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Explanation: New Horizons has survived its close encounter with Pluto and has resumed sending back images and data. The robotic spacecraft reported back on time, with all systems working, and with the expected volume of data stored. Featured here is the highest resolution image of Pluto taken before closest approach, an image that really brings Pluto into a satisfying focus. At first glance, Pluto is reddish and has several craters. Toward the image bottom is a surprisingly featureless light-covered region that resembles an iconic heart, and mountainous terrain appears on the lower right. This image, however, is only the beginning....

Click HERE for YouTube video. Warning: There are a few mild curse words in the video.

New Letters Added to the Genetic Alphabet Scientists hope that new genetic letters, created in the lab, will endow DNA with new powers. Olena Shmahalo/Quanta MagazineThe two new letters are named P and Z, and fit seamlessly into existing DNA. By: Emily SingerJuly 10, 2015 Comments (14) DNA stores our genetic code in an elegant double helix. But some argue that this elegance is overrated. “DNA as a molecule has many things wrong with it,” said Steven Benner, an organic chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Florida.Nearly 30 years ago, Benner sketched out better versions of both...

An exotic particle made up of five quarks has been discovered a decade after experiments seemed to rule out its existence. The short-lived ‘pentaquark’ was spotted by researchers analysing data on the decay of unstable particles in the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva. The finding, says LHCb spokesperson Guy Wilkinson, opens a new era in physicists’ understanding of the strong nuclear force that holds atomic nuclei together. “The pentaquark is not just any new particle — it represents a way to aggregate quarks, namely the fundamental constituents of ordinary protons...

The number of atoms in this silicon sphere is known given or taken 20 atoms each 10^9. The atom distance was measured by the X-ray interferometer on the left. Credit: Enrico Massa and Carlo Sasso ================================================================================================ An ongoing international effort to redefine the kilogram by 2018 has been helped by recent efforts from a team researchers from Italy, Japan and Germany to correlate two of the most precise measurements of Avogadro's number and obtain one averaged value that can be used for future calculations. Their results are published this week in the Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data. Avogadro's...

European Space Agency Cluster II satellites observe equatorial noise waves inside the Earth's magnetosphere. Credit: ESA/Yuri Shprits ********************************************************************************************************************************************************** Since the early 1970s, orbiting satellites have picked up on noise-like plasma waves very close to the Earth's magnetic field equator. This "equatorial noise," as it was then named, seemed to be an unruly mess of electric and magnetic fields oscillating at different frequencies in the form of plasma waves. Now a team from MIT, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Sheffield, and elsewhere has detected a remarkably orderly pattern amid the noise. In a region of space...

The first age of solar system exploration is in the books. Related Stories NASA's New Horizons probe flew by Pluto this morning (July 14), capturing history's first up-close looks at the far-flung world — if all went according to plan. (Mission team members won't declare success until they hear from New Horizons tonight.) Closest approach came at 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT), when the spacecraft whizzed within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto's frigid surface. More at link

Excavations in the Cairngorms have revealed evidence of a human settlement as long ago as 8,000 BC which is 3,000 years earlier than previously thought. Archaeologists have been examining a scattering of stone tools around a fire setting at Glen Geldie on the Mar Lodge Estate, Aberdeenshire.

WHEN can we declare the Red Planet a dead planet? Although most efforts so far have gone toward showing that other planets could support life, now is the time to think about the other side of the coin. Spacecraft going to other worlds must follow costly planetary protection protocols, such as sterilisation, to avoid contaminating their destination with Earth microbes, putting any native life at risk, or bringing potentially dangerous alien ones back. But if there’s nothing there, why bother? We haven’t found life on Mars yet, and if further missions also turn up nothing, at some point commercial space...

July 13, 2015 How Big Is Pluto? New Horizons Settles Decades-Long Debate A portrait from the final approach. Pluto and Charon display striking color and brightness contrast in this composite image from July 11, showing high-resolution black-and-white LORRI images colorized with Ralph data collected from the last rotation of Pluto. Color data being returned by the spacecraft now will update these images, bringing color contrast into sharper focus. Credits: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI Pluto’s bright, mysterious “heart” is rotating into view, ready for its close-up on close approach, in this image taken by New Horizons on July 12 from a distance of...

