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NASA RESEARCH ABOUT EARTH

Earth is a complex, dynamic system we do not yet fully understand. The Earth system, like the human body, comprises diverse components that interact in complex ways. We need to understand the Earth's atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere as a single connected system. Our planet is changing on all spatial and temporal scales. The purpose of NASA's Earth science program is to develop a scientific understanding of Earth's system and its response to natural or human-induced changes, and to improve prediction of climate, weather, and natural hazards. A major component of NASA’s Earth Science Division is a coordinated series of satellite and airborne missions for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, solid Earth, atmosphere, and oceans. This coordinated approach enables an improved understanding of the Earth as an integrated system. NASA is completing the development and launch of a set of Foundational missions, new Decadal Survey missions, and Climate Continuity missions. The Foundational missions are those missions in development at the time the decadal survey was published and include Aquarius, NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM). The Decadal Survey missions are those guided by the decadal survey produced by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and published in 2007. These missions include Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP), Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat-II), Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI), Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions Over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS), Surface Water and Topography (SWOT), Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE), and Aerosol-Clouds-Ecosystems (ACE). Earth Venture, also a recommendation of the decadal survey, consists of low cost, competed suborbital and orbital missions as well as instruments for Missions of Opportunity.The Climate Continuity missions include Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment – III (SAGE III), Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on (GRACE-FO), and Pre-Aerosol, Clouds, and Ocean Ecosystem (PACE). Over the coming decades, NASA and the Agency's research partners will continue to pioneer the use of both spaceborne and aircraft measurements to characterize, understand, and predict variability and trends in Earth's system for both research and applications. Earth is the only planet we know to be capable of sustaining life. It is our lifeboat in the vast expanse of space. Over the past 50 years, world population has doubled, grain yields have tripled and economic output has grown sevenfold. Earth science research can ascertain whether and how the Earth can sustain this growth in the future. Also, over a third of the US economy - $3 trillion annually - is influenced by climate, weather, and natural hazards, providing economic incentive to study the Earth. NASA Earth System Science conducts and sponsors research, collects new observations, develops technologies and extends science and technology education to learners of all ages. We work closely with our global partners in government, industry, and the public to enhance economic security, and environmental stewardship, benefiting society in many tangible ways. We conduct and sponsor research to answer fundamental science questions about the changes we see in climate, weather, and natural hazards, and deliver sound science that helps decision-makers make informed decisions. We inspire the next generation of explorers by providing opportunities for learners of all ages to investigate the Earth system using unique NASA resources, and our Earth System research is strengthening science, technology, engineering and mathematics education nationwide.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT Atmospheric Composition

Changes in atmospheric composition affect air quality, weather, climate, and critical constituents such as ozone and aerosols. Atmospheric composition is central to Earth system dynamics, since the atmosphere integrates surface emissions globally on time scales from weeks to years and involves several environmental issues. NASA’s research for furthering the understanding of atmospheric composition seeks to provide an improved prognostic capability for such issues. These issues include the recovery of stratospheric ozone and its effects on surface ultraviolet radiation, the evolution of greenhouse gases and their effects on climate, and the evolution of aerosols, clouds and tropospheric ozone and their effects on climate and air quality. NASA works to provide monitoring and evaluation tools to assess the effects of climate change on ozone recovery and future atmospheric composition, improved climate forecasts based on the understanding of the forcings of global environmental change, and air quality forecasts that take into account the relationship between regional air quality and global climate change. Achievements in these areas via advances in observations, data assimilation, and modeling enable improved predictive capabilities for describing how future changes in atmospheric composition affect ozone, climate, and air quality. Drawing on global observations from space, augmented by suborbital and ground-based measurements, NASA is well positioned to address these issues.

NASA RESEARCH QUESTION ABOUT Atmospheric Composition

Atmospheric Composition addresses the following questions: How is atmospheric composition changing? What trends in atmospheric composition and solar radiation influence global climate? How does atmospheric composition respond to and affect global environmental change? What are the effects of global atmospheric composition and climate changes on regional air quality? How will future changes in atmospheric composition affect ozone, climate, and global air quality?

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT Atmospheric Composition

The Upper Atmosphere Research Program (UARP) concentrates on observations to study processes that control ozone concentrations in the upper troposphere and stratosphere, and therefore surface ultraviolet radiation. The program funds numerous laboratory studies, ground-based network observations, and field campaigns that contribute to quantifying scientific understanding of ozone changes. These activities complement the observations from and data analysis using the NASA Aura EOS satellite as well as other satellites that observe the upper troposphere and stratosphere. Typical laboratory studies include kinetics studies of key reactions that either directly or indirectly destroy and create ozone or the precursors to ozone destroying compounds, as well as spectroscopic studies required to accurately monitor the key atmospheric constituents. Typical field studies include airborne in situ and remote sensing instrumentation for focused aircraft field campaigns, high altitude balloon remote sensing and in situ observations, and long term ground-based in situ and remote sensing programs (such as AGAGE and NDACC). The WMO/UNEP quadrennial assessments on ozone depletion, as mandated by the Montreal Protocol, rely heavily on many of these observations. The Tropospheric Chemistry Program (TCP) seeks to improve measurement-based understanding of global tropospheric ozone and aerosol, including their precursors and transformation processes in the atmosphere. Ozone and aerosol are fundamental to both air quality and climate. The program emphasizes suborbital and ground-based measurements acquired during focused field deployments. Along with the other Atmospheric Composition programs, TCP also sponsors interpretation of these comprehensive but infrequent measurements to improve the continuous monitoring of ozone and aerosols from space and the improvement of prognostic models. TCP also supports limited laboratory studies that are directly relevant to improved understanding of tropospheric chemistry. Additional information regarding airborne campaigns that TCP has supported is available at http://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/missions.htm. The Radiation Sciences Program (RSP) strives to develop a quantitative and predictive understanding of how aerosols, clouds, and radiatively active gases scatter and absorb radiation in the Earth’s atmosphere, especially as it relates to climate variability and change. The program supports studies to improve the theoretical understanding of radiative transfer as well as field measurements of aerosol and cloud particle concentration, composition, microphysics, and optical properties. These measurements include both airborne and surface-based remote and in situ measurements. The program also supports the analysis of satellite remote sensing and field data as well as the development of process models, which contribute to an Earth system modeling capability. The Atmospheric Composition Modeling and Analysis Program (ACMAP) supports studies of air quality and oxidation efficiency in the troposphere, how pollution-sourced aerosols affect cloud properties, stratospheric chemistry and ozone depletion, and interactions between atmospheric chemistry and the climate. Studies of long-term trends in atmospheric composition are also of interest, particularly if a governing process can be identified. The program is particularly interested in studies that integrate observations from multiple instruments with models to address attribution and predictions. Use of satellite and suborbital data sets and ground-based measurements are encouraged for modeling constraints and verification where applicable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nishantsingh990611 (talk • contribs) 15:34, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT WEATHER

The weather system includes the dynamics of the atmosphere and its interaction with the oceans and land. Weather includes those local or microphysical processes that occur in minutes through the global-scale phenomena that can be predicted with a degree of success at an estimated maximum of two weeks prior. The Weather theme is important to the NASA Earth Science for two reasons. First, the improvement of our understanding of weather processes and phenomena is crucial in gaining an understanding of the Earth system. It is directly related to the Climate and Water/Energy Cycle Themes. In both cases, the dynamics are to a large degree controlled by "weather processes." Second, there is an infrastructure in the U.S. for operational meteorology at NOAA, the FAA, the DoD, and others that requires the introduction of new technologies and knowledge that only NASA can develop. NASA has been a strong contributor to the National weather forecasting goals in the past, and will continue in the future, primarily through the development and use of data from space-based sensors. Satellite-based profiles of temperature and moisture have been routinely used in the operational system for more than two decades, and new NASA sensors hold promise for more accuracy and spatial resolution. A geostationary Lightning Mapper Sensor (LMS) will provide dramatic improvements in the operational use of sounding data for real-time diagnosing of severe storms. Recent developments in the assimilation of radar and passive microwave data from TRMM and the Advanced Infrared Sounder (AIRS) data from Aqua have been shown to improve weather forecasts. NASA has partnered with NOAA and DoD to develop a Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA). The mission of the JCSDA is to accelerate and improve the quantitative use of research and operational satellite data in weather, ocean, climate and environmental analysis and prediction models. In addition, the Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) center is transitioning the data from NASA research satellites to the NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs).

