Troy Oakes

Mysterious Source of Banned Ozone-Depleting Substance Uncovered

A potent ozone-depleting substance from eastern China has been found as ongoing significant emissions by researchers from the University of Bristol. The compound, carbon tetrachloride, contributes to the destruction of the Earth’s ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. As a result, the production of carbon tetrachloride has been banned throughout the world ...

Troy Oakes

Q&A With the Scientists Behind OSIRIS-REx’s ‘Eyes’

Using its multipurpose camera designed at the UA, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spied its target asteroid for the first time from about 1.4 million miles away. How did the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft take the first image of the target asteroid Bennu? UANews spoke with three OSIRIS-REx mission scientists who planned the first-light image of Bennu: Bashar Rizk, senior staff scientist ...

Troy Oakes

Drier, Less Predictable Environment May Have Spurred Human Evolution

Evidence of a variable but progressively drying climate coincides with a major shift in stone-tool-making abilities and the appearance of modern Homo sapiens. A progressively drying climate punctuated by variable wetter episodes may have precipitated the human evolution transition from our hominin ancestors to anatomically modern humans, according to research published in the online edition ...

Troy Oakes

Neutron Star Jets Shoot Down Theory

Astronomers have detected radio jets belonging to a neutron star with a strong magnetic field — something not predicted by current theory, according to a new study published in Nature. The team, led by researchers at the University of Amsterdam, observed the object known as Swift J0243.6+6124 using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio ...

Troy Oakes

‘Vampire Burial’ Reveals Efforts to Prevent Child’s Return From Grave

Archaeologists found the “vampire burial” remains of a 10-year-old child with a stone inserted into his or her mouth at a 5th-century Italian cemetery. The discovery of a 10-year-old’s body at an ancient Roman site in Italy suggests measures were taken to prevent the child, possibly infected with malaria, from rising from the dead and ...

Troy Oakes

Aussie Telescope Almost Doubles Number of Mysterious ‘Fast Radio Bursts’

Australian researchers using a CSIRO radio telescope in Western Australia have nearly doubled the known number of “fast radio bursts” —  powerful flashes of radio waves from deep space. The team’s discoveries include the closest and brightest fast radio bursts ever detected. Fast radio bursts come from all over the sky and last for just ...

Troy Oakes

Australian SKA Pathfinder with the Milky Way overhead.

Humans Delayed the Onset of the Sahara Desert by 500 Years

The study by a team of geographers and archaeologists from UCL and King’s College London, published in Nature Communications, suggests that early pastoralists in North Africa combined detailed knowledge of the environment with newly domesticated species to deal with the long-term drying trend. This delayed the onset of the Sahara Desert by 500 years. It is thought ...

Troy Oakes

The Real Power of ‘We’

A healthy relationship starts with the word “we.” Past research by UC Riverside psychologist Megan Robbins has emphasized the power of first-person personal pronouns such as “we” and “us” in relationships. “We-talk” is an indicator of interdependence, meaning partners affect one another’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This is a shift from self-oriented to relationship-oriented. New ...

Troy Oakes

Voyager 2 Could Be Nearing Interstellar Space

NASA’s Voyager 2 probe, currently on a journey toward interstellar space, has detected an increase in cosmic rays that originate outside our solar system. Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 is a little less than 11 billion miles (about 17.7 billion kilometers) from Earth, or more than 118 times the distance from the Earth to the ...

Troy Oakes

Ways to Improve Wind Farm Productivity

You’ve probably seen them, perhaps on long road trips — wind turbines with enormous, hypnotic rolling blades, harnessing the clean power of wind for conversion into electric energy. What you may not know is that for the explosion in the number of wind turbines in use as we embrace cleaner sources of energy, these wind farms ...

Troy Oakes