ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Complexities of ancient asteroidal world revealed
• NASA Dawn spacecraft reveals secrets of giant asteroid Vesta
• Asteroid collision that spawned Vesta's asteroid family occurred more recently than thought
• Heliosphere's long-theorized bow shock does not exist, new IBEX data show
• Unseen planet revealed by its gravity
• Solar power to dye for: Flexible lightweight inexpensive dyes could harvest energy from sun
• Dwarf galaxy with a bright nebula
• New molecules and star formation in the Milky Way
• Free-floating planets in the milky way outnumber stars by factors of thousands: Life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers
• Ultra-cool companion helps reveal giant planets
• Optimal planning of solar power plants
• Virtual reality allows researchers to measure fish brain activity during behavior at unprecedented resolution

Complexities of ancient asteroidal world revealed Posted: 10 May 2012 07:44 PM PDT New findings from NASA's Dawn spacecraft lay the groundwork for the first geological overview of asteroid (4)Vesta and confirm the existence of not one but two giant impact basins in its southern hemisphere.

NASA Dawn spacecraft reveals secrets of giant asteroid Vesta Posted: 10 May 2012 11:55 AM PDT NASA's Dawn spacecraft has provided researchers with the first orbital analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta, yielding new insights into its creation and kinship with terrestrial planets and Earth's moon.

Asteroid collision that spawned Vesta's asteroid family occurred more recently than thought Posted: 10 May 2012 11:19 AM PDT Scientists have discovered evidence that the giant impact crater Rheasilvia on Asteroid Vesta was created in a collision that occurred only about one billion years ago, much more recently than previously thought. This result is based on the analysis of high-resolution images obtained with the Dawn spacecraft, which entered orbit around Vesta in July 2011.

Heliosphere's long-theorized bow shock does not exist, new IBEX data show Posted: 10 May 2012 11:19 AM PDT New results reveal that the bow shock, widely accepted by researchers to precede the heliosphere as it plows through tenuous gas and dust from the galaxy does not exist. For about a quarter century, researchers believed that the heliosphere moved through the interstellar medium at a speed fast enough to form a bow shock. IBEX data have shown that the heliosphere actually moves through the local interstellar cloud at about 52,000 miles per hour, roughly 7,000 miles per hour slower than previously thought -- slow enough to create more of a bow "wave" than a shock.

Unseen planet revealed by its gravity Posted: 10 May 2012 11:19 AM PDT More than a 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the motion of Uranus. Scientists have now inferred another unseen planet, this time orbiting a distant star, marking the first success of this technique outside the solar system.

Solar power to dye for: Flexible lightweight inexpensive dyes could harvest energy from sun Posted: 10 May 2012 08:37 AM PDT Flexible, lightweight and inexpensive dyes could be used to harvest the power of the sun rather than our relying on costly and fragile semiconductor solar panel that use crystalline silicon, new research suggests.

Dwarf galaxy with a bright nebula Posted: 10 May 2012 07:02 AM PDT The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made detailed observations of the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366. While it lacks the elegant spiral arms of many larger galaxies, NGC 2366 is home to a bright, star-forming nebula and is close enough for astronomers to discern its individual stars.

New molecules and star formation in the Milky Way Posted: 10 May 2012 07:02 AM PDT New research shows the first detections of new interstellar molecules and important spectral lines in space, and address different stages of the star formation process.

Free-floating planets in the milky way outnumber stars by factors of thousands: Life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers Posted: 10 May 2012 07:02 AM PDT Researchers say life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers in the space between stars in the Milky Way.

Ultra-cool companion helps reveal giant planets Posted: 10 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT Astronomers have found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has a temperature of just 400 degrees Celsius and its discovery could be a key step forward in helping astronomers distinguish between brown dwarfs and giant planets.

Optimal planning of solar power plants Posted: 10 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT The photovoltaics industry is booming, and the market for solar farms is growing quickly all over the world. Yet, the task of planning PV power plants to make them as effi cient as possible is far from trivial. Researchers have now developed software that simplifies conceptual design.

Virtual reality allows researchers to measure fish brain activity during behavior at unprecedented resolution Posted: 09 May 2012 10:59 AM PDT Researchers have developed a new technique which allows them to measure brain activity in large populations of nerve cells at the resolution of individual cells. The technique has been developed in zebrafish to represent a simplified model of how brain regions work together to flexibly control behavior.

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