Scientists map waves in Earth’s radiation belt

September 16th, 2009 TORONTO - Ozone layer alterations, prompted by climate change, will enhance ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the tropics and Antarctica, according to a discovery by physicists. Climate change is an established fact, but scientists are only just beginning to understand its regional manifestations, said Michaela Hegglin, a physics researcher at the University of Toronto (U-T) and lead study author.

September 14th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists, using the Cassini spacecraft's Magnetospheric Imaging instrument (MIMI), have detected a new, temporary radiation belt at Saturn, located around the orbit of its moon Dione at about 377,000 km from the centre of the planet. Radiation belts, like Earth's Van Allen belts, have been discovered at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

September 10th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has found new clues that could help solve Saturn's rotation mystery. Scientists have known for some time that Saturn emits intense kilometer-wavelength radio emission, known as Saturn kilometric radiation (SKR), which rotates with a period of 10.8 hours.

September 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Melting permafrost in arctic regions, triggered by global warming, will release underground methane. Once released, methane would speed up global warming by trapping the earths heat radiation about 20 times more efficiently than the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

September 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have developed a new technique that uses data collected from earthquakes, potentially allowing the Earth's seismic activity to be mapped more comprehensively. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, developed the new method.

August 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, a team of scientists at Dartmouth university has proposed a new way of creating a reproduction black hole in the laboratory on a much-tinier scale than their celestial counterparts. The new method to create a tiny quantum sized black hole would allow researchers to better understand what physicist Stephen Hawking proposed more than 35 years ago: black holes are not totally void of activity; they emit photons, which is now known as Hawking radiation.

August 13th, 2009 LONDON - Invisible gateways, like the one in Harry Potter, are a step closer to reality, thanks to a new theory developed by scientists. With the help of a technique known as transformation optics, the research team from Hong Kong University and Fudan University in Shanghai has found a way to alter the pathway of light waves that could eventually allow them to develop portals that are invisible to the human eye, reports The Telegraph.

August 7th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, scientists have concluded that slight shifts in solar radiation caused by predictable changes in Earth's rotation and axis made the periodic ice ages to finally come to an end about 19,000 years ago. The research, by scientists from Oregon State University and other institutions conclude that the known wobbles in Earth's rotation caused global ice levels to reach their peak about 26,000 years ago, stabilize for 7,000 years and then begin melting 19,000 years ago, eventually bringing to an end the last ice age.

July 15th, 2009 Space invaders: Asteroid belt has rocks from afarWASHINGTON — A new astronomy theory says the solar system's main asteroid belt is littered with icy invaders from far away. The so-called invaders are asteroids that seem more like primitive frozen comets than the baked rocks that make up the overwhelming majority of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.

June 17th, 2009 LONDON - A team of physicists have created an artificial black hole in their lab that traps sound instead of light, in an attempt to detect the theoretical Hawking radiation. The radiation, proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking more than 30 years ago, causes black holes to evaporate over time.

May 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new probe is going to look for the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which is the afterglow of the Big Bang, that may still carry a faint signature of gravitational waves, which rippled through the very fabric of space-time nearly 14 billion years ago. A tiny fraction of a second following the Big Bang, the universe allegedly experienced the most inflationary period it has ever known.

May 8th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have determined that thousands of miles above our planet, a cosmic chorus is filling the Earth's magnetic field with a mysterious, low frequency "hiss." According to a report in National Geographic News, that's the conclusion of scientists studying data from a set of NASA probes designed to monitor substorms-dramatic exchanges of energy among charged particles that spark the auroras at Earth's poles. The charged particles come from the sun and get trapped in loops around our planet by Earth's magnetic field.

April 2nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Radiation therapy directly over the ovaries should be avoided because they could lead to fertility problems in women, according to a review study. Radiation therapy of the pelvic region can cause ovarian failure or result in damage that makes the uterus unable to accommodate the growth of a foetus.

March 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say that they may have developed a new tool to enhance the way computer chips, LEDs, and transistors are built by reversing a process that converts electrical signals into sounds heard out of a cell phone. The researchers claim that this is the first time that any research team have converted the highest frequency sounds into light by reversing a process that converts electrical signals to sound.

March 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have found the interaction between shock waves created by high-pressure supersonic fuel jets. The discovery may lead to cleaner and more efficient internal combustion engines as well as advances in high-speed jet cleaning, machining and mining.