A study shows that Traces of water in moon came from Earth.

Traces of water inside the moon were inherited from ancient Earth, according to a fresh analysis of lunar rocks brought home by US astronauts.

The findings make for a clearer picture of our cosmic neighbour, once viewed as an arid expanse, but now considered a frost-coated rock that holds water throughout.

The latest results come from studies on the most extraordinary samples hauled back from the moon, including green-tinged stone collected by Apollo 15 in 1971, and orange material gathered by Apollo 17 in 1972.

The surprise discovery of the green rock, by Commander Dave Scott and lunar module pilot Jim Irwin, sparked a lengthy debate among the astronauts about the boulder's true colour while Nasa controllers listened in.

Scientists focused on tiny droplets of volcanic glass that were trapped in crystals inside the rocks. The crystals protected the droplets from the violence of eruption, and so preserved in them a snapshot of the moon's ancient interior.

Researchers found evidence for water inside the glass droplets in earlier work but the latest study goes further, showing that the lunar water is chemically identical to that on ancient Earth.

Much of Earth's water is thought to have arrived in meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites that ploughed into the planet as it formed in the early solar system.

According to the leading theory, the moon was created some time later, about 4.5bn years ago, from a hot cloud of debris that was knocked into space when a planet the size of Mars slammed into Earth.

The latest findings suggest the Earth was already damp at the time the moon was created, and that the intense heat of the collision failed to vapourise all of the water. "Some of that water survived the impact, and that's what we see in the moon," said Alberto Saal, a geologist at Brown University.

Scientists can tell roughly where in the solar system water came from by analysing its chemical signature. Water that formed far from the sun contains proportionally more deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen, than water that formed closer to the sun.

When Saal's team studied water in the glass droplets, they found the ratio of deuterium to normal hydrogen was fairly low, and matched that of water found in carbonaceous chondrites. As much as 98% of Earth's water may have come from these primitive meteorites.

"The water in the moon came from the same source that brought the water to Earth, and that was carbonaceous chondrites," Saal told the Guardian.

Carbonaceous chondrites formed in the asteroid belt near Jupiter and are among the oldest objects in the solar system. The findings, reported in the journal Science, rule out comets as the source of the moon's water. Comets form in the farthest reaches of the solar system, and water inside them tends to have a higher ratio of deuterium to hydrogen.

"The new data provide the best evidence yet that the carbon-bearing chondrites were a common source of volatiles in the Earth and the moon, and perhaps the entire inner solar system," said Erik Hauri, a co-author of the study at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

What would be in the middle of a galaxy?

There are two things in the center of a typical galaxy.

First, there is a much higher density of stars, and gas as well. This is why the center of a galaxy tends to be brighter. This inner region of higher stellar density is called a "galactic bulge". In elliptical galaxies, which don't have spiral arm structures and instead have a more uniform appearance there is still an increase in density toward the center.

Second, most large galaxies seem to have a supermassive black hole at their center. Under the right conditions if there is a lot of matter falling into such a black hole then it can give rise to extremely energetic phenomena. Depending on the details such phenomena are given different names, such as active galactic nuclei (AGNs) or quasars or blazars (which are now understood to be subsets of AGNs). These phenomena can sometimes outshine the light from all of the other stars in the galaxy, sometimes by orders of magnitude, but they are relatively uncommon and also usually depend on a fortuitous viewing angle.

Can plants get "cancer"?

They are made out of cells and exposed to UV rays nearly all the time. So why shouldn't the UV rays ionize their cell nucleus and corrupt the DNA?

Any complex multicellular organism can be suseptible to defects in cell proliferation causing individual cells or groups of cells to develop abnormally. In animals, these defects lead to tumour formation and cancer and plants develop tumours too which can be detrimental to how they function or develop. One crucial difference between plant and animal tumours is that, unlike many animal cells, plant cells are incapable of moving as they are fixed in a cell wall matrix. As such, the 'cancer' in plants is not able to spread to other parts of the organism and rarely kills.