NASA WATER AND ENERGY CYCLE

The Water and Energy Cycle Focus Area studies the distribution, transport and transformation of water and energy within the Earth System. Since solar energy drives the water cycle and energy exchanges are modulated by the interaction of water with radiation, the energy cycle and the water cycle are intimately entwined. The long-term goal of this focus area is to enable improved predictions of the global water and energy cycles. This key goal requires not only documenting and predicting means and trends in the rate of the Earth's water and energy cycling as well as predicting changes in the frequency and intensity of related meteorological and hydrologic events such as floods and droughts. In the past decade NASA's water and energy research projects have yielded significant advances in our understanding of key Earth system science processes. For example, we have been able to improve rainfall quantification, as well as greatly improve hurricane prediction capability. However, many issues remain to be resolved. In the next decade this focus area will move us toward balancing the water budget at global and regional spatial scales, provide global observation capability of precipitation over the day's cycle and important land surface quantities such as soil moisture and snow quantity at mesoscale resolution. We are working on improving cloud-resolving models for use in climate models. We will gain knowledge of the major influences on variability in the water and energy cycles.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND CHANGE

NASA's role in characterizing, understanding and predicting climate variability and change is centered around providing the global scale observational data sets on the higher-inertia components of the climate system (oceans and ice), their forcings, and the interactions with the entire Earth system. Understanding these interactions goes beyond observations, but includes developing and maintaining a modeling capability that allows for the effective use, interpretation, and application of the data. The ultimate objective is to enable predictions of change in climate on time scales ranging from seasonal to multi-decadal. As we pioneer new satellite measurements to enable this capability, we work with our agency partners to transition our demonstrated observational capabilities to operational capabilities run by other agencies. Fueled by the important space-based perspective, we have learned much over the last several decades. Among the more recent discoveries have been that ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is shrinking, as has ice cover on land, as temperatures have warmed over the last two decades. In the Antarctic, such trends are not apparent, except for in a few select locations. Satellite altimetry has made a major contribution to being able to measure and monitor recent changes in global circulation and has contributed valuable insight into the net upward trend in sea level that may threaten coastal regions in the future. The climate system is dynamic, and modeling is the only way we can effectively integrate the current knowledge of the individual components. Through modeling studies we can estimate and project the future state of the climate system. However, we don't have the full understanding of the processes that contribute to the climate variability and change. The future work will be to eliminate model uncertainties through better understanding of the processes. NASA data and analyses will ultimately enable more accurate climate prediction, characterization of uncertainties, and the development of scenarios that are more likely to reflect the realities of the future. Many advances in such capabilities in the last few decades are a direct result of our investments in instrumentation and research. Such prediction capabilities are critical to effective management of resources.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT EARTH SURFACE AND INTERIOR

The Earth’s surface and its interior are fundamental components of the Earth system influence and react to the dynamics of our oceans and atmosphere. Therefore, an understanding the dynamics of the solid Earth is essential to developing an interconnected view of Earth science and its applications that ranges from natural hazards and climate change to fundamental physics. As basic research leads to prediction of solid earth processes, so is the need to adapt this research to real societal problem solving. Knowledge that improves human abilities to prepare and respond to disasters involving the dynamism of the Earth’s interior has an immediate benefit to saving lives and property. Earth Surface and Interior focus area (ESI) seeks to coordinate the efforts of the NASA’s Research and Analysis Program in Solid Earth with the Applied Sciences Disaster Management Program to provide a continuum of development from research to applications that will enable first responders, planners, and policy makers to improve decision tools through NASA science and technology.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT Heliophysics

We live in the extended atmosphere of an active star. While sunlight enables and sustains life, the Sun's variability produces streams of high energy particles and radiation that can harm life or alter its evolution. Under the protective shield of a magnetic field and atmosphere, the Earth is an island in the Universe where life has developed and flourished. The origins and fate of life on Earth are intimately connected to the way the Earth responds to the Sun's variations. Understanding the Sun, Heliosphere, and Planetary Environments as a single connected system is the goal of the Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Research Program. In addition to solar processes, our domain of study includes the interaction of solar plasma and radiation with Earth, the other planets, and the Galaxy. By analyzing the connections between the Sun, solar wind, planetary space environments, and our place in the Galaxy, we are uncovering the fundamental physical processes that occur throughout the Universe. Understanding the connections between the Sun and its planets will allow us to predict the impacts of solar variability on humans, technological systems, and even the presence of life itself. We have already discovered ways to peer into the internal workings of the Sun and understand how the Earth's magnetosphere responds to solar activity. Our challenge now is to explore the full system of complex interactions that characterize the relationship of the Sun with the solar system. Understanding these connections is especially critical as we contemplate our destiny in the third millennium. Heliophysics is needed to facilitate the accelerated expansion of human experience beyond the confines of our Earthly home. Recent advances in technology allow us, for the first time, to realistically contemplate voyages beyond the solar system.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT HELIOSPHERE

Plasmas and their embedded magnetic fields affect the formation, evolution and destiny of planets and planetary systems. The heliosphere shields the solar system from galactic cosmic radiation. Our habitable planet is shielded by its magnetic field, protecting it from solar and cosmic particle radiation and from erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind. Planets without a shielding magnetic field, such as Mars and Venus, are exposed to those processes and evolve differently. And on Earth, the magnetic field changes strength and configuration during its occasional polarity reversals, altering the shielding of the planet from external radiation sources. How important is a magnetosphere to the development and survivability of life? The solar wind, where it meets the local interstellar medium (LISM), forms boundaries that protect the planets from the galactic environment. The interstellar interaction depends on the raw pressure of the solar wind and the properties of the local interstellar medium (density, pressure, magnetic field, and bulk flow). These properties, particularly those of the LISM, change over the course of time, and change dramatically on long time scales (1,000 years and longer) as the solar system encounters interstellar clouds. How do these long-term changes affect the sustainability of life in our solar system? Understanding the nature of these variations and their consequences requires a series of investigations targeting the structure of the heliosphere and its boundaries and conditions in the LISM. Planetary systems form in disks of gas and dust around young stars. Stellar ultraviolet emission, winds, and energetic particles alter this process, both in the internal structure of the disk and its interaction with its parent star. The role of magnetic fields in the formation process has not been fully integrated with other parts of the process. The study of similar regions in our solar system, such as dusty plasmas surrounding Saturn and Jupiter, will help explain the role of plasma processes in determining the types of planets that can form, and how they later evolve.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT Magnetospheres

The study of the region of space near the Earth helps to determine changes in the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper atmosphere in order to enable specification, prediction, and mitigation of their effects. Heliophysics seeks to develop an understanding of the response of the near-Earth plasma regions to space weather. This complex, highly coupled system protects Earth from the worst solar disturbances while redistributing energy and mass throughout. A key element involves distinguishing between the responses to external and internal drivers, as well as the impact of ordinary reconfigurations of environmental conditions, such as might be encountered when Earth crosses a magnetic sector boundary in the solar wind. This near-Earth region harbors spacecraft for communication, navigation, and remote sensing needs; conditions there can adversely affect their operation. Ground based systems, such as the power distribution grid, can also be affected by ionospheric and upper atmospheric changes. Key near-term investigations emphasize understanding the nature of the electrodynamic coupling, how geospace responds to external and internal drivers, and how the coupled middle and upper atmosphere respond to external forcings and how they interact with each other. A magnetosphere is that area of space, around a planet, that is controlled by the planet's magnetic field. The shape of the Earth's magnetosphere is the direct result of being blasted by solar wind. It prevents most of the particles from the Sun, carried in the solar wind, from hitting the Earth. The Sun and other planets have magnetospheres, but the Earth has the strongest one of all the rocky planets. The Earth's magnetosphere is a highly dynamic structure that responds dramatically to solar variations. Life on Earth developed and is sustained under the protection of this variable magnetosphere.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT SPACE ENVIRONMENT

The observation of the Sun and various phenomena which we see on its surface, and which moves through interplanetary space, helps us understand the causes and subsequent evolution of solar activity that affects Earth's space climate and environment. The climate and space environment of Earth are significantly determined by the impact of plasma, particle, and radiative outputs from the Sun. Therefore, it is essential to understand the Sun, determine how predictable solar activity truly is, and develop the capability to forecast solar activity and the evolution of disturbances as they propagate to Earth. Our star's output varies on many time scales: from explosive reconnection and convective turnover, to the 27-day solar rotation, to the 22-year solar magnetic cycle, and to even longer, irregular fluctuations, such as the 17th-century Maunder minimum. The variability is linked to the emergence of magnetic field from below the photosphere, its transport and destruction on the solar surface, and the eruption into the heliosphere of energy stored in the solar atmosphere as flares, shocks, and coronal mass ejections. Longer-term changes that can affect Earth's climate include solar total and spectral irradiance. Like terrestrial weather, it is not yet clear how long in advance solar activity is predictable. Continuous observations of the solar vector magnetic field and high-resolution observations of the atmosphere will be as critical for resolving this question as helioseismology will be for revealing the subsurface conditions. Sunspots and their associated magnetic fields follow an 11-year activity cycle. This composite image shows ten magnetic maps of the Sun observed approximately one year apart, from one maximum of activity almost to the next. As activity fades, the large regions disappear and only small ones generated near the surface continue to emerge, creating a salt-and-pepper pattern of ephemeral magnetic regions that persists through time. As the next cycle of activity picks up, the magnetic polarities of the active regions that emerge from deep inside the Sun are reversed. This means that although the sunspot number and the coronal activity have an eleven-year cycle, the full magnetic cycle is actually twenty-two years.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT PLANETS