Natural gas overtook coal as the top source of U.S. electric power generation for the first time ever earlier this spring, a milestone that has been in the making for years as the price of gas slides and new regulations make coal more risky for power generators. About 31 percent of electric power generation in April came from natural gas, and 30 percent from coal, according to a recently released report from the research company SNL Energy, which used data from the U.S. Energy Department. Nuclear power came in third at 20 percent. A drilling boom that started in 2008...

Classes began in early September last year at a small new international university, called Nalanda, in Bihar in northeast India -- one of the most backward parts of the country. Only two faculties -- history, and environment and ecology -- were holding classes for fewer than twenty students. And yet the opening of Nalanda was the subject of headlines in all the major newspapers in India and received attention across the world. "Ritorno a Nalanda" was the headline in Corriere della Sera. The new venture is meant to be a revival of Nalanda Mahavihara, the oldest university in the world,...

So it IS global warming melting it – just not the way they meanGeothermal heating - from within the Earth's core, not the possibly warming air or sea - beneath the much-studied West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been measured for the first time ever, and been found to be "surprisingly high".The West Antarctic sheet is the part of the Antarctic ice cap thought to be easiest to melt and thus worries over global warming and sea-level rise lead to it being investigated much more than other parts of the frozen austral continent. Some parts of it, for instance the Pine...

July 11, 2015Pluto by Moonlight In this artist’s rendering, Pluto’s largest moon Charon rises over the frozen surface of Pluto, casting a faint silvery luminescence across the distant planetary landscape. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute It’s Antarctic winter on Pluto. The sun has not been visible for twenty years in this frigid south polar region; it will not shine again for another 80 years. The only source of natural light is starlight and moonlight from Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. On July 14, New Horizons mission scientists will soon obtain the first images of the night region...

Explanation: Pluto surface is strange. As the robotic New Horizons barrels toward its closest approach to Pluto and its moons tomorrow, images already coming back show Pluto's surface to be curiouser and curiouser. The featured image, taken two days ago, shows the side of Pluto that always faces Pluto's largest moon Charon. Particularly noteworthy is the dark belt near the bottom that circles Pluto's equator. It is currently unclear whether regions in this dark belt are mountainous or flat, why boundaries are so sharply defined, and why the light regions seem to be nearly evenly spaced. As New Horizons will...

Explanation: Destination: Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft roared off its launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA in 2006 toward adventures in the distant Solar System. The craft is the fastest spaceships ever launched by humans, having passed the Moon only nine hours after launch, and Jupiter only a year later. After spending almost a decade crossing the Solar System, New Horizons will fly past Pluto on Tuesday. Pluto, officially a planet when New Horizons launched, has never been visited by a spacecraft or photographed up close. After Pluto, the robot spaceship will visit one or more Kuiper Belt...

A man and his nephew in California got a little more than they expected when they won an auction for an abandoned storage unit. At Cubesmart in Rancho Cordova, units are auctioned when renters default on them for longer than 45 days, according to NBC affiliate KCRA. Some people buy these units and resell them for a profit. The two men won one of the units with an $80 bid, according to the station. However, it contained a box full of hazardous, old-fashioned equipment used to make meth. Narcotics officers told the station that the material was so toxic, hazmat...

Early July saw Britain basking in a brief heatwave, with air temperatures across much of south and east England hitting the mid 30s centigrade. On July 1, the Met Office announced that the UK had recorded the hottest July day on record, with temperatures hitting 36.7° centigrade at Heathrow airport. The claim was widely repeated in the media—the BBC’s headline read “Hottest July day ever recorded in UK”, while The Guardian opted for a live blog under the headline “Heatwave live: Britain swelters on hottest July day on record”. But eagle-eyed climate bloggers immediately spotted a problem with the so-called...

No, not really. But the conflicting headlines I’m seeing this week might as well say that. Apparently we’re all still doomed, but our first item in recent climate news deals with a different phenomenon than the usual screeds which, rather than melting the ice caps and drowning all of the coastal cities, is going to bring on a new mini-ice starting in about fifteen years. Rather than carbon emissions or fracking, the culprit this time is the sun. (From the Daily Mail) The Earth could be headed for a ‘mini ice age’ researchers have warned.A new study claims to...