Today's Reuters Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News:
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Stormy sun could knock out power grids: report
Fri,2 Dec 2011 09:40 AM PST
Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - An upcoming cycle of stormy solar activity risks causing damage to electrical transformers and threatening vulnerable energy infrastructure around the globe, a report by an insurance group says. The sun follows a predictable 11 year activity cycle, with the next period of stormy activity expected to begin in 2012-13. The report by German insurance group Allianz said a high impact solar storm, not easily predicted due to its recorded rarity, could cause blackouts and economic losses of over $1 trillion and that the worst case scenario would be even worse. ... Full Story | Top |
Whales win, walruses lose in warmer Arctic: report
Fri,2 Dec 2011 05:09 AM PST
Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Arctic zone has moved into a warmer, greener "new normal" phase, which means less habitat for polar bears and more access for development, an international scientific team reported on Thursday. Arctic air temperatures were higher - about 2.5 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) higher in 2011 than the baseline number for the previous 30 years - and there was a dramatic loss of sea ice and glacier mass, the scientists said in a telephone briefing. ... Full Story | Top |
Gender inequality persists in multitasking: study
Fri,2 Dec 2011 05:07 AM PST
Reuters -  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Men may be helping more in the home but working women still do more multitasking in U.S. families than their partners and are finding it stressful, according to a new study. Whether it is housework, cooking or childcare, women do about 10 hours more multitasking in the home each week -- 48.3 hours compared to 38.9 -- which researchers say constitutes an important source of gender inequality. ...
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Whales win, walruses lose in warmer Arctic: report
Thu,1 Dec 2011 02:00 PM PST
Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Arctic zone has moved into a warmer, greener "new normal" phase, which means less habitat for polar bears and more access for development, an international scientific team reported on Thursday. Arctic air temperatures were higher - about 2.5 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) higher in 2011 than the baseline number for the previous 30 years - and there was a dramatic loss of sea ice and glacier mass, the scientists said in a telephone briefing. ... Full Story | Top |
Apollo 13 notebook fetches $388,375 at auction
Wed,30 Nov 2011 04:25 PM PST
Reuters - DALLAS (Reuters) - Shortly after Apollo 13 astronauts reported, "Houston, we have had a problem," Commander James Lovell jotted down handwritten calculations in hopes of guiding his crew safely home. The notebook with those calculations from the aborted 1970 NASA mission to the moon fetched $388,375 at auction on Wednesday in Dallas when it was sold to an American collector who was not identified. The notebook, the main attraction of a space memorabilia auction, was part of retired NASA commander Lovell's personal collection of artifacts. ... Full Story | Top |
Microscopic worms may hold key to living on Mars
Wed,30 Nov 2011 05:07 AM PST
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists believe microscopic worms which are biologically very similar to humans may be the key to helping humans colonize other planets like Mars by giving clues on coping with long-term space living. A team of scientists led by Nathaniel Szewczyk from Notthingham University blasted 4,000 of the worms, known as known as Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans, into space on board the Space Shuttle Discovery, and studied their progress. ...
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NASA rover launched to seek out life clues on Mars
Tue,29 Nov 2011 12:51 PM PST
Reuters -  CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Florida on Saturday, launching a $2.5 billion nuclear-powered NASA rover toward Mars to look for clues on what could sustain life on the Red Planet. The 20-story-tall booster built by United Launch Alliance lifted off from its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:02 a.m. EST (3:02 p.m. GMT). It soared through partly cloudy skies into space, carrying NASA's Mars Science Laboratory on a 354-million mile (556 million km), nearly nine-month journey to the planet. ...
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Medvedev suggests prosecution for Russia space failure
Sat,26 Nov 2011 07:19 AM PST
Reuters -  MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev raised the prospect of criminal prosecution for space mishaps on Saturday following a series of failed launches that have embarrassed Russia. Earlier this month, a probe designed to bring back soil samples from the Mars moon Phobos got stuck in Earth's orbit, leaving Russia's first interplanetary mission in years with almost no chance of success. The probe failure came less than three months after a cargo ship carrying food and fuel to the International Space Station burned up in the atmosphere shortly after launch. ...
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Factbox: Mars and its missions
Sat,26 Nov 2011 07:04 AM PST
Reuters - (Reuters) - Here are some facts about Mars and about missions to the red planet, as United Launch Alliance prepares to send aloft on Saturday an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA's Mars Science Laboratory. MISSIONS TO MARS: - One of a pair of Mars rovers that arrived on the planet in January 2004 is still working. Its twin succumbed to the harsh environment in 2010. They returned evidence that Mars was once far wetter and warmer than the dry, cold desert that exists today. ... Full Story | Top |
Search narrowed for Higgs: does it exist?
Fri,25 Nov 2011 05:04 AM PST
Reuters -  GENEVA (Reuters) - CERN physicists have moved the focus of their search for the Higgs boson, the particle many think gave the universe form after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, to a narrow band on the mass spectrum, a spokesman said on Wednesday. And science bloggers close to the research center are suggesting it might be clear by mid-December that the boson is a chimera and some other mechanism to explain how matter changed to mass at the birth of the cosmos will have to be sought. ...
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Search narrowed for Higgs: does it exist?
Wed,23 Nov 2011 12:34 PM PST
Reuters -  GENEVA (Reuters) - CERN physicists have moved the focus of their search for the Higgs boson, the particle many think gave the universe form after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, to a narrow band on the mass spectrum, a spokesman said on Wednesday. And science bloggers close to the research center are suggesting it might be clear by mid-December that the boson is a chimera and some other mechanism to explain how matter changed to mass at the birth of the cosmos will have to be sought. ...
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Rats help Colombia sniff out deadly landmines
Wed,23 Nov 2011 10:05 AM PST
Reuters -  BOGOTA (Reuters) - In a laboratory on the grounds of a police-guarded complex, 11 white-furred rats wait their turn to impress trainers and perhaps receive a bit of sugar as reward. The rodents could play an important role in making conflict-wracked Colombia safer. They are in the final stages of a training program to find landmines that kill or injure hundreds of people each year in Colombia. ...
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Study rejects "faster than light" particle finding
Mon,21 Nov 2011 11:21 AM PST
Reuters -  GENEVA (Reuters) - An international team of scientists in Italy studying the same neutrino particles colleagues say appear to have travelled faster than light rejected the startling finding this weekend, saying their tests had shown it must be wrong. The September announcement of the finding, backed up last week after new studies, caused a furor in the scientific world as it seemed to suggest Albert Einstein's ideas on relativity, and much of modern physics, were based on a mistaken premise. ...
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New test finds neutrinos still faster than light
Fri,18 Nov 2011 06:50 AM PST
Reuters -  LONDON (Reuters) - A new experiment appears to provide further evidence that Einstein may have been wrong when he said nothing could go faster than the speed of light, a theory that underpins modern thinking on how the universe works. The new evidence, challenging a dogma of science that has held since Albert Einstein laid out his theory of relativity in 1905, appeared to confirm a startling finding that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos could travel fractions of a second faster. ...
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"Big Bang" machine to get huge upgrade in 2020
Thu,17 Nov 2011 05:11 AM PST
Reuters - GENEVA (Reuters) - Physicists from around the globe launched a major program on Wednesday aimed at converting the LHC "Big Bang" particle collider at CERN near Geneva into a vastly more powerful cosmic research machine by the year 2020. CERN officials said the effort, involving scientific establishments in the European Union, the United States and Japan, would demand development of new technologies in fields ranging from super-conducting magnets to energy transfer lines. ... Full Story | Top |
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