NASA is at the leading edge of a journey of scientific discovery that promises to reveal new knowledge of our Solar System’s content, origin, evolution and the potential for life elsewhere. NASA Planetary Science is engaged in one of the oldest of scientific pursuits: the observation and discovery of our solar system’s planetary objects. With an exploration strategy based on progressing from flybys, to orbiting, to landing, to roving and finally to returning samples from planetary bodies, NASA advances the scientific understanding of the solar system in extraordinary ways, while pushing the limits of spacecraft and robotic engineering design and operations. Since the 1960s, NASA has broadened its reach with increasingly sophisticated missions launched to a host of nearby planets, moons, comets and asteroids. NASA Planetary Science continues to expand our knowledge of the solar system, with spacecraft in place from the innermost planet of our Solar System to the very edge of our Sun's influence. In 2010 the EPOXI spacecraft encountered Comet Hartley 2, returning the first images clear enough for scientists to link jets of dust and gas with specific surface cometary features. In early 2011, the Stardust-NExTmission provided the planetary science community with a first-time opportunity to compare observations of a single comet (Temple 1) made at close range during two successive passages. When the Stardust spacecraft was retired in March 2011, it had travelled over 3.5 billion miles in our solar system. In another first, in March of 2011 NASA Planetary Science inserted the spacecraft MESSENGERinto orbit around our solar system’s innermost planet, Mercury, providing unprecedented images of that planet’s topography and improved understanding of its core and magnetic field. Also in this unprecedented productive year of planetary exploration, the spacecraft Dawn was inserted into orbit around the asteroid Vesta in July 2011, the Juno spacecraft was launched in August 2011 on a mission to Jupiter to map the depths of Jupiter’s interior to answer questions about how the gas giant was formed; the two GRAIL spacecraft were launched to the moon in September 2011, and the Mars Science Laboratory was launched in November 2011, on its voyage to Mars with Curiosity, the largest planetary rover ever designed, destined for the surface of Mars to continue the work begun by Spirit and Opportunity. And at the outer reaches of our solar system, New Horizonscontinues on its way to study Pluto and into the Kuiper Belt, birthplace of comets. With the release of the Planetary Science Decadal Surveyin March 2011, NASA’s planetary scientists and engineers are preparing missions to every corner of the Solar System to seek out the discoveries needed to push the boundaries of planetary science further than ever before. Our Solar System is a place of beauty and mystery, incredible diversity, extreme environments, and continuous change. Our Solar System is also a natural laboratory, on a grand scale, within which we seek to unravel the mysteries of the universe and our place within it.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT INNER SOLAR SYSTEM

Planetary Science missions, past, current, in planning or in development, extend mankind’s presence to the solar system’s inner rocky worlds, helping to unlock the secrets of the solar systems’ composition, history and evolution, and how life established itself on Earth. Mercury is the least explored terrestrial or “rocky” planet in our solar system. Previously NASA’s only encounters with the innermost planet were the three flybys performed in 1974 and 1975 by the Mariner 10 mission that mapped 45 percent of the planet’s surface. In January 2008, the MESSENGER spacecraft flew by Mercury for its first of three fly-bys. As it begins to reveal the planet’s composition and history, it will in turn,  help scientists understand more about our home planet and its place in the inner solar system. Venus has often been described as Earth’s sister planet since the two are very similar in size and bulk composition, although they evolved to very different ends. Venus is not currently targeted by any NASA missions although future mission concepts include the Venus In Situ Explorer (VISE) and Venus Mobile Explorer (VME) that would investigate the surface of Venus and help understand the climate change processes that led to the extreme conditions of Venus today. A Venus Surface Sample Return (VSSR) mission is also being considered. These missions remain long-range goals for Venus exploration. Earth’s Moon has a special place among the objects of the solar system, as it is the only body other than Earth where humans have journeyed to and where humans will return relatively soon. NASA is sending robotic missions to the moon to prepare for mans’ prolonged habitation on the lunar surface which ultimately will help man reach for Mars and attain the goals set forth in the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). Studying the Moon and its history provides insight on the formation history of the Earth-Moon system and events that shaped the inner solar system. Mars is a highly attractive object of study: not only does it provide an excellent laboratory for studying planetary evolution in the context of the Earth and Venus, but it is the most compelling target in the solar system to search for life’s existence beyond Earth. Additionally, Mars is an eventual goal of the Vision for Space Exploration’s human spaceflight program. Finally, Mars is relatively easily accessed with launch opportunities occurring approximately every 2 years. For these reasons, the Mars Exploration Program is a fully integrated program, designed to maximize the scientific return, technology infusion, and public engagement of the robotic exploration of the Red Planet. Each strategic mission of the program has both technological and scientific linkages to previous missions and orbiters, and landers support each other’s operations.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM

NASA’s Planetary Science missions to the outer planets help reveal secrets about the solar system by observing those outer distant worlds up close. Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus are now thought to hide liquid water beneath their frozen surfaces and are high priority targets for NASA. Unlocking their secrets and those of the outer planets will help scientists understand more about planet Earth and the formation and evolution of the solar system. Jupiter has more mass than all other planets in the solar system combined. It helps protect Earth by steering comets either towards the sun or ejecting them to the outer reaches of the solar system or beyond. Jupiter has dozens of moons orbiting it, one of which, Europa, is thought to have a sub-surface liquid salt water ocean. It therefore may possibly harbor life as heat and water, the two ingredients required for life on Earth as we know it, are seemingly present below the moon’s surface. Saturn has intrigued man for centuries, especially since the invention of the telescope when the Saturn’s grand rings were observed for the first time. Much like Jupiter, Saturn has many dozens of moons, one of which, Enceladus, could provide a foot-hold for life to form. Observations by the Cassini spacecraft revealed Enceladus’ to have tenuous geyser and therefore heated liquid must be lurking below the surface. Water and energy are essential to all forms of life on Earth and these two constituents are what scientists treasure most in the search for life beyond our planet. Uranus - Over the 2006–2016 time frame, there are no strategic missions planned to Uranus and only one spacecraft, the extremely productive Voyager II, has ever visited the distant planet. Ultimately, deep-entry probes into Uranus will be necessary in order to understand its composition and compare it to that of the other “water giant,” Neptune. Neptune poses a number of important questions regarding how giant planets form and what truncates the formation of multiple giant planets in a planetary system. Residing on the edge of our planetary system, Neptune may hold, deep in its interior, chemical clues concerning the nature of the rocky and icy debris that formed the giant planets. A comprehensive study of Neptune, and its moon Triton, is considered a priority for the third decade by the Solar System Exploration roadmap team. Pluto was redefined in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as a “dwarf Planet.” Throughout the scientific community there is still much debate about this definition and many organizations have yet to weigh in. Pluto shares a region of its orbit with a collection of similar icy bodies called Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO’s). The Kuiper Belt is believed to represent the best available record of the original interstellar materials that formed the solar nebula. This region is also the birthplace of the short-period comets. Pluto’s orbit also crosses inside that of Neptune’s which renders Pluto a member of the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) class. Pluto’s moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978, but more recently in 2005, two moonlets, Nix and Hydra were revealed in telescopic surveys. The Pluto System is unique and the New Horizons mission will be the first spacecraft to glimpse these distant icy bodies when it encounters the system in 2015.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT SMALL BODIES OF SOLAR SYSTEM

The small bodies in the solar system include comets, asteroids, the objects in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud, small planetary satellites, Triton, Pluto, Charon, and interplanetary dust. As some of these objects are believed to be minimally altered from their state in the young solar nebula from which the planets formed, they may provide insight into planet Earth and the formation and evolution of the solar system. The Oort Cloud is a spherical shell of millions of icy bodies which surrounds the solar system at vast distances and is thought to be the birth place of long-period comets. The Kuiper Belt is a region extending from Neptune’s orbit out to the far and distant reaches of the solar system and possibly holds the best available record of the original interstellar materials that formed the solar nebula. This region beyond Neptune is also the most probable birthplace of the short-period comets. Comets are pristine remnants from the formation of the solar system that are comprised of minerals, rock and mostly ice, much like a dirty snowball. They travel around the sun in elliptical orbits and can be inclined to the plane of the solar system at any angle. Comets can sprout tails extending many tens of millions of miles, during their closest approach to the sun. Short period comets are thought to come from the Kuiper Belt on the outskirts of Neptune’s orbit and further, and longer period comets are thought to come from the Oort cloud, a vast spherical shell that surrounds the solar system at a huge distance. Recent spacecraft encounters with comets seem to raise more questions then they answer and some finds are quite unexpected. NASA targets some of these bodies with spacecraft loaded with instrumentation that help tease out the secrets lurking in these icy bodies. Pluto resides in the Kuiper Belt. With an orbit inclined to the plane of the solar system, Pluto most likely evolved away from the sun’s flattened disk where the larger bodies (or planets) formed. Pluto’s orbit crosses inside that of Neptune’s rendering Pluto also a member of the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) class. The Pluto system is very exotic, having three moons including Charon discovered in 1978, and Nix and Hydra discovered in 2005. Asteroids are rocky remnants from the formation of the solar system. They are not spherical and have differing compositions and histories. Most, although not all asteroids, reside in a region between Mars and Jupiter where numerous other small rocky worlds orbit the sun. Some asteroids belong to groups that came from larger parent bodies which were shattered in past collisions with other asteroids. Some are in orbits that cross paths with that of Earth’s or other planets. Asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit are called Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA) and the more we observe the heavens, the more of them we find, some of which are seen for the first time just after passing close to Earth.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT PLANETS AROUND OTHER STAR

