveil results next week that could confirm, confound or complicate our understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe. Seldom has something so small and ephemeral excited such interest. The theoretical particle explains how suns and planets formed after the Big Bang - but so far it has not been proven to exist. The CERN research centre near Geneva will on July 4 unveil its latest findings in the search for the Higgs after reporting "tantalizing glimpses" in December. ...
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"Blade Runner" still subject of scientists' debate
Wed,27 Jun 2012 10:07 AM PDT
Reuters - (Reuters) - While South African athlete Oscar Pistorius attempts to become the first amputee runner to compete at the Olympic Games, scientists are still arguing whether his artificial limbs give him a critical advantage or not. Pistorius, born without fibulas and who had his lower legs amputated when a baby, uses carbon fiber prosthetic running blades and is hoping to qualify for the 400 meters at the Games. Pistorius beat the Olympic qualifying time of 45. ... Full Story | Top |
Promoting health? It's all in the game
Tue,26 Jun 2012 04:42 AM PDT
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - Meet Roxxi - a feisty and fully-armed virtual nanobot. Billed as "medicine's mightiest warrior", she's fighting an epic battle deep inside the human body where she launches rapid-fire assaults on malignant cells. Or, if it's not cancer but diabetes you're fighting, why not join Britney and Hunter, two digital kids whose adventures to other worlds are spurred on by regular and timely updates of your blood sugar levels. ...
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