184 articles from TUESDAY 7.1.2020

Australia’s Wildfires and Climate Change Are Making One Another Worse in a Vicious, Devastating Circle

The hot, dry conditions that primed southeastern Australia’s forest and fields for the bushfires that have been ravaging the country since September are likely to continue, scientists warn — and climate change has likely made the situation much worse. Over the past few months, the bushfires have already scorched millions of acres, killed two dozen people, and slaughtered an estimated...

Kangaroo Island shows burn scars on one third of the land mass

NASA's Terra satellite provided before and after imagery that showed the extent of the fires that have been ravaging Australia's Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island lies off the mainland of South Australia, southwest of Adelaide. About a third of the island is made up of protected nature reserves which are home to native wildlife which includes sea lions, koalas and diverse and endangered bird...

Koala Mittens and Baby Bottles: Saving Australia's Animals After Fires

WATERHOLES, Australia -- The convoy of vehicles fleeing a raging inferno in the forest of southeastern Australia ferried a copious cargo: 11 koalas, 15 kangaroos, five chickens, two possums, two dogs and a lorikeet.Susan Pulis, who runs a wildlife shelter, had rallied her friends to pack the animals in blankets and baskets and take them to safety on the coast. One friend gutted her downstairs...

Astronomers discover huge gaseous wave holding Milky Way's newest stars

‘It’s right up in our face’ – close proximity of stellar nursery to our solar system stuns scientists Astronomers have discovered a gigantic, undulating wave of dust and gas where newborn stars are forged over a 50 million billion mile stretch of the Milky Way.The gaseous structure, which holds more mass than 3m suns, runs directly behind our solar system as viewed from the heart of the...

New map of Milky Way reveals giant wave of stellar nurseries

Astronomers at Harvard University have discovered a monolithic, wave-shaped gaseous structure—the largest ever seen in our galaxy—made up of interconnected stellar nurseries. Dubbed the "Radcliffe wave" in honor of the collaboration's home base, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the discovery transforms a 150-year-old vision of nearby stellar nurseries as an expanding ring into one...

SOFIA Reveals How the Swan Nebula Hatched

Portal origin URL: SOFIA Reveals How the Swan Nebula Hatched Portal origin nid: 457136Published: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 - 15:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: A new view of the Swan Nebula from SOFIA reveals that parts of it formed separately to create the swan-like shape seen today.Portal image: Composite image of the Swan nebula in blue,...

Geographers find tipping point in deforestation

Geography researchers have identified a tipping point for deforestation that leads to rapid forest loss. Researchers used high-resolution satellite images to study landscapes in 9-kilometer-wide blocks across every inch of the planet between 1992 and 2015. They found that deforestation occurs comparatively slowly in these blocks until about half of the forest is gone. Then the remaining forest...

Mighty Mice splash down aboard SpaceX Dragon cargo ship after zero-G study on space station

A troop of muscle-enhanced mice was among more than 3,500 pounds of experiments and equipment  that came back to Earth today when a robotic SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of a monthlong resupply mission to the International Space Station. Mighty Mice in Space is an experiment studying mice who have been bred to lack myostatin, a growth factor that...

The Guardian view on an ice-sheet collapse: threatening the world’s coasts | Editorial

A scientific expedition to Thwaites glacier aims to provide vital information about the dangers of melting Antarctic ice Thwaites glacier, a vast river of ice the size of Great Britain, holds enough frozen water that were it to collapse, the world’s oceans would rise by more than 60cm. Part of the West Antarctic ice sheet, it is one of the most unstable glaciers on the continent. Since the...

Anger over UK's failure to ban breast implants linked to 61 cancer cases

Exclusive: solicitors call for UK ban of textured variety associated with lymphomaAt least 61 women in the UK have been diagnosed with a potentially fatal cancer linked to breast implants, but the type they received continues to be used, with no plans by the regulator to follow France and Australia in banning them.Lawyers for more than 40 of the women, who are bringing legal action against the...