What are exoplanets? Throughout recorded history and perhaps before, we have wondered about the possible existence of other worlds, like or unlike our own. The earliest understanding of the solar system showed us that there were indeed other worlds in orbit about our Sun, and steadily growing understanding of their natures shows that all are dramatically different from Earth, and mostly very different from one another. As we came to understand that the stars in the sky are other suns, and that the galaxies consist of billions of stars, it appeared a near certainty that other planets must orbit other stars. And yet, it could not be proven, until the early 1990’s. Then, radio and optical astronomers detected small changes in stellar emission which revealed the presence of first a few, and now many, planetary systems around other stars. We call these planets “exoplanets” to distinguish them from our own solar system neighbors. How we know that there are planets around other stars? Most of the detected exoplanets have revealed their presence by small effects that they have on their star. As planet follows its orbital path, the star follows a complementary motion of its own. This is a tiny effect proportional to the planet/star mass ratio – in the case of the solar system, the Sun moves in synch with the Earth at the speed of a slow dance – currently too slow to readily detect in a distant system. The motion of the Sun in synch with Jupiter, however, is closer to a fast run – and in favorable cases it can be detected by several methods. The motion of the host star can be measured as a shift in its spectrum (the Doppler shift) or as a change in its position on the sky (astrometry). In both cases these are very challenging measurements and require exquisitely sensitive instruments. Exoplanet orbits presumably have random orientations, and in some cases the orbit carries the planet between us and its star. Then the exoplanet might be detected by the decrease in the light from the star. Such transits have been observed, and a number of planets discovered by this method.

Another effect that can reveal the presence of a planet around another star is the bending of light from background stars by the gravitational field of an intervening star. If the intervening star has an orbiting planet it may alter the gravitational lensing effect in a noticeable way (microlensing). The large majority of the several hundred known extrasolar planets have been discovered by the Doppler technique, and other methods are contributing more significantly as they are refined and the number of detected exoplanets continues to increase steadily. What do we know about our exoplanet neighbors? Although the details are not entirely understood, it is known that stars like the Sun form from spinning protostellar disks of gas and dust. The Earth and other planets of the solar system are believed to have developed from the remains of that disk, and there is no reason to believe that the same process would not be effective throughout the galaxy. Thus a first guess might be that other planetary systems would be like the solar system. However, the first detections of exoplanets revealed bodies which are utterly unlike any solar system planet – and subsequent discoveries have shown that many exoplanet systems are very dissimilar from ours. In some exosystems, planets as massive as Jupiter orbit so close to their star that they are heated to high temperature and their upper atmospheres are swept into space. In other systems, planets follow elongated orbits (in contrast to the nearly circular orbits of the solar system). However, our studies of exoplanets are just beginning, and it is not possible to be sure what will prove to be “typical” planets among our neighboring stars. Will most planet systems prove to be much like our own, or are we exceptional in more ways than we can imagine? Only years of further study will tell.

Evidence is accumulating that exoplanet systems which resemble the solar system are being found. The star 55 Cancri, 41 light years away, has a system of 5 planets, with distributions somewhat similar to the solar systems inner planets (though with much higher masses). As our measurements become sensitive to lower masses, some astronomers believe that we will find many such systems with a substantial complement of planets (perhaps even dynamically full – that is, containing as many planets as can coexist in orbital harmony).

In other reports, a number of planets with masses near that of Earth have been detected. The results are few, but because the measurements are very difficult, the detections are considered significant and possibly indicative of many more to be found in the future. Again, only years of study will tell. What do we want to learn about exoplanets? A thorough understanding of exoplanets will tell us much about how our solar system formed, why it has small, rocky planets near the Sun, why it has gas giant planets far from the Sun, why the Earth has the conditions and chemicals that can support life, and why conditions on other planets are hostile to life. Theories of planet formation and evolution are incomplete, but offer specific predictions. Detections of exoplanets are already testing, validating, and in some cases invalidating, details of these theories. Perhaps the most interesting question, and one of the most difficult to answer, concerns the uniqueness of the Earth. Are there planets similar to the Earth around other stars and does life exist on any other planet beyond our own Earth?

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT THE BIG BANG

The night sky presents the viewer with a picture of a calm and unchanging Universe. So the 1929 discovery by Edwin Hubble that the Universe is in fact expanding at enormous speed was revolutionary. Hubble noted that galaxies outside our own Milky Way were all moving away from us, each at a speed proportional to its distance from us. He quickly realized what this meant that there must have been an instant in time (now known to be about 14 billion years ago) when the entire Universe was contained in a single point in space. The Universe must have been born in this single violent event which came to be known as the "Big Bang." Astronomers combine mathematical models with observations to develop workable theories of how the Universe came to be. The mathematical underpinnings of the Big Bang theory include Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity along with standard theories of fundamental particles. Today NASA spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope continue Edwin Hubble's work of measuring the expansion of the Universe. One of the goals has long been to decide whether the Universe will expand forever, or whether it will someday stop, turn around, and collapse in a "Big Crunch?" Background Radiation According to the theories of physics, if we were to look at the Universe one second after the Big Bang, what we would see is a 10-billion degree sea of neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons (positrons), photons, and neutrinos. Then, as time went on, we would see the Universe cool, the neutrons either decaying into protons and electrons or combining with protons to make deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen). As it continued to cool, it would eventually reach the temperature where electrons combined with nuclei to form neutral atoms. Before this "recombination" occurred, the Universe would have been opaque because the free electrons would have caused light (photons) to scatter the way sunlight scatters from the water droplets in clouds. But when the free electrons were absorbed to form neutral atoms, the Universe suddenly became transparent. Those same photons - the afterglow of the Big Bang known as cosmic background radiation - can be observed today. Missions Study Cosmic Background Radiation NASA has launched two missions to study the cosmic background radiation, taking "baby pictures" of the Universe only 400,000 years after it was born. The first of these was the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). In 1992, the COBE team announced that they had mapped the primordial hot and cold spots in cosmic background radiation. These spots are related to the gravitational field in the early Universe and form the seeds of the giant clusters of galaxies that stretch hundreds of millions of light years across the Universe. This work earned NASA's Dr. John C. Mather and George F. Smoot of the University of California the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics. The second mission to examine the cosmic background radiation was the Wilkinson Microware Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). With greatly improved resolution compared to COBE, WMAP surveyed the entire sky, measuring temperature differences of the microwave radiation that is nearly uniformly distributed across the Universe. The picture shows a map of the sky, with hot regions in red and cooler regions in blue. By combining this evidence with theoretical models of the Universe, scientists have concluded that the Universe is "flat," meaning that, on cosmological scales, the geometry of space satisfies the rules of Euclidean geometry (e.g., parallel lines never meet, the ratio of circle circumference to diameter is pi, etc). A third mission, Planck, led by the European Space Agency with significant participation from NASA, was. launched in 2009. Planck is making the most accurate maps of the microwave background radiation yet. With instruments sensitive to temperature variations of a few millionths of a degree, and mapping the full sky over 9 wavelength bands, it measures the fluctuations of the temperature of the CMB with an accuracy set by fundamental astrophysical limits. One problem that arose from the original COBE results, and that persists with the higher-resolution WMAP data, was that the Universe was too homogeneous. How could pieces of the Universe that had never been in contact with each other have come to equilibrium at the very same temperature? This and other cosmological problems could be solved, however, if there had been a very short period immediately after the Big Bang where the Universe experienced an incredible burst of expansion called "inflation." For this inflation to have taken place, the Universe at the time of the Big Bang must have been filled with an unstable form of energy whose nature is not yet known. Whatever its nature, the inflationary model predicts that this primordial energy would have been unevenly distributed in space due to a kind of quantum noise that arose when the Universe was extremely small. This pattern would have been transferred to the matter of the Universe and would show up in the photons that began streaming away freely at the moment of recombination. As a result, we would expect to see, and do see, this kind of pattern in the COBE and WMAP pictures of the Universe. But all this leaves unanswered the question of what powered inflation. One difficulty in answering this question is that inflation was over well before recombination, and so the opacity of the Universe before recombination is, in effect, a curtain drawn over those interesting very early events. Fortunately, there is a way to observe the Universe that does not involve photons at all. Gravitational waves, the only known form of information that can reach us undistorted from the instant of the Big Bang, can carry information that we can get no other way. Two missions that are being considered by NASA, LISA and the Big Bang Observer, will look for the gravitational waves from the epoch of inflation. Dark Energy During the years following Hubble and COBE, the picture of the Big Bang gradually became clearer. But in 1996, observations of very distant supernovae required a dramatic change in the picture. It had always been assumed that the matter of the Universe would slow its rate of expansion. Mass creates gravity, gravity creates pull, the pulling must slow the expansion. But supernovae observations showed that the expansion of the Universe, rather than slowing, is accelerating. Something, not like matter and not like ordinary energy, is pushing the galaxies apart. This "stuff" has been dubbed dark energy, but to give it a name is not to understand it. Whether dark energy is a type of dynamical fluid, heretofore unknown to physics, or whether it is a property of the vacuum of empty space, or whether it is some modification to general relativity is not yet known.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT DARK ENERGY,DARK MATTER