So why do plants develops tumours? You asked in your question whether exposure to UV light could be a cause, but as far as I can find this is not the case. A vast majority of tumours developed by plants are caused by pathogens - specialised viruses and bacteria that invade plant cells and cause defects. One of the most common plant tumours are called Crown Galls which develop in the plant stems and are caused by a specific soil bacteria. Similarly, certain fungal diseases can also lead to the development of tumour like growths.

Certain plant varieties are also suspect to spontaneous tumour formation due to genetic disorders, particularly hybrid plants. Tobacco plants, for example, are one of the most suseptible to this and hybrid can be so over-run with tumours that flower and seed development is severely comporised.

Cell found in salamanders aids cell regrowth

Researchers have identified a cell that aids limb regrowth in Salamanders. Macrophages are a type of repairing cell that devour dead cells and pathogens, and trigger other immune cells to respond to pathogens. In humans, they're also important to muscle repair, which led Dr. James Godwin, of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University, to research whether the macrophages found inside Salamanders are related to the animal's ability to regenerate limbs. Salamanders are unique in the vertebrate world as they're capable of repairing their hearts, tails, spinal cords, brain, and regrowing limbs. This makes them an obvious candidate for regenerative research. Godwin and the team at ARMI removed the macrophages the Salamanders and found that the animals were no longer able to regenerate limbs. He believes that the cells release chemicals that are vital to the Salamanders' regenerative powers. More research is needed to establish exactly how regeneration works, and Godwin is currently conducting experiments to investigate. "This really gives us somewhere to look for what might be secreted into the wound environment that allows for regeneration," he tells ABC News.

Although understanding the Salamander's abilities may one day lead to impossible-sounding feats like limb regeneration in humans, there are more-immediate benefits that could come from the research. Less ambitious goals such as scarless healing, could be attainable. "The long-term plan is that we'll know exactly what cocktail to add to a wound site to allow salamander-like regeneration under hospital conditions."

Alligator stem cells could offer tooth regeneration in humans

Humans naturally only have two sets of teeth – baby teeth and adult teeth. Ultimately, we want to identify stem cells that can be used as a resource to stimulate tooth renewal in adult humans who have lost teeth. But, to do that, we must first understand how they renew in other animals and why they stop in people,” Prof Chuong said.

Whereas most vertebrates can replace teeth throughout their lives, human teeth are naturally replaced only once, despite the lingering presence of a band of epithelial tissue called the dental lamina, which is crucial to tooth development.

Because alligators have well-organized teeth with similar form and structure as mammalian teeth and are capable of lifelong tooth renewal, the team reasoned that they might serve as models for mammalian tooth replacement.

“Alligator teeth are implanted in sockets of the dental bone, like human teeth. They have 80 teeth, each of which can be replaced up to 50 times over their lifetime, making them the ideal model for comparison to human teeth,” explained study lead author Prof Ping Wu, also from the University of Southern California.

The team found that each alligator tooth is a complex unit of three components – a functional tooth, a replacement tooth, and the dental lamina – in different developmental stages. The tooth units are structured to enable a smooth transition from dislodgement of the functional, mature tooth to replacement with the new tooth. Identifying three developmental phases for each tooth unit, the researchers conclude that the alligator dental laminae contain what appear to be stem cells from which new replacement teeth develop.

“Stem cells divide more slowly than other cells,” said co-author Prof Randall Widelitz of the University of Southern California.

“The cells in the alligator’s dental lamina behaved like we would expect stem cells to behave. In the future, we hope to isolate those cells from the dental lamina to see whether we can use them to regenerate teeth in the lab.”

The team also intends to learn what molecular networks are involved in repetitive renewal and hope to apply the principles to regenerative medicine in the future.

