James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

The nation’s flagship public universities — large, taxpayer-funded institutions whose declared mission is to educate residents of their states — enroll far smaller proportions of black students than other colleges, and the number appears to be declining, according to federal records and college enrollment data analyzed by The Hechinger Report and The Huffington Post.

On average, just 5 percent of students at the nation’s flagship public universities are black. As recently as a decade ago, that figure was higher, although changing methods of counting racial categories makes a precise comparison difficult.

.

Meredith Kolodner / The Hechinger Report

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Scientists at the University of New South Wales in Australia have made a stellar and rare discovery: The closest habitable planet to Earth is located 14 light-years away, which is eight light-years closer than scientists previously thought. The discovery is the result of a study from UNSW researchers, who found the planet located as part of a cluster of three others, all of which orbit the red dwarf star Wolf 1061. The new world is more than four times the size of Earth; researchers have named it Wolf 1061c.

“It is a particularly exciting find because all three planets are of low enough mass to be potentially rocky and have a solid surface, and the middle planet, Wolf 1061c, sits within the ‘Goldilocks’ zone where it might be possible for liquid water – and maybe even life — to exist,” said the UNSW study’s lead researcher Duncan Wright. “It is fascinating to look out at the vastness of space and think a star so very close to us — a near neighbor — could host a habitable planet.”

Prior to UNSW scientists’ discovery, the closest known habitable planet to Earth was Gliese 667Cc, according to the study, and is a planet four and a half times the size of earth that orbits another red dwarf star located 22 light-years away.

“The close proximity of the planets around Wolf 1061 means there is a good chance these planets may pass across the face of the star,” said Rob Wittenmyer, a member of the study’s research team at UNSW. “If they do, then it may be possible to study the atmospheres of these planets in the future to see whether they would be conducive to life.”

.

Planet X

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

For everyone whoever answered “Astronaut!” to the “What Are You Going to Be When You Grow Up?” question, now is the time to make that dream come true: NASA is “looking for the best candidates to work in the best job on or off the planet,” according to a Dec. 14 job post. Until Feb. 18, 2016, all qualifying U.S. citizens may apply to join the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s next class of astronauts on a red planet adventure.

 “NASA is on an ambitious journey to Mars and we’re looking for talented men and women from diverse backgrounds and every walk of life to help get us there,” said Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator and real, live (former) astronaut, according to the job listing. “Today, we opened the application process for our next class of astronauts, extraordinary Americans who will take the next giant leap in exploration.

“The mission: According to Bolden, “this group will launch to space from U.S. soil on American-made spacecraft and blaze the trail on our journey to the Red Planet,” specifically, onboard Orion and two commercial crew space vehicles. 

“NASA astronauts will again launch to the International Space Station from Florida’s Space Coast on American-made commercial spacecraft — Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and the SpaceX Crew Dragon. These spacecraft will allow NASA to add a seventh crew member to each station mission, effectively doubling the amount of time astronauts will be able to devote to research in space, expanding scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies,” Bolden said in the listing.

.

The Stars

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

The tomb, found in a field near Città della Pieve, about 30 miles southwest of Perugia, had been partially buried in a landslide, according to local news outlet Perugia Today.

Inside, archaeologists have found a number of artifacts including urns and a marble head, as well as two sarcophagi:

A worker had been plowing the field above the tomb in October when the machine jammed, leading to the spectacular find, according to Italian news outlet Umbria24, which says the tomb is at the end of a corridor 40 feet deep.

.

2,300-year-old Etruscan tomb

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

In a highly anticipated announcement on Thursday, NASA revealed that solar wind is probably what stripped Mars of its atmosphere — a phenomenon that likely won’t happen to planet Earth.

“To answer the question [of what happened to Mars’ atmosphere], I’ll quote Bob Dylan: ‘The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,'” lead scientist of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Michael Meyer said during the announcement. After six months of data analysis, scientists found that solar wind stripped away the gas that was once Mars’ upper atmosphere. 

“Wind grabs ions and strips them from the planet,” Bruce Jakosky of NASA’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics said during the announcement.

Mars once had lush valleys and long-existing lakes that closely resembled Earth’s, scientists said. However, the two planets differ in a key way: Earth is protected by a global magnetic field that deflects solar wind away from its atmosphere, while Mars’ magnetic field is thick enough to prevent solar wind from reaching its surface but not from eroding its atmosphere.

The data came from NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) space probe, whose mission was to study Mars’ atmosphere. “Scientists will use MAVEN data to determine the role that loss of volatiles from the Mars atmosphere to space has played through time, giving insight into the history of Mars’ atmosphere and climate, liquid water, and planetary habitability,” according to the space agency’s MAVEN mission page. MAVEN reached Mars in September 2014. 

.

NASA

NASA

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

“We are losing huge areas of coral across the U.S., as well as internationally,” said Mark Eakin, NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch coordinator, citing climate change and events like the current El Niño as primary reasons for the mass die-off.

A new study published this week is bringing even more bad news about the world’s dying corals. According to researchers, there may be another, oft-overlooked threat to reefs worldwide: sunscreen.

Scientists who conducted their research in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands found that the chemical oxybenzone — used in more than 3,500 sunscreen products worldwide, including those by popular brands such as Coppertone, L’Oreal, and Banana Boat — was extremely harmful to fragile coral reefs.

“The chemical not only kills the coral, it causes DNA damage in adults and deforms the DNA in coral in the larval stage, making it unlikely they can develop properly,” a news release reported.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

When the Rosetta space probe sent back its first close-up pictures of a comet last year, scientists got a bit of a surprise: Instead of the ball of rock and ice they had expected, the comet turned out to have two distinct lobes connected by a “neck.”

Some said it looked like a giant rubber duck. Researchers have now concluded that the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko was probably formed when two separate objects collided during the early stages of the solar system, according to a paper published Monday in the journal Nature.

Using data collected by the OSIRIS cameras onboard Rosetta, scientists were able to determine that the flat planes and arcs on 67P’s surface are in fact terraces that wrap around the two lobes like layers around an onion. “For the first time, this study gives observational evidence on how the primordial bodies formed,” said Matteo Massironi, one of the study’s authors.

Thanks to the high resolution of the images, scientists were able to see that the layers on the larger lobe — some up to 650 meters (2,130 feet) thick — are independent of the layers on the smaller lobe. In essence, this means the comet is made of two separate cores.

.

A file handout photo released on September 19, 2014, by the European Space Agency shows a four-image NAVCAM mosaic of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The characteristic “rubber duck” shape of the comet was the result of a low-velocity impact billions of years ago between two objects which fused, a study said on September 28, 2015.AFP – Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

A record-breaking distance has been achieved in the bizarre world of quantum teleportation, scientists say.

The scientists teleported photons (packets of light) across a spool of fiber optics 63 miles long, four times farther than the previous record. This research could one day lead to a “quantum Internet” that offers next-generation encryption, the scientists said.

Teleporting an object from one point in the universe to another without it moving through the space in between may sound like science fiction pulled from an episode of “Star Trek,” but scientists have actually been experimenting with “quantum teleportation” since 1998.

Quantum teleportation depends on capturing the fundamental details of an object — its “quantum states” — and instantly transmitting that information from one area to another to recreate the exact object someplace else.

.

Quantum teleportation?

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________