In the early 1990's, one thing was fairly certain about the expansion of the Universe. It might have enough energy density to stop its expansion and re-collapse, it might have so little energy density that it would never stop expanding, but gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time went on. Granted, the slowing had not been observed, but, theoretically, the Universe had to slow. The Universe is full of matter and the attractive force of gravity pulls all matter together. Then came 1998 and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of very distant supernovae that showed that, a long time ago, the Universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. So the expansion of the Universe has not been slowing due to gravity, as everyone thought, it has been accelerating. No one expected this, no one knew how to explain it. But something was causing it. Eventually theorists came up with three sorts of explanations. Maybe it was a result of a long-discarded version of Einstein's theory of gravity, one that contained what was called a "cosmological constant." Maybe there was some strange kind of energy-fluid that filled space. Maybe there is something wrong with Einstein's theory of gravity and a new theory could include some kind of field that creates this cosmic acceleration. Theorists still don't know what the correct explanation is, but they have given the solution a name. It is called dark energy. What Is Dark Energy? More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be called "normal" matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe. One explanation for dark energy is that it is a property of space. Albert Einstein was the first person to realize that empty space is not nothing. Space has amazing properties, many of which are just beginning to be understood. The first property that Einstein discovered is that it is possible for more space to come into existence. Then one version of Einstein's gravity theory, the version that contains a cosmological constant, makes a second prediction: "empty space" can possess its own energy. Because this energy is a property of space itself, it would not be diluted as space expands. As more space comes into existence, more of this energy-of-space would appear. As a result, this form of energy would cause the Universe to expand faster and faster. Unfortunately, no one understands why the cosmological constant should even be there, much less why it would have exactly the right value to cause the observed acceleration of the Universe. Another explanation for how space acquires energy comes from the quantum theory of matter. In this theory, "empty space" is actually full of temporary ("virtual") particles that continually form and then disappear. But when physicists tried to calculate how much energy this would give empty space, the answer came out wrong - wrong by a lot. The number came out 10120 times too big. That's a 1 with 120 zeros after it. It's hard to get an answer that bad. So the mystery continues. Another explanation for dark energy is that it is a new kind of dynamical energy fluid or field, something that fills all of space but something whose effect on the expansion of the Universe is the opposite of that of matter and normal energy. Some theorists have named this "quintessence," after the fifth element of the Greek philosophers. But, if quintessence is the answer, we still don't know what it is like, what it interacts with, or why it exists. So the mystery continues. A last possibility is that Einstein's theory of gravity is not correct. That would not only affect the expansion of the Universe, but it would also affect the way that normal matter in galaxies and clusters of galaxies behaved. This fact would provide a way to decide if the solution to the dark energy problem is a new gravity theory or not: we could observe how galaxies come together in clusters. But if it does turn out that a new theory of gravity is needed, what kind of theory would it be? How could it correctly describe the motion of the bodies in the Solar System, as Einstein's theory is known to do, and still give us the different prediction for the Universe that we need? There are candidate theories, but none are compelling. So the mystery continues. The thing that is needed to decide between dark energy possibilities - a property of space, a new dynamic fluid, or a new theory of gravity - is more data, better data. What Is Dark Matter? By fitting a theoretical model of the composition of the Universe to the combined set of cosmological observations, scientists have come up with the composition that we described above, ~68% dark energy, ~27% dark matter, ~5% normal matter. What is dark matter? We are much more certain what dark matter is not than we are what it is. First, it is dark, meaning that it is not in the form of stars and planets that we see. Observations show that there is far too little visible matter in the Universe to make up the 27% required by the observations. Second, it is not in the form of dark clouds of normal matter, matter made up of particles called baryons. We know this because we would be able to detect baryonic clouds by their absorption of radiation passing through them. Third, dark matter is not antimatter, because we do not see the unique gamma rays that are produced when antimatter annihilates with matter. Finally, we can rule out large galaxy-sized black holes on the basis of how many gravitational lenses we see. High concentrations of matter bend light passing near them from objects further away, but we do not see enough lensing events to suggest that such objects to make up the required 25% dark matter contribution. However, at this point, there are still a few dark matter possibilities that are viable. Baryonic matter could still make up the dark matter if it were all tied up in brown dwarfs or in small, dense chunks of heavy elements. These possibilities are known as massive compact halo objects, or "MACHOs". But the most common view is that dark matter is not baryonic at all, but that it is made up of other, more exotic particles like axions or WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles).

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT STARS

Stars are the most widely recognized astronomical objects, and represent the most fundamental building blocks of galaxies. The age, distribution, and composition of the stars in a galaxy trace the history, dynamics, and evolution of that galaxy. Moreover, stars are responsible for the manufacture and distribution of heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and their characteristics are intimately tied to the characteristics of the planetary systems that may coalesce about them. Consequently, the study of the birth, life, and death of stars is central to the field of astronomy. Star Formation Stars are born within the clouds of dust and scattered throughout most galaxies. A familiar example of such as a dust cloud is the Orion Nebula, revealed in vivid detail in the adjacent image, which combines images at visible and infrared wavelengths measured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope. Turbulence deep within these clouds gives rise to knots with sufficient mass that the gas and dust can begin to collapse under its own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses, the material at the center begins to heat up. Known as a protostar, it is this hot core at the heart of the collapsing cloud that will one day become a star. Three-dimensional computer models of star formation predict that the spinning clouds of collapsing gas and dust may break up into two or three blobs; this would explain why the majority the stars in the Milky Way are paired or in groups of multiple stars. As the cloud collapses, a dense, hot core forms and begins gathering dust and gas. Not all of this material ends up as part of a star — the remaining dust can become planets, asteroids, or comets or may remain as dust. In some cases, the cloud may not collapse at a steady pace. In January 2004, an amateur astronomer, James McNeil, discovered a small nebula that appeared unexpectedly near the nebula Messier 78, in the constellation of Orion. When observers around the world pointed their instruments at McNeil's Nebula, they found something interesting — its brightness appears to vary. Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory provided a likely explanation: the interaction between the young star's magnetic field and the surrounding gas causes episodic increases in brightness. Main Sequence Stars A star the size of our Sun requires about 50 million years to mature from the beginning of the collapse to adulthood. Our Sun will stay in this mature phase (on the main sequence as shown in the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram) for approximately 10 billion years. Stars are fueled by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to form helium deep in their interiors. The outflow of energy from the central regions of the star provides the pressure necessary to keep the star from collapsing under its own weight, and the energy by which it shines. As shown in the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, Main Sequence stars span a wide range of luminosities and colors, and can be classified according to those characteristics. The smallest stars, known as red dwarfs, may contain as little as 10% the mass of the Sun and emit only 0.01% as much energy, glowing feebly at temperatures between 3000-4000K. Despite their diminutive nature, red dwarfs are by far the most numerous stars in the Universe and have lifespans of tens of billions of years. On the other hand, the most massive stars, known as hypergiants, may be 100 or more times more massive than the Sun, and have surface temperatures of more than 30,000 K. Hypergiants emit hundreds of thousands of times more energy than the Sun, but have lifetimes of only a few million years. Although extreme stars such as these are believed to have been common in the early Universe, today they are extremely rare - the entire Milky Way galaxy contains only a handful of hypergiants. Stars and Their Fates In general, the larger a star, the shorter its life, although all but the most massive stars live for billions of years. When a star has fused all the hydrogen in its core, nuclear reactions cease. Deprived of the energy production needed to support it, the core begins to collapse into itself and becomes much hotter. Hydrogen is still available outside the core, so hydrogen fusion continues in a shell surrounding the core. The increasingly hot core also pushes the outer layers of the star outward, causing them to expand and cool, transforming the star into a red giant. If the star is sufficiently massive, the collapsing core may become hot enough to support more exotic nuclear reactions that consume helium and produce a variety of heavier elements up to iron. However, such reactions offer only a temporary reprieve. Gradually, the star's internal nuclear fires become increasingly unstable - sometimes burning furiously, other times dying down. These variations cause the star to pulsate and throw off its outer layers, enshrouding itself in a cocoon of gas and dust. What happens next depends on the size of the core. Average Stars Become White Dwarfs For average stars like the Sun, the process of ejecting its outer layers continues until the stellar core is exposed. This dead, but still ferociously hot stellar cinder is called a a White Dwarf. White dwarfs, which are roughly the size of our Earth despite containing the mass of a star, once puzzled astronomers - why didn't they collapse further? What force supported the mass of the core? Quantum mechanics provided the explanation. Pressure from fast moving electrons keeps these stars from collapsing. The more massive the core, the denser the white dwarf that is formed. Thus, the smaller a white dwarf is in diameter, the larger it is in mass! These paradoxical stars are very common - our own Sun will be a white dwarf billions of years from now. White dwarfs are intrinsically very faint because they are so small and, lacking a source of energy production, they fade into oblivion as they gradually cool down.

