Category: Top Stories

Scientists have finally located a source of the most energetic rays. Starting with a single signal—a flash of light in a detector at the South Pole—and combining it with telescope data from a collaboration of over a thousand people, astrophysicists have traced the origin of some of Earth’s cosmic rays to a blazar, a type of galaxy, 4 billion light years away. “We’ve learned that these active galaxies are responsible for accelerating particles and cosmic rays,” says physicist Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Quoted: “It’s exciting, no doubt, to have finally nailed the cosmic accelerator,” says the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Francis Halzen, lead scientist with IceCube. The results are reported today in three papers appearing in Scienceand the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Astronomers said the discovery could provide a long sought clue to one of the enduring mysteries of physics and the cosmos. Where does the rain of high-energy particles from space known as cosmic rays come from?

According to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, increased use of air conditioners may only be making a bad problem even worse.

An international team of astrophysicists will reveal a “breakthrough” discovery Thursday (July 12), and you can watch the announcement live.The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced in a statement that it will host a news conference Thursday at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) to unveil new “multimessenger astrophysics findings” led by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an NSF-managed facility at the South Pole.

One way of tackling this problem is to roll out more air conditioning systems, but according to Professor Jonathan Patz at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this means trading one problem for another.

“We’re always interested in how temperatures behave,” says Matthew Lazzara, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the study’s authors. “In Antarctica, we still haven’t learned a lot of the basics.” His team found conditions need to be just so, in the right spot, to brew up the perfect freeze.

After the endangered species list was created and targeted conservation efforts began, eagle populations recovered. Researchers have found that one of the keys to recovery is protecting the nest of breeding pairs of eagles. Their results were published earlier this year in the Journal of Applied Ecology. Ecologist Benjamin Zuckerberg, an author on that study, explains what it means for the future conservation of eagles and endangered raptors.

Dawn Dudley, senior scientist in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the lead author of the study called the high rate “alarming.” While Dudly believes the true rate of human miscarriage in Zika-infected pregnancies is somewhat lower than what they found in monkeys, she said it’s also likely higher than the 8 percent figure.

Metamaterials that cloak people and objects from radar, visible light or infrared are usually thick and heavy, but now engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed an ultrathin, lightweight sheet that absorbs heat signatures and can even present false ones.

Studies of bees, climate change and Amish children are among the eight projects out of 70 receiving grants from one of UW-Madison’s largest endowments.

If you’ve ever felt like there just aren’t enough hours in the day just be glad that you didn’t live on Earth 1.4 billion years ago. A new study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin – Madison reveals that ancient Earth had much shorter days, and the 24-hour days that we experience in modern times come courtesy of the Moon.

t’s not just you – the days really are getting longer. More than a billion years ago, the moon used to be about 40,000 kilometres closer, which made Earth spin faster. Back then, the days were less than 19 hours long. (Paywall)

As the Earth’s rotation gradually winds down, the moon moves further away. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stephen Meyers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Alberto Malinverno at Columbia University in New York calculate that over the past 1.4bn years the moon has drifted about 44,000km from Earth to a distance of 384,400km

Two researchers at UW-Madison have been selected as recipients of the 2018 Shaw Scientist Awards, each getting $200,000 in seed funding to continue their innovative research work.

As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out, explained Professor Stephen Meyers, professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out,” explained Professor Stephen Meyers, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out,” said Stephen Meyers, co-author of the study and a geoscience professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The study author of geoscience Stephen Meyers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison explained the relation between Earth’s spin and the location of Moon as that of a spinning figure skater and his arms. The way skater slows down his spinning speed by stretching his arms out, the spinning speed of Earth is slowing down as the moon is distancing itself from the planet.

Using a new statistical method called astrochronology, astronomers peered into Earth’s deep geologic past and reconstructed the planet’s history. This work revealed that, just 1.4 billion years ago, the moon was significantly closer to Earth, which made the planet spin faster. As a result, a day on Earth lasted just over 18 hours back then, according to a statement from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

forgets memory cardResearchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have worked out that around 1.4 billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted 18 hours. “This is at least in part because the Moon was closer and changed the way the Earth spun around its axis,” the Daily Mirror reports.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that 1.4 billion years ago the moon orbited much closer to the planet, altering the way it spins on its axis.The study also said the moon will continue to move away from Earth, making our days even longer.

The new study, co-authored by Stephen Meyers, Ph.D., a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Alberto Malinverno, Ph.D., a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, isn’t just about the moon. The researchers initially set out to find a way to accurately study the many phases that our planet has undergone since its beginning, both in terms of its geology and its place in the solar system.

Study author Professor of geoscience Stephen Meyers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: “As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out.”

Once upon a time, when the moon was closer to our planet, a day only had 18 hours. According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, about 1.4 billion years ago, the moon was orbiting Earth a lot closer than it is now, altering the way it spins on its axis.

Study author Professor of geoscience Stephen Meyers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: “As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out.”