Human cells cloned for the first time ever

An international team of scientists announced today that for the first time ever, they were able to create new human stem cells by cloning older, fully mature human cells. The process cannot be used to create full human clones, as the scientists involved were quick to point out, but it does allow for cells to be grown to fit specific functions within an individual's body — resulting in new, patient-specific liver cells or heart cells that actually pulse on their own, for example.

Eventually, scientists hope to refine the process to the point it could be used to help treat disease and even create whole custom organs, but that is likely to be several years away at the earliest. "While there is much work to be done in developing safe and effective stem cell treatments, we believe this is a significant step forward in developing the cells that could be used in regenerative medicine," said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the leader of the research team and a senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC), in a news release.

The research team was led by scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University, who used a technique similar to the one that created Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from adult cells, back in 1996. In a basic sense, this method involves taking an adult cell from a patient's body, sucking out the central portion containing DNA (the nucleus), then injecting this material into an empty egg cell donated by another human volunteer. The genetic material from the adult cell tells the empty egg cell what type it should mature into.

The ice on Mt Everest are melting

A warming climate is melting the glaciers of Mount Everest, shrinking the frozen cloak of Earth’s highest peak by 13% in the last 50 years, researchers have found.

Rocks and natural debris previously covered by snow are appearing now as the snow line has retreated 590 feet, according to Sudeep Thakuri, a University of Milan scientist who led the research.

 Researchers said they believe the observed changes could be due to human-generated greenhouse gases altering global climate, although their research has not established a firm connection. 

Average temperatures have risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1992, according data from the Nepal Climate Observatory stations and Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, the researchers found. Since 1992, precipitation has declined nearly four inches during the pre-monsoon and winter months, they found.

Earth's center is out of sync

We all know that the Earth rotates beneath our feet, but new research from ANU has revealed that the center of the Earth is out of sync with the rest of the planet, frequently speeding up and slowing down.

Associate Professor Hrvoje Tkalcic from the ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and his team used earthquake doublets to measure the rotation speed of Earth's inner core over the last 50 years.

They discovered that not only did the inner core rotate at a different rate to the mantle the layer between the core and the crust that makes up most of the planet's interior but its rotation speed was variable. compared with the mantle, the inner core was rotating more quickly in the 1970s and 1990s, but slowed down in the 80s. The most dramatic acceleration has possibly occurred in the last few years, although further tests are needed to confirm that observation. Scientists have so far assumed the rotation rate of the inner core to be constant because they lacked adequate mathematical methods for interpreting the data, says Associate Professor Tkalcic. A new method applied to earthquake doublets – pairs of almost identical earthquakes that can occur a couple of weeks to 30 or 40 years apart – has provided the solution.

"It's stunning to see that even 10, 20 or 30 years apart, these earthquakes look so similar. But each pair differs very slightly, and that difference corresponds to the inner core. We have been able to use that small difference to reconstruct a history of how the inner core has rotated over the last 50 years,"  Professor Hrvoje Tkalcic said. 

Analyses of sediment cores show that Arctic summers 3.6 million years ago were a good 8 degrees C warmer than they are today.

The Arctic wasn't always covered in ice. Samples of sediment layers beneath a frozen lake show this region used to be a lot warmer and may thaw out again in the future. The work is in the journalScience. 

El'gygytgyn, a Russian lake 100 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, contains layers of sediment that date back to the lake's formation 3.6 million years ago. Analyses of sediment cores have revealed that back then summers reached about 15 to 16 degrees Celsius, a good 8 degrees warmer than modern Arctic summers. These warm temperatures, which supported plants like Douglas fir and hemlock, lasted until about 2.2 million years ago.

Using a sediment core as a detailed history of climate change, scientists can see how the forested Arctic gradually became covered in ice and snow. These changes help us understand details about the development of Ice Ages. In addition, the sediment comes from a window of time during the Pliocene Epoch, when greenhouse gas levels were only slightly higher than they are today. Such sensitivity to small carbon dioxide changes hint at a warm Arctic future.

University of Georgia developed a way to make energy through photosynthesis

There's a more efficient way to harvest energy from the backyard than by wiring up hapless critters. Researchers at the University of Georgia have proof: they've discovered a way to generate electricity from plants through hijacking the photosynthesis process. By altering the proteins inside a plant cell's thylakoids, which store solar energy, scientists can intercept electrons through a carbon nanotube backing that draws them away before they're used to make sugar. While the resulting power isn't phenomenal, it's still two orders of magnitude better than previous methods, according to the university. The protein modification method may have a rosier future, as well: the team believes that it could eventually compete with solar cells, producing green energy in a very literal sense.

Ammonia Leak on ISS ‘Very Serious,’ Emergency Spacewalks Scheduled

At the risk of starting your Friday of with bad news, an ammonia leak in the system that cools the International Space Station may be more severe than initially thought, say officials familiar with the situation. Ground crews are working overtime to try and determine the cause of the leak, and emergency spacewalks  that will let astronauts on board diagnose — and ideally fix — the problem are being scheduled  for the coming days.

The leak in power channel 2B — where energy collected by the station’s solar arrays is converted into power for the spacecraft — was known to ISS crew members and ground control, but slow enough that it wasn’t a concern. That was the situation until last night, when the rotation of the solar panels seemed to worsen the leak. Crew members were first alerted when they began to see white flakes drifting near the station, a sign that ammonia was not staying in the cooling system where it belonged. This morning saw power channel 2B shut down, transferring its critical responsibilities to another channel and diminishing the station’s power production capabilities by more than 12%.

A slow leak in the 2B channel has been apparent since 2006, but the amount of ammonia escaping the space station was so minimal as to not require immediate attention. A spacewalk last November was meant to repair the leak, which was likely caused by a tiny asteroid or debris strike like the one that punctured the station’s solar panels recently.

We’re probably not at the point where anyone needs hold a good thought for the ISS crew yet — after all, there’s a reason these guys get to go to the ISS and we don’t. They’re pretty well-equipped to handle this kind of thing, whereas I would probably just be rocking back and forth slowly in zero gravity right now. Instead of that, flight engineers Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy will be spacewalking out to attempt to divert ammonia flow around the leak and restore the power channel to working order tomorrow. Yes, because they’re better men than I, but I don’t think it’s necessary to point that out.

What is the centre of the milky way and is it a threat?

When you look at a picture of our milky way some of you may think to your selves. What is that very bright light in the middle of our milky way and why is our milky way in a spiral motion.

Well its because there is super massive black hole Called Sagittarius A*. most of us know that black holes spin around in a circle motion that is why our milky way is in a spiral Shape.Black holes have a very strong gravitation pull witch pulls all the stars into the back hole this is why it is so bright.Your probably wandering why we cant see the blinding light also is that black hole a threat to us.Well its not a threat to us don't worry we are 28,000 light years away from the center of the milky way. Also we can see the arm of the milky way sometime but rarely.The reason we cant see the center of the milky way is because there is a mass amount of stars,dust and other materials that are light years wide.

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50 years time?

Our earth is a delicate planet, one of a kind that supports life. However in 50 years time is it all going to be the same? Its scary thinking about mass extinction but why is it now why wasn't it earlier why in our generation? well the answer is that we are burning fossil  fuels to quick. Also we are putting so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere That our planet is going threw serious changes that we are not doing much about. scientist recon we have about 30 to 40 years of fossil fuels left till we have a serious problem what will we do when it runs out?

What will earth look like in 50 years no one knows but people have theories.The earth is very delicate and we are destroying it.

ESA gives go ahead for satalite that can measure forests weight

The spacecraft will carry a novel radar system that is able to sense the trunks and big branches of trees from orbit.

Scientists will use Biomass to calculate the amount of carbon stored in the world's forests, and to monitor for any changes over the course of the five-year mission.

The satellite's data should help researchers understand better the role trees play in the cycling of carbon on Earth and, by extension, the influence this has on the planet's climate.

"Biomass will give us unprecedented knowledge on the state of the world's forests and how they are changing," said Prof Shaun Quegan, who was one of the key proposers of the mission. 

Biomass will be a 1.2-tonne satellite at launch, meaning it will probably go up on Esa's new Vega rocket, which successfully conducted only its second flight overnight.

Its sole instrument will send down a 70cm radar pulse that will penetrate the leafy canopies of forests but scatter back off the large woody parts of trees. It will sense the volume of material at a resolution of about 200m. In essence, it will be able to weigh the amount of carbon tied up in the world's forests.

Arctic Ocean is rapidly acidifying

Scientists from Norway's Center for International Climate and Environmental Research monitored widespread changes in ocean chemistry in the region.

They say even if CO2 emissions stopped now, it would take tens of thousands of years for Arctic Ocean chemistry to revert to pre-industrial levels.  They forecast major changes in the marine ecosystem, but say there is huge uncertainty over what those changes will be.

It is well known that CO2 warms the planet, but less well-known that it also makes the alkaline seas more acidic when it is absorbed from the air. Absorption is particularly fast in cold water so the Arctic is especially susceptible, and the recent decreases in summer sea ice have exposed more sea surface to atmospheric CO2. 

The researchers say there is likely to be major change to the Arctic marine ecosystem as a result. Some key prey species like sea butterflies may be harmed. Other species may thrive. Adult fish look likely to be fairly resilient but the development of fish eggs might be harmed. It is too soon to tell.

New dinosaur found in China

A new dinosaur found in China may be the oldest of its kind and a crucial link between lizard-like dinosaurs and the feathered, late-period creatures that bore a closer resemblance to today's birds.

A team of international researchers led by James Clark, from the George Washington University, found a fossilized leg bone on the side of a stream in a remote part of Xinjiang province in the far northwestern corner of China. That's not much, but, amazingly, they found more of the small dinosaur's body a partial skeleton, a nearly complete skull, and a mandible. It is a new species, a basal member of the Coelurosauria family tree. Coelurosaurs are late-period dinosaurs that resembled birds as much as the typical dinosaurs we think of; it's possible all of them were feathered.

The researchers gave the dinosaur a name: Aorun zhaoi, after the Dragon King in the Chinese epic tale Journey to the West. It is the oldest known coelurosaur--though it died a youngster.

This particular animal had many very small, sharp teeth, which are very useful clues as to what this dinosaur ate and how it behaved. The researchers suspect it preyed on lizards and primitive shrew-like mammals--though since this one is estimated to be less than a year old, we don't really know much about how the adult of the species lived, or even how big it might have been.

Trees can make noises when short on water

Like a person gasping for air when it's in short supply, living trees make noises when they are running out of water, and a team of French scientists is a step closer to pinpointing the noises.

Lab experiments at Grenoble University in France have isolated ultrasonic pops, which are 100 times faster than what a human can hear, in slivers of dead pine wood bathed in a hydrogel to simulate the conditions of a living tree.

Researchers exposed the gel to an artificially dry environment and listened for the noises that occurred as air bubbles built up, similar to what occurs to trees during droughts. Air bubbles form when a tree is trying to suck moisture out of dry ground during droughts. As leaves on a tree collect carbon dioxide, they open their pores, a process that leaves them vulnerable to water loss.

Evaporation from the leaves pulls water up the trees in a state of tension. The tree vacuums up water from the ground through its root system, pulling it up through tubes. There are thousands of them in a typical tree, connected by pit membranes (sort of like a two-way valve). Tension in the xylem tubes increases in times of drought, then cavitates.Douglas firs and pine trees can repair this damage as frequently as every hour, said Katherine McCulloh, a plant ecophysiologist at Oregon State University, in a past Our Amazing Planet interview. The bubbles are deadly for other species, however, if the bubbles block the water's flow

In the video you are accelerating through the observable universe. This simulation took many years to program and create. The simulation incorporates the stars and the effect of gravity on each other.