This fate awaits only those stars with a mass up to about 1.4 times the mass of our Sun. Above that mass, electron pressure cannot support the core against further collapse. Such stars suffer a different fate as described below. Hubble view of an expanding halo of light around star V838 Monocerotis	White Dwarfs May Become Novae If a white dwarf forms in a binary or multiple star system, it may experience a more eventful demise as a nova. Nova is Latin for "new" - novae were once thought to be new stars. Today, we understand that they are in fact, very old stars - white dwarfs. If a white dwarf is close enough to a companion star, its gravity may drag matter - mostly hydrogen - from the outer layers of that star onto itself, building up its surface layer. When enough hydrogen has accumulated on the surface, a burst of nuclear fusion occurs, causing the white dwarf to brighten substantially and expel the remaining material. Within a few days, the glow subsides and the cycle starts again. Sometimes, particularly massive white dwarfs (those near the 1.4 solar mass limit mentioned above) may accrete so much mass in the manner that they collapse and explode completely, becoming what is known as a supernova. Hubble Space Telescope image of supernova remnant N 63A	Supernovae Leave Behind Neutron Stars or Black Holes Main sequence stars over eight solar masses are destined to die in a titanic explosion called a supernova. A supernova is not merely a bigger nova. In a nova, only the star's surface explodes. In a supernova, the star's core collapses and then explodes. In massive stars, a complex series of nuclear reactions leads to the production of iron in the core. Having achieved iron, the star has wrung all the energy it can out of nuclear fusion - fusion reactions that form elements heavier than iron actually consume energy rather than produce it. The star no longer has any way to support its own mass, and the iron core collapses. In just a matter of seconds the core shrinks from roughly 5000 miles across to just a dozen, and the temperature spikes 100 billion degrees or more. The outer layers of the star initially begin to collapse along with the core, but rebound with the enormous release of energy and are thrown violently outward. Supernovae release an almost unimaginable amount of energy. For a period of days to weeks, a supernova may outshine an entire galaxy. Likewise, all the naturally occurring elements and a rich array of subatomic particles are produced in these explosions. On average, a supernova explosion occurs about once every hundred years in the typical galaxy. About 25 to 50 supernovae are discovered each year in other galaxies, but most are too far away to be seen without a telescope. Still of swirling flow of gas from Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer	Neutron Stars If the collapsing stellar core at the center of a supernova contains between about 1.4 and 3 solar masses, the collapse continues until electrons and protons combine to form neutrons, producing a neutron star. Neutron stars are incredibly dense - similar to the density of an atomic nucleus. Because it contains so much mass packed into such a small volume, the gravitation at the surface of a neutron star is immense. Like the White Dwarf stars above, if a neutron star forms in a multiple star system it can accrete gas by stripping it off any nearby companions. The Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer has captured telltale X-Ray emissions of gas swirling just a few miles from the surface of a neutron star.

Neutron stars also have powerful magnetic fields which can accelerate atomic particles around its magnetic poles producing powerful beams of radiation. Those beams sweep around like massive searchlight beams as the star rotates. If such a beam is oriented so that it periodically points toward the Earth, we observe it as regular pulses of radiation that occur whenever the magnetic pole sweeps past the line of sight. In this case, the neutron star is known as a pulsar. Chandra image of the supermassive black hole at our Galaxy's center, a.k.a. Sagittarius A	Black Holes If the collapsed stellar core is larger than three solar masses, it collapses completely to form a black hole: an infinitely dense object whose gravity is so strong that nothing can escape its immediate proximity, not even light. Since photons are what our instruments are designed to see, black holes can only be detected indirectly. Indirect observations are possible because the gravitational field of a black hole is so powerful that any nearby material - often the outer layers of a companion star - is caught up and dragged in. As matter spirals into a black hole, it forms a disk that is heated to enormous temperatures, emitting copious quantities of X-rays and Gamma-rays that indicate the presence of the underlying hidden companion. False color picture of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A	From the Remains, New Stars Arise The dust and debris left behind by novae and supernovae eventually blend with the surrounding interstellar gas and dust, enriching it with the heavy elements and chemical compounds produced during stellar death. Eventually, those materials are recycled, providing the building blocks for a new generation of stars and accompanying planetary systems.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT GALAXIES

axy, the Milky Way, is typical: it has hundreds of billions of stars, enough gas and dust to make billions more stars, and at least ten times as much dark matter as all the stars and gas put together. And it’s all held together by gravity. Like more than two-thirds of the known galaxies, the Milky Way has a spiral shape. At the center of the spiral, a lot of energy and, occasionally, vivid flares. are being generated. Based on the immense gravity that would be required explain the movement of stars and the energy expelled, the astronomers conclude that the center of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole. Other galaxies have elliptical shapes, and a few have unusual shapes like toothpicks or rings. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) shows this diversity. Hubble observed a tiny patch of sky (one-tenth the diameter of the moon) for one million seconds (11.6 days) and found approximately 10,000 galaxies, of all sizes, shapes, and colors. From the ground, we see very little in this spot, which is in the constellation Fornax. Formation After the Big Bang, the Universe was composed of radiation and subatomic particles. What happened next is up for debate - did small particles slowly team up and gradually form stars, star clusters, and eventually galaxies? Or did the Universe first organize as immense clumps of matter that later subdivided into galaxies? Collisions The shapes of galaxies are influenced by their neighbors, and, often, galaxies collide. The Milky Way is itself on a collision course with our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. Even though it is the same age as the Milky Way, Hubble observations reveal that the stars in Andromeda's halo are much younger than those in the Milky Way. From this and other evidence, astronomers infer that Andromeda has already smashed into at least one and maybe several other galaxies.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT BLACK HOLES

Don't let the name fool you: a black hole is anything but empty space. Rather, it is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area - think of a star ten times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City. The result is a gravitational field so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. In recent years, NASA instruments have painted a new picture of these strange objects that are, to many, the most fascinating objects in space. Although the term was not coined until 1967 by Princeton physicist John Wheeler, the idea of an object in space so massive and dense that light could not escape it has been around for centuries. Most famously, black holes were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which showed that when a massive star dies, it leaves behind a small, dense remnant core. If the core's mass is more than about three times the mass of the Sun, the equations showed, the force of gravity overwhelms all other forces and produces a black hole.Scientists can't directly observe black holes with telescopes that detect x-rays, light, or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. We can, however, infer the presence of black holes and study them by detecting their effect on other matter nearby. If a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, for example, it will draw matter inward in a process known as accretion. A similar process can occur if a normal star passes close to a black hole. In this case, the black hole can tear the star apart as it pulls it toward itself. As the attracted matter accelerates and heats up, it emits x-rays that radiate into space. Recent discoveries offer some tantalizing evidence that black holes have a dramatic influence on the neighborhoods around them - emitting powerful gamma ray bursts, devouring nearby stars, and spurring the growth of new stars in some areas while stalling it in others. One Star's End is a Black Hole's Beginning Most black holes form from the remnants of a large star that dies in a supernova explosion. (Smaller stars become dense neutron stars, which are not massive enough to trap light.) If the total mass of the star is large enough (about three times the mass of the Sun), it can be proven theoretically that no force can keep the star from collapsing under the influence of gravity. However, as the star collapses, a strange thing occurs. As the surface of the star nears an imaginary surface called the "event horizon," time on the star slows relative to the time kept by observers far away. When the surface reaches the event horizon, time stands still, and the star can collapse no more - it is a frozen collapsing object. Even bigger black holes can result from stellar collisions. Soon after its launch in December 2004, NASA's Swift telescope observed the powerful, fleeting flashes of light known as gamma ray bursts. Chandra and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope later collected data from the event's "afterglow," and together the observations led astronomers to conclude that the powerful explosions can result when a black hole and a neutron star collide, producing another black hole. Babies and Giants Although the basic formation process is understood, one perennial mystery in the science of black holes is that they appear to exist on two radically different size scales. On the one end, there are the countless black holes that are the remnants of massive stars. Peppered throughout the Universe, these "stellar mass" black holes are generally 10 to 24 times as massive as the Sun. Astronomers spot them when another star draws near enough for some of the matter surrounding it to be snared by the black hole's gravity, churning out x-rays in the process. Most stellar black holes, however, lead isolated lives and are impossible to detect. Judging from the number of stars large enough to produce such black holes, however, scientists estimate that there are as many as ten million to a billion such black holes in the Milky Way alone. On the other end of the size spectrum are the giants known as "supermassive" black holes, which are millions, if not billions, of times as massive as the Sun. Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes lie at the center of virtually all large galaxies, even our own Milky Way. Astronomers can detect them by watching for their effects on nearby stars and gas. Historically, astronomers have long believed that no mid-sized black holes exist. However, recent evidence evidence from Chandra, XMM-Newton and Hubble strengthens the case that mid-size black holes do exist. One possible mechanism for the formation of supermassive black holes involves a chain reaction of collisions of stars in compact star clusters that results in the buildup of extremely massive stars, which then collapse to form intermediate-mass black holes. The star clusters then sink to the center of the galaxy, where the intermediate-mass black holes merge to form a supermassive black hole.

