Space physics articles within Nature

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  • News & Views |

    Wave energy has long been proposed to be a source of the hot solar corona and fast solar wind. Direct measurements made by spacecraft have finally established that coronal waves are ubiquitous and can have the required energy. See Letter p.477

    • Peter Cargill
    •  & Ineke De Moortel

  • Editorial |

    The final mission of the space shuttle heralds difficult days for space science.

  • News Feature |

    Reusable commercial rockets will soon be able to take scientists — and tourists — on suborbital spaceflights. Are these vehicles vital research tools, or an expensive dead end?

    • Lee Billings

  • News |

    US budget crisis forces European Space Agency to abandon plans for joint mission.

    • Eugenie Samuel Reich

  • Muse |

    As shown by its latest claim of 'alien bugs', the Journal of Cosmology has at least been an entertaining diversion, argues Philip Ball.

    • Philip Ball

  • News |

    NASA satellite crash will hamper solar monitoring and aerosol measurements vital to improving climate models.

    • Jeff Tollefson

  • News |

    The loss of Glory is the second in two years for NASA's troubled Earth-observation programme.

    • Geoff Brumfiel

  • Letter |

    Direct observations over the past four centuries show that the number of sunspots observed on the Sun's surface varies periodically. After sunspot cycle 23, the Sun went into a prolonged minimum characterized by a very weak polar magnetic field and an unusually large number of days without sunspots. This study reports kinematic dynamo simulations which demonstrate that a fast meridional flow in the early half of a cycle, followed by a slower flow in the latter half, reproduces both characteristics of the minimum of sunspot cycle 23.

    • Dibyendu Nandy
    • , Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo
    •  & Petrus C. H. Martens

  • News Feature |

    The ancient Greeks' vision of a geometrical Universe seemed to come out of nowhere. Could their ideas have come from the internal gearing of an ancient mechanism?

    • Jo Marchant

  • News |

    Geometric test supports the existence of a key thread in the fabric of the Universe.

    • Eugenie Samuel Reich

  • Editorial |

    Tough lessons must be learned if NASA is to avoid repeating a costly accounting error.

  • Editorial |

    Commercial spacecraft with room to carry experiments could give science a lift.

  • News & Views |

    The origin of the diffuse aurora, whose beauty and intensity pale beside those of the famous aurora borealis, has remained controversial. A convincing explanation for this auroral display is now at hand. See Letter p.943

    • Patrick T. Newell

  • Letter |

    Earth's diffuse aurora occurs over a broad latitude range, and is mainly caused by the precipitation of low-energy electrons originating in the central plasma sheet. Theory suggests that two classes of magnetospheric plasma waves — electrostatic electron cyclotron harmonic waves and whistler-mode chorus waves — could be responsible for the electron scattering that leads to diffuse auroral precipitation. Here it is found that scattering by chorus is the dominant cause of the most intense diffuse precipitation.

    • Richard M. Thorne
    • , Binbin Ni
    •  & Nigel P. Meredith

  • Letter |

    Asteroidal disruption, through high-velocity collisions or rotational spin-up, is believed to be the primary mechanism for the production and destruction of small asteroids. These authors report observations of P/2010 A2 — a previously unknown inner-belt asteroid with a peculiar, comet-like morphology — that reveal an approximately 120-metre-diameter nucleus with an associated tail of millimetre-sized dust particles. They conclude that it is most probably the evolving remnant of a recent asteroidal disruption in February/March 2009.

    • David Jewitt
    • , Harold Weaver
    •  & Michal Drahus

  • News & Views |

    The detection of unexpected changes in the Sun's spectral irradiance during the declining phase of the most recent solar cycle, and their implications for Earth's atmosphere, are intriguing. But they must be viewed as provisional. See Letter p.696

    • Rolando R. Garcia

  • News Feature |

    After a near-death crisis, the best gravity sensor in space is back to full strength, providing data that will keep scientists on the level.

    • Quirin Schiermeier

  • Letter |

    Radiative forcing over an '11-year' solar cycle is thought to be in phase with related influences on climate, but recent satellite data reveal a surprising spectral component in solar variability. These authors show that these spectral variations lead to decreases in ozone below 45 km and increases above. As a consequence, radiative forcing of surface climate is out of phase with solar activity, suggesting that a major revision of our current understanding of solar forcing of climate may be required.

    • Joanna D. Haigh
    • , Ann R. Winning
    •  & Jerald W. Harder

  • Letter |

    It has long been suspected that the development of hydrodynamical instabilities can compress or fragment a molecular cloud (in which stars are born). One key signature of an instability would be a wave-like structure in the gas, although this has not yet been seen. Now, the presence of 'waves' is reported at the surface of the Orion cloud, near where massive stars are forming. The waves probably arise as gas that is heated and ionized by massive stars is blown over pre-existing molecular gas.

    • Olivier Berné
    • , Núria Marcelino
    •  & José Cernicharo

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