First detailed images of ocean currents

The European satellite GOCE-Explorer Gravity field and Ocean Circulation, for its contraction in English, was able to obtain, for the first time, extremely detailed images of how water currents move around the planet. These images record the effect of gravity on the ocean currents, which allows scientists to determine the direction and speed of the same.

The data obtained by Goce used to improve climate models studying how the oceans move heat around the globe. In the new map you can clearly see the famous Gulf Stream, the most intense of all streams, in which the water passes rapidly, reaching even more than a meter per second, in some places.

An asteroid with us on our trip around the sun

Astronomers detected an asteroid which follows the orbit of the Earth around the sun. The rock-between 200 and 300 meters in diameter and 2010 TK7-christened it the Trojans, which are those that share an orbit with a planet near stable points. Because they remain in front of or behind the planets in the same orbit, never collide with them.

According to the science specialist for the BBC, Jonathan Amos, it is a fascinating finding because the relative stability and proximity of the Trojan asteroids makes them potential targets for future space missions, when they go beyond the International Space Station (EEI).

The telescopes of the world is ready for a giant asteroid

Has a diameter of more than four football fields or, as defined by NASA, is as big an aircraft carrier. This is a big one, in terms of space; pass close to Earth. YU55, as the space rock is called circular, not dangerous in any way, there is no risk of collision with the Earth as it is in the closest point (about 324,600 kilometers), its gravitational effect on the Earth will be so minuscule that can hardly be measured. But his interest in another aspect: its rarity.

NASA astronomers discovered the smallest planet

Astronomers discovered the smallest planet outside our solar system. This is the first that is certainly rocky like Earth. Measurements of extraordinary precision-called Kepler showed that 10b is 1.4 times the diameter of Earth and a mass 4.6 times greater than he. However, because it orbits very close to its star, the exoplanet could not support life. The discovery has been hailed as "one of the deepest in the history of mankind."

Why some planets orbit backwards?

Experts from Northwestern University in Illinois, USA, conduct a study that was published in the scientific journal Nature, and which required to find the reasons for this phenomenon that breaks with the standard theory of planet configuration. According to this theory, a planet must rotate in the same direction as their star, just like in our solar system. "It's very strange, and it is even rarer because the planet is very close to the star," said Frederic Rasio, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University.

Earth in the third dimension

The German satellite TanDEM-X was launch into orbit on a mission to map more accurate to be made available to the surface of the Earth. The satellite will fly radar technology with identical platform called TerraSAR-X launched in 2007. Both measured variations in the height of the globe with an accuracy of better than two meters.

Its digital elevation model will have many uses, from helping military jets fly ultra low height to show where rescue workers was worse the damage caused by an earthquake.

Significance makes Earth look like a potato

A satellite is record variations in Earth's significance gives us a different view of our planet from space looks like a potato. And yet, the information provided by this model is the sharpest view we have of how gravity varies across the Earth. The device was released by the team working on the European satellite GOCE.