NASA RESEARCH ABOUT BIG QUESTION

Big Questions NASA has defined a set of space and Earth Science questions that can best be addressed using the Agency’s unique capabilities. NASA works with the broader scientific community, considers national initiatives, and the results of decade-long surveys by the National Research Council in defining these questions. See also the Science Strategy section for more information about how NASA Science is pursuing these questions. Earth How is the global earth system changing? Earth is currently in a period of warming. Over the last century, Earth's average temperature rose about 1.1°F (0.6°C). In the last two decades, the rate of our world's warming accelerated and scientists predict that the globe will continue to warm over the course of the 21st century. Is this warming trend a reason for concern? After all, our world has witnessed extreme warm periods before, such as during the time of the dinosaurs. Earth has also seen numerous ice ages on roughly 11,000-year cycles for at least the last million years. So, change is perhaps the only constant in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history. Scientists note that there are two new and different twists to today's changing climate: (1) The globe is warming at a faster rate than it ever has before; and (2) Humans are the main reason Earth is warming. Since the industrial revolution, which began in the mid-1800s, humans have attained the magnitude of a geological force in terms of our ability to change Earth's environment and impact its climate system. Since 1900, human population doubled and then doubled again. Today more than 6.5 billion people inhabit our world. By burning increasing amounts of coal and oil, we drove up carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere by 30 percent. Carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse gas" that traps warmth near the surface. Humans are also affecting Earth's climate system in other ways. For example, we transformed roughly 40 percent of Earth's habitable land surface to make way for our crop fields, cities, roads, livestock pastures, etc. We also released particulate pollution (called "aerosols") into the atmosphere. Changing the surface and introducing aerosols into the atmosphere can both increase and reduce cloud cover. Thus, in addition to driving up average global temperature, humans are also influencing rainfall and drought patterns around the world. While scientists have solid evidence of such human influence, more data and research are needed to better understand and quantify our impact on our world's climate system. How will the Earth system change in the future? As the world consumes ever more fossil fuel energy, greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise and Earth's average temperature will rise with them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) estimates that Earth's average surface temperature could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century. For most places, global warming will result in more hot days and fewer cool days, with the greatest warming happening over land. Longer, more intense heat waves will happen more often. High latitudes and generally wet places will tend to receive more rainfall, while tropical regions and generally dry places will probably receive less rain. Increases in rainfall will come in the form of bigger, wetter storms, rather than in the form of more rainy days. In between those larger storms will be longer periods of light or no rain, so the frequency and severity of drought will increase. Hurricanes will likely increase in intensity due to warmer ocean surface temperatures. So one of the most obvious impacts of global warming will be changes in both average and extreme temperature and precipitation events. Scientists are also monitoring the great ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica, both of which are experiencing increasing melting trends as surface temperatures are rising faster in those parts of the world than anywhere else. Each of those ice sheets contains enough water to raise sea level by 5 meters and if our world continues to warm at the rate it is today then it is a question of when, not if, those ice sheets will collapse. Some scientists warn we could lose either, or both, of them as soon as the year 2100. Ecosystems will shift as those plants and animals that adapt the quickest will move into new areas to compete with the currently established species. Those species that cannot adapt quickly enough will face extinction. Scientists note with increasing concern the 21st century could see one of the greatest periods of mass extinction of species in Earth's entire history. Ultimately, global warming will impact life on Earth in many ways. But the extent of the change is up to us. What causes the sun to vary? We live in the extended atmosphere of a magnetic variable star that drives our solar system and sustains life on Earth. Our Sun varies in every way we can observe it. The Sun gives off light in the infrared, visible, ultraviolet, and at x-ray energies, and it gives off magnetic field, bulk plasma (the solar wind) and energetic particles moving up to nearly the speed of light, and all of these emissions vary. These variations occur on timescales from milliseconds to billions of years. Most of these variations are related to the solar magnetic field, which is caused by the moving plasma inside the rotating Sun, which make a dynamo. How do the Earth and Heliosphere respond? Our planet is immersed in this seemingly invisible yet exotic and inherently dangerous environment. Above the protective cocoon of Earth’s lower atmosphere is a plasma soup composed of electrified and magnetized matter entwined with penetrating radiation and energetic particles. The Earth’s magnetic field interacts with the Sun’s outer atmosphere to create this extraordinary environment. Our Sun’s explosive energy output forms an immense, complex magnetic fields structure. Hugely inflated by the solar wind, this colossal bubble of magnetism known as the heliosphere stretches far beyond the orbit of Pluto, from where it controls the entry of cosmic rays into the solar system. On its way through the Milky Way this extended atmosphere of the Sun affects all planetary bodies in the solar system. It is itself influenced by slowly changing interstellar conditions that in turn can affect Earth’s habitability. In fact, the Sun’s extended atmosphere drives some of the greatest changes in the near-Earth space environment affecting our magnetosphere, atmosphere, ionosphere, and potentially our climate. What are the impacts on humanity? Modern society depends heavily on a variety of technologies that are susceptible to the extremes of space weather — severe disturbances of the upper atmosphere and of the near-Earth space environment that are driven by the magnetic activity of the Sun. Strong electrical currents driven in the Earth’s surface during auroral events can disrupt and damage modern electric power grids and may contribute to the corrosion of oil and gas pipelines. Changes in the ionosphere during geomagnetic storms driven by magnetic activity of the Sun interfere with high-frequency radio communications and GPS navigation. During polar cap absorption events caused by solar protons, radio communications can be severely compromised for commercial airliners on transpolar crossing routes. Exposure of spacecraft to energetic particles during solar energetic particle events and radiation belt enhancements can cause temporary operational anomalies, damage critical electronics, degrade solar arrays, and blind optical systems such as imagers and star trackers used on commercial and government satellites. Harsh conditions in the space environment also pose significant risks for the journey of exploration. Although space is a near-vacuum, the very-thinly-spread particles and fields are like an ocean that can affect the spacecraft and astronauts that travel through it. Like seafaring voyagers, space explorers must be constantly aware of the current space weather and be prepared to handle the most extreme conditions that might be encountered. How did the sun's family of planets and minor bodies originate? For the first time in human history we know of planets around other stars and many of those other planetary systems look quite different from our own. Many have a planet like Jupiter, or even bigger, nearest to the Sun. If we are to understand why this is the case, and how likely it is that there are Earth-like planets elsewhere, we need to better understand how planets form. We might not be here if it were not for our moon, which makes our rotation axis stable. Our planet might not be as wet and rich as it is if it were not for comets and asteroids that leave dust in our neighborhood. Thus, we must understand the moons and other small bodies too, though modest by comparison these objects had a hand in our fate. Studies of ancient meteorites, cosmic dust, and comets provide clues to the processes operating in the early solar system, and actually allow dating of events over 4.5 billion years ago. Studying these objects, which have changed little since the first few million years of the Solar System’s existence, allows us to understand the components that made up the dust and gas cloud from which the Solar System formed, and the processes that led to the formation of planets. These analytical studies, in turn, inform theoretical studies of Solar System formation. How did the solar system evolve to its current diverse state? Many of the other solar systems have massive Jupiter like planets close to their Sun, closer even than Mercury. Many scientists now believe that these gas giants could not have formed there. Rather, they must have began out where our Jupiter is, and moved inwards, scattering the smaller planets with their powerful gravity as they went. Why is it that our Jupiter and Saturn did not migrate inward? We are trying to learn more about our outer solar system by sending probes there. We sent Galileo to Jupiter, Cassini is at Saturn right now, and New Horizons is on its way to Pluto even as you read this. Planets also change even if they don't move closer to the Sun. For example, Mars once had water on the surface. We know that thanks to our two rovers on Mars and a spacecraft in orbit. We recently launched Phoenix to explore near the pole and sniff the dirt for organic molecules. By studying Mars we will learn more about how rocky planets can change. If other planets change, then ours can change too. How did life begin and evolve on Earth, and has it evolved elsewhere in the Solar System? Microbial life forms have been discovered on Earth that can survive and even thrive at extremes of high and low temperature and pressure, and in conditions of acidity, salinity, alkalinity, and concentrations of heavy metals that would have been regarded as lethal just a few years ago. These discoveries include the wide diversity of life near sea–floor hydrother­mal vent systems, where some organisms live essentially on chemical energy in the absence of sunlight. Similar environments may be present elsewhere in the Solar System. Understanding the processes that lead to life, however, is complicated by the actions of biology itself. Earth’s atmosphere today bears little resemblance to the atmosphere of the early Earth, in which life developed; it has been nearly reconstituted by the bacteria, vegetation, and other life forms that have acted upon it over the eons. Fortunately, the Solar System has preserved for us an array of natural laboratories in which we can study life’s raw ingredients — volatiles and organics — as well as their delivery mechanisms and the prebiotic chemical processes that lead to life. We can also find on Earth direct evidence of the interactions of life with its environments, and the dramatic changes that life has undergone as the planet evolved. This can tell us much about the adaptability of life and the prospects that it might survive upheavals on other planets. What are the characteristics of the Solar System that lead to the origins of life? The possibility of finding life elsewhere is for many people the most compelling reason for humankind to explore beyond the Earth. We believe that liquid water and carbon are required for life to arise and thrive, as well as a source of energy. Many places in the Solar System provide these, at least for a time; not only planets, but also some moons and even certain comets. But for life to arise we presume that a hospitable environment must be more than just transient. The Earth is in the continuously habitable zone, meaning at our size and at our distance from the Sun water has been stable at the surface even though the brightness of the Sun has varied. Not all planets are so lucky. We now know that there once was liquid water on the surface of Mars, but was it there long enough for life to develop? We are not sure, but its possible and if so then life might still linger beneath the surface, perhaps in a place where sub-surface heat meets the surface permafrost. There are other places where there has been liquid water for as long as on Earth. Jupiter's icy moon Europa almost certainly has a liquid water ocean beneath the surface even though its five times further from the Sun than we are. If there are hydrothermal vents at the bottom of Europa's ocean, then that would seem a very hospitable place for life, but that doesn't mean its there. The only way we are going to find out is by going there. Other moons that may have liquid water deep below the surface include Jupiter's moons Callisto and Ganymede as perhaps Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus. How do matter, energy, space, and time behave under the extraordinarily diverse conditions of the cosmos? How does the universe work? Understanding the Universe's birth and its ultimate fate are essential first steps to unveil the mechanisms of how it works. This, in turn, requires knowledge of its history, which started with the Big Bang. Previous NASA investigations with the Cosmic Microwave Background Explorer (COBE) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have measured the radiation from the Universe when it was only 300,000 years old, confirming theoretical models of its early evolution. With its improved sensitivity and resolution, the Planck observatory is now probing the long wavelength sky to new depths in its 2-year sky survey, providing stringent new constraints on the physics of the first few moments of the Universe. Moreover, the possible detection and investigation of the so-called B-mode polarization pattern on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) impressed by gravitational waves during those initial instants will provide clues for how the large-scale structures we observe today came to be. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories showed that the Universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, implying that some day - in the very distant future - anyone looking at the night sky would see only our Galaxy and its stars. The billions of other galaxies will have receded beyond detection by these future observers. The origin of the force that is pushing the Universe apart is a mystery, and astronomers refer to it simply as "dark energy". This new, unknown component, which comprises ~75% of the matter-energy content of the Universe, will determine the ultimate fate of all. Determining the nature of dark energy, its possible history over cosmic time, is perhaps the most important quest of astronomy for the next decade and lies at the intersection of cosmology, astrophysics, and fundamental physics. Knowing how the laws of physics behave at the extremes of space and time, near a black hole or a neutron star, is also an important piece of the puzzle we must obtain if we are to understand how the universe works. Current observatories operating at X-ray and gamma-ray energies, such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, XMM-Newton, are producing a wealth of information on the conditions of matter near compact sources, in extreme gravity fields unattainable on Earth. Future missions such as LISA and the International X-ray Observatory, will push the frontier of knowledge of exotic astrophysical phenomena related to extreme regimes even further in space and time. For PCOS, the decade ahead holds the promise of exciting discoveries and new, bolder questions. How did the universe originate and evolve to produce the galaxies, stars, and planets we see today? How did we get here? In order to understand how the Universe has changed from its initial simple state following the Big Bang (only cooling elementary particles like protons and electrons) into the magnificent Universe we see as we look at the night sky, we must understand how stars, galaxies and planets are formed. There are many questions associated with the creation and evolution of the major constituents of the cosmos. A basic question astronomers must address is, how did the Universe create its first stars and galaxies? Once these entities were created, how did they influence subsequent galaxy, star and planet formation? This is an important question, because these later objects are made of elements that can only have been created by the first generation of stars. It is still unknown whether the Universe created black holes with the first generation of stars or whether these exotic objects were created by the first generation of stars. Because black holes represent the most extreme physical conditions of spacetime and generate some of the most energetic phenomena following the Big Bang, they are the ultimate physical laboratories for testing theories of the Universe. We now know that our Universe has a "foamy" structure. The galaxies and clusters of galaxies that make up the visible Universe are concentrated in a complex scaffold that surrounds a network of enormous cosmic voids. However, in addition to the "normal" matter that makes up the visible parts of the Universe, scientists have discovered that there are vast amounts of unseen matter. This so-called, "dark matter" makes up roughly 23% of the matter-energy content of the Universe, while the visible pieces account for only about 5% of the total. Clearly, if we hope to understand the structure of the Universe and the processes by which it formed and evolves, we must first understand the distribution of this important but unseen dark matter and the ways in which it interacts with and influences normal matter. Though astronomers have been studying stars for thousands of years, it is only in the past 35 or so years that they have been able to employ instruments that detect light across the entire electromagnetic spectrum–from radio waves to gamma rays–to peer into the dusty clouds where stars are born in our own Galaxy. If we are to comprehend how the Universe makes stars–and planets that orbit them today–we must continue these studies with ever more powerful telescopes. What are the characteristics of planetary systems orbiting other stars, and do they harbor life? Are we alone? This question is as old as humankind itself. For millennia, people have turned their eyes to the stars and wondered if there are others like themselves out there. Does life, be it similar to our own or not, exist elsewhere in our Solar System? Our Galaxy? Until 1992, when the first exoplanet was confirmed, it was uncertain whether there were even any planets outside those in our own Solar System. Today we know of over 1000 planets and planet candidates orbiting other stars. Do any of these planets have conditions that would support life? What conditions favor the formation of terrestrial-class planets in developing planetary systems? NASA can help address these questions by developing missions designed to find and characterize extra solar planetary systems. Before we can determine if there are other planetary systems capable of supporting life, we must first find them. NASA Science pursues this goal by supporting a focused suite of ground-based observations and through the development of the Kepler mission, a space-based observatory dedicated to identifying and determining the prevalence (how many there are per star) of extra solar planets.

