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December 14, 2012

ASU researchers propose new way to look at the dawn of life
Tempe AZ (SPX) Dec 14, 2012
One of the great mysteries of life is how it began. What physical process transformed a nonliving mix of chemicals into something as complex as a living cell? For more than a century, scientists have struggled to reconstruct the key first steps on the road to life. Until recently, their focus has been trained on how the simple building blocks of life might have been synthesized on the early Earth, or perhaps in space. But because it happened so long ago, all chemical traces have long been oblitera ... read more

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Alcohol constrains Physical Constant in the Early Universe Radio-astronomical observations of a distant galaxy indicate that the ratio of the proton's mass to that of the electron has hardly changed over cosmic history. This fundamental constant of na ... more		12 Matter Particles Suffice in Nature How many matter particles exist in nature? Particle physicists have been dealing with this question for a long time. The 12 matter particles contained in the standard model of particle physics? Or a ... more		24-armed Giant to Probe Early Lives of Galaxies A powerful new instrument called KMOS has just been successfully tested on ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. KMOS is unique as it will be able to observe not just one, ... more
				NASA's Hubble Provides First Census of Galaxies Near Cosmic Dawn Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than ... more		NASA Gravity Probes Prepare to Hit the Moon A pair of NASA spacecraft that have been studying the Moon's gravitational field are being prepared for a controlled descent into a mountain near the Moon's north pole. Impact is expected at about 2 ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Hubble plumbs the universe, yields images of early galaxies The Hubble Space Telescope is giving scientists a look at the oldest galaxies ever seen, dating back some 13.3 billion years - providing a glimpse into how the cosmos must have looked right after the Big Bang. ... more		Student Team Provides Real-Time Video of Asteroid Toutatis An asteroid that some day might threaten Earth is passing relatively close by on the night of December 11-12, and its gliding path among the stars will be tracked by a team of high-school students a ... more		US missile defense still plagued by technical doubts Northrop Grumman, US Navy Complete Triton Unmanned Aircraft's First Flight Lockheed Martin Completes Milestone for Training Element of United States Ballistic Missile Defense System General Dynamics to Deliver U.S. Army's Newest Tactical Ground Station Intelligence System Lockheed Martin Conducts First EMD Flight Test of New GMLRS Warhead Defense Acquisition Board approves Standard Missile-6 full-rate production DARPA Seeks Technology to Radically Improve Dismounted Squad Situational Awareness, Communication Effectiveness		Cassini Spots Mini Nile River on Saturn Moon Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted what appears to be a miniature, extraterrestrial likeness of Earth's Nile River: a river valley on Saturn's moon Titan that stretches more than 20 ... more
				New knowledge about the remarkable properties of black holes Black holes are surrounded by many mysteries, but now researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, have come up with new groundbreaking theories that can explain several of their propert ... more		Big Asteroid Tumbles Harmlessly Past Earth This week, NASA's Goldstone radar is tracking a large asteroid as it passes by Earth, and obtaining images of unprecedented clarity. "At closest approach on Dec. 12th, asteroid 4179 Toutatis will be ... more

Solar systems for home and business

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Greedy black hole discovered in Andromeda Studying the Andromeda galaxy with ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory, astronomers have discovered a new bright X-ray source that hosts a stellar-mass black hole accreting mass at a very high ... more		An Older Vega: New Insights About The Star All Others Are Measured By Vega, a star astronomers have used as a touchstone to measure other stars' brightness for thousands of years, may be more than 200 million years older than previously thought. That's according to ne ... more		Volcanoes Cause Climate Gas Concentrations to Vary Allosaurus fed more like a falcon than a crocodile Study reveals how fishing gear can cause slow death of whales Research offers promising new approach to treatment of lung cancer A Local Footprint's Global Footprint A Roadmap for the Future of Astrobiology Small but speedy: Short plants live in the evolutionary fast lane		Mining ancient ores for clues to early life An analysis of sulfide ore deposits from one of the world's richest base-metal mines confirms that oxygen levels were extremely low on Earth 2.7 billion years ago, but also shows that microbes were ... more
				Hubble's Glitter galaxy: The ESO 318-13 galaxy The brilliant cascade of stars through the middle of this image is the galaxy ESO 318-13 as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Despite being located millions of light-years from Earth, the ... more		Fermi Improves its Vision for Thunderstorm Gamma-Ray Flashes Thanks to improved data analysis techniques and a new operating mode, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times ... more

Halfway Between Uranus and Neptune, New Horizons Cruises On

Dwarf planet Makemake lacks atmosphere

Keck Observations Bring Weather Of Uranus Into Sharp Focus

ASU researchers propose new way to look at the dawn of life

Mining ancient ores for clues to early life

Search for life extends to the stars

Astronomers discover and 'weigh' infant solar system

Search for Life Suggests Solar Systems More Habitable than Ours

Do missing Jupiters mean massive comet belts?

Opportunity Checking Out Some Rocks At Matijevic Hill

Charitum Montes: a cratered winter wonderland

Opportunity Continues Rock Studies

	Unvieling diffuse x-ray emission from nearby galaxies NASA will launch an astrophysics mission to study the Diffuse X-ray emission from the Local galaxy (DXL) December 9 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The goal of this flight is ... more		Do we live in a computer simulation? UW researchers say idea can be tested A decade ago, a British philosopher put forth the notion that the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. While that seems far-fetched, perhaps even incomp ... more		NASA Astrobiology Institute Shows How Wide Binary Stars Form Using computer simulations, scientists from the NASA Astrobiology Institute team at the University of Hawaii are shedding light on a question that has challenged astronomers for years: What causes w ... more		Nearby star much older than thought The star Vega, used as a "yardstick" to gage other stars' brightness for thousands of years, may be much older than previously thought, U.S. astronomers say. ... more

Solar Industry Capital Spending Hits Seven-Year Low in 2013

Innovation could bring flexible solar cells, transistors, displays

More emphasis needed on recycling and reuse of Li-ion batteries

Israel eyes Syrian missile threat to gas fields

Sempra U.S. Gas and Power, Consolidated Edison Development announce solar partnership

Areva, world's 2nd uranium company heavily present in Niger

Magnetic fingerprints of superfluid helium-3

Apollo's Lunar Dust Data Being Restored		Rock Comet Meteor Shower		Search for life extends to the stars		Point of Light		Geminid Meteor Shower Coming on December 13-14
British astronomer Patrick Moore dead aged 89		To the moon and back for less than 2 billion dollars		The Bubble Nebula, observed with the new One Degree Imager Camera		Wide Binary Stars: Long-Distance Stellar Relationships		What is Creating Gullies on Vesta?

Secrets of universe revealed thanks to AF research complex

X-ray vision can reveal the moment of birth of violent supernovae

Speeding Space Junk Poses Risks for Spacecraft

Galaxy-wide echoes from the past

NASA's GRAIL Creates Most Accurate Moon Gravity Map

Crowdsourcing the cosmos: Astronomers welcome all to identify star clusters in Andromeda galaxy

Can life emerge on planets around cooling stars?

Heliophysics Nugget: Sungrazing Comets as Solar Probes

Quantum thermodynamics

The dance of quantum tornadoes

A bridge to the quantum world: Dirac electrons found in unique material

'Dark Core' May Not Be So Dark After All

When the first stars blinked on

Astronomers discover and 'weigh' infant solar system

New galaxy census highlights importance of starbursts

Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon, Icier than Scientists Thought

Chinese astronauts may grow veg on Moon

NASA's Cassini Sees Abrupt Turn in Titan's Atmosphere

Search for Life Suggests Solar Systems More Habitable than Ours

Altimeter Built at Goddard Helped Identify Ice on Mercury

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