How The First Stars In The Universe Came Into Existence

Researchers believe that our universe began with the Big Bang about 13 billion years ago, and that soon after that event, matter began to form as small dust grains and gases.

The first primordial stars began as tiny seeds that grew rapidly into stars one hundred times the mass of our own Sun. Seen here in this artist’s impression, swirling clouds of hydrogen and helium gasses are illuminated by the first starlight to shine in the Universe. In the lower portion of the artwork, a supernova explodes, ejecting heavier elements that will someday be incorporated into new stars and planets. (Credit: Image courtesy of David A. Aguilar (CfA) via Science/AAAS)

Oil rebounds from 3-day slide

Crude futures climb above $130 a barrel. Recent decline has taken $16 a barrel off prices.

Oil climbed back above $130 a barrel Friday in Asia as news of an output cut in Nigeria helped to halt the steady decline in prices that began three days ago.

Eni SpA said Thursday that it had shut down pipelines carrying 47,000 barrels of oil a day after a “sudden drop of pressure.”

A Nigerian military official said an explosion had damaged an Eni pipeline in the country’s oil-rich south early Thursday, although he didn’t know how severely.

Summer Arctic Sea Ice Expected To Be Among Lowest On Record

The ice cover in the Arctic Ocean at the end of summer 2008 will lie, with almost 100 per cent probability, below that of the year 2005 — the year with the second lowest sea ice extent ever measured. Chances of an equally low value as in the extreme conditions of the year 2007 lie around eight per cent. Climate scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association come to this conclusion in a recent model calculation.

Simulated minimum sea-ice extent in 2008 when forced with atmospheric data from each year between 1988 and 2007 from the initial state of June 27, 2008. Model derived ice extents have been adjusted with a constant offset to account for discrepancies with satellite-derived ice extents. The thick black horizontal line displays the yearly minimum ice extent from 2007. (Credit: Alfred Wegener Institute)

Volcanic Eruptions Wiped Out Ocean Life 94 Million Years Ago

The underwater volcano Kavachi during an eruption in June of 2000. (Credit: Photos by Dr. Brent McInnes, CSIRO; courtesy of NOAA)

Undersea volcanic activity triggered a mass extinction of marine life and buried a thick mat of organic matter on the sea floor about 93 million years ago, which became a major source of oil, according to a new study.

Sun Could Cause 15% To 20% Of Effects Of Climate Change, Researcher Says

Global warming is mainly caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities; however, current climatic variations may be affected “around 15% or 20%” by solar activity, according to Manuel Vázquez, a researcher from the Canary Islands’ Astrophysics Institute (IAC) who spoke at the Sun and Climate Change conference, organised as part of the El Escorial summer courses by Madrid’s Complutense University.

In the past, the sun was the main external agent affecting climate change on Earth. (Credit: iStockphoto)

New Way To Weigh Giant Black Holes

How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a completely new and independent technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

A composite image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown in purple) and Hubble Space Telescope (blue) shows the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649. By applying a new technique, scientists used Chandra data to measure the black hole at its center to be about 3.4 billion times more massive than the Sun. The value from this X-ray technique is consistent with a more traditional method using the motions of stars near the black hole. NGC 4649 is now one of only a handful of galaxies for which the mass of a supermassive black hole has been measured with two different methods. (Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Univ. of California Irvine/P.Humphrey et al.); Optical (NASA/STScI))

Mitigating Climate Change By Improving Forest Management In The Tropics

A key aspect of the international climate change agreement slated to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 focuses on reducing carbon emissions due to deforestation and degradation (REDD). But most REDD discussions focus on tropical deforestation while ignoring the potential carbon savings that could be realized from reduced forest degradation.

Newly Described ‘Dragon’ Protein Could Be Key To Bird Flu Cure

Scientists and researchers have taken a big step closer to a cure for the most common strain of avian influenza, or “bird flu,” the potential pandemic that has claimed more than 200 lives and infected nearly 400 people in 14 countries since it was identified in 2003.

The overall structure of the PAC –PB1 N complex. The structure is colored according to secondary structure and elements are labeled. Helices are shown as cylinders and are red in the brain domain and blue in the mouth domain; strands are yellow and loops are green. The PB1 N peptide is magenta. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Argonne National Laboratory)

Ancient Mars Had Widespread Water, Potential To Support Life

Organic Cemetery? A color-enhanced image of the delta in Jezero Crater, which once held a lake. Researchers led by CRISM team member and Brown graduate student Bethany Ehlmann report that ancient rivers ferried clay-like minerals (shown in green) into the lake, forming the delta. Clays tend to trap and preserve organic matter, making the delta a good place to look for signs of ancient life. (Credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/MSSS/Brown University)

Mars once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life, according to two new studies based on data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) and other instruments on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Ocean May Exist Beneath Titan’s Crust, Cassini Spacecraft Finds

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has discovered evidence that points to the existence of an underground ocean of water and ammonia on Saturn’s moon Titan. The findings made using radar measurements of Titan’s rotation will appear in the March 21 issue of the journal Science.