What are some PC games without a graphic card requirement? Answer: A Corps vs. Desert Rats (XP only) Age of Empires + Expansion Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings + The Conquerors Expansion Age of Empires III + The Warchiefs + The Asian Dynasties (Everything high, 1360×768, no shadow and shaders set to low. Win7 and MD 1.1) Age of Mythology + Titans Expansion Aggression - Reign over Europe (Using 3D Analyze: all textures work but too slow. FPS is unplayable status. Try Swiftwshader) Aion Online AirStrike 3D II Alien Shooter Alien Shooter 2 Alien vs. Predator 2 + Expansion Alpha Prime American McGee's Alice (tested on XP, stock drivers) America's Secret Operations Ancient Wars : Sparta (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) And Yet It Moves (works with stock drivers and shader effects turned off on Windows 7) Anno 1404 Dawn of Discovery (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Area 51 (Version 1.2 patch) Armed and Dangerous (3D Analyze) Armies of Exigo (Works with Medium Settings with Swiftshader) Ashes Cricket 2009 Demo (Windows 7 with Modded drivers and 'addgame.reg' tweak) Attack on Pearl Harbor (Dogfight game, playable at pretty high setting) Audiosurf Avencast: Rise of the Mage B Bad Boys II: The Video Game Baja 1000 (use addgame.reg, still lags though) Batman: Vengeance Battle Isle: The Andosia Conflict Battle Realms Battle Realms: Winter of the Wolf Battlefield 1942 (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Battlefield 1942: Desert Combat Mod Battlefield 2142 (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL, a bit laggy at lowest setting) Battlefield Heroes Battlefield Vietnam Battle For Troy Battlestations: Midway Beyond Good & Evil Big Mutha Truckers 2 Black & White Black & White 2 Black Mirror / Black Mirror Special Edition Black Shot (All Details High, tested on XP, v1.2 Modded Drivers) Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII Blitzkrieg + All Expansions and Mods Blitzkrieg 2 + All Expansions and Mods Blood Bowl BloodRayne 1 (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL / medium settings) BloodRayne 2 (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL / medium settings) Boiling Point: Road to Hell (Vista/7, Modded Drivers. Low FPS, about 15-20 on version 1.00) Braid Breath of Fire 4 Brian Lara International Cricket 2005 Brian Lara International Cricket 2007 (3D Analyze) Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (Works under XP and Vista) Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon (Works under XP and Vista) Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (Works under XP and Vista) Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL or 'addgame.reg') Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL or 'addgame.reg') C Caesar IV Call of Ctulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth Call of Duty + United Offensive Call of Duty 2 (Windows Vista/Windows 7 With Modded Drivers and 'addgame.reg' or 3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Call of Juarez (very laggy after first level) Championship Manager 2006 Championship Manager 2007 Championship Manager 2008 Chaos Legion (Best Resolution, high details - very smooth FPS) