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When a volcano in Tonga erupted on January 15, it gave satellites their first glimpse at a plume of volcanic ash shooting into the mesosphere, the third layer of Earth's atmosphere.
According to NASA, the Tonga event was the largest volcanic eruption since satellites began monitoring our planet. As the Pacific volcano shot a burst of ash and gases into the sky, with the force of about 10 megatons of TNT, two weather satellites were passing overhead.
By controlling the SPC's variable configuration tokamak (TCV), the RL system sculpted plasma into a range of different shapes inside the reactor, including one that had never before been seen in the TCV: stabilizing 'droplets' where two plasmas co-existed simultaneously inside the device.
In addition to conventional shapes, the AI could also produce advanced configurations, sculpting the plasma into 'negative triangularity' and 'snowflake' configurations.
Visualization of controlled plasma shapes. (DeepMind/SPC/EPFL)
The strong force holds protons and neutrons together, but the theory behind it is largely inscrutable. Two new approaches show how it works.
Billions of times each minute, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) smashes protons together, unleashing a maelstrom of energy that crystallizes into more protons, neutrons, and less familiar cousins of the nuclear particles. Some particles encounter each other as they flee the scene. What happens next — whether a given pair pulls together or pushes apart — physicists generally can’t say.
In 1935, Hideki Yukawa explained why protons and neutrons — particles made of quarks — stick together. Only now do physicists have the tools to investigate how rarer groupings of quarks interact.
When galaxies rip each other apart, they leave an explosion of bright baby stars.
Hubble's capture of the "Tumultuous Galactic Trio." The center of the image is obscured by a thick cloud of dust—though light from a background galaxy can be seen piercing the merger's outer extremities.
Orbiting machines that grip, grapple and maneuver could one day maintain the fleet of small spacecraft that encircle Earth
Within a few years, NASA’s OSAM-1 mission will launch into space and use a robotic arm to refuel the Landsat 7 Earth-observation satellite, as shown in this animation.
Earth's interior is not a uniform stack of layers. Deep in its thick middle layer lie two colossal blobs of thermo-chemical material.
To this day, scientists still don't know where both of these colossal structures came from or why they have such different heights, but a new set of geodynamic models has landed on a possible answer to the latter mystery. These hidden reservoirs are located on opposite sides of the world, and judging from the deep propagation of seismic waves, the blob under the African continent is more than twice as high as the one under the Pacific ocean.
Rotating 3D view of Earth's blobs. (Cottaar & Lekic/Geophysical Journal International, 2016)
Climate change is spiraling out of control, and that's never been easier to see.
A winding coil of global temperatures spanning 1880 to 2021 is practically a maelstrom of menace. The animation is based on data from NASA's GISS Surface Temperature Analysis and was designed by climate scientist Ed Hawkins, who is known for putting together the original climate stripes.
With a color palette brighter than a bag of Skittles, you’d think the rose-veiled fairy wrasse would have no trouble standing out. But in the teeming waters of the Indian Ocean, it’s easy for a fish to swim under the radar, even when it looks like it’s ultraviolet.
The newly named rose-veiled fairy wrasse looks like it was ripped out of the pages of a Lisa Frank notebook. Yi-Kai Tea
Un lampo lungo 768 chilometri e un altro della durata di oltre 17 secondi. Sono i due fenomeni eccezionali che hanno stabilito un doppio nuovo record registrato dall'Organizzazione meteorologica mondiale (Omm): quello del singolo lampo più esteso su una distanza orizzontale e quello della durata massima per un singolo lampo.
There was a time when our Universe was nothing but an opaque, lightless sea of swirling gas.
By the time the Universe was a billion years old, however, that had all changed. Radiation from the first stars and galaxies wreaked a dramatic alteration, allowing light to stream freely, across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
"Exploration is in our nature.
We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still.
We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars."
[COLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8)]Carl Sagan[/COLOR]
Geckos that are typically placid and mild-mannered become violent, head-shaking "berserkers" when subduing a scorpion meal, new research reveals.
When a western banded gecko (Coleonyx variegatus) bites down on its scorpion prey, it repeatedly whips its head from side to side, slamming the scorpion into the ground over and over again.
Geckos vigorously shook scorpions after catching them, then gulped them down whole. (Image credit: Whitford et al.)
New research has revealed an intriguing link between psilocybin – the psychedelic substance in magic mushrooms – and opioid addiction: people who have used psilocybin at some point in their lives are significantly less likely to become addicted to opioids.
More than 5,000 new virus species have been identified in the world's oceans, according to a new study.
The study researchers analyzed tens of thousands of water samples from around the globe, hunting for RNA viruses, or viruses that use RNA as their genetic material. The novel coronavirus, for instance, is a type of RNA virus. These viruses are understudied compared with DNA viruses, which use DNA as their genetic material, the authors said.
The sun unleashed a major X1.1 class solar flare from an active sunspot cluster on its eastern limb on April 17, 2022 GMT. This view was taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. (Image credit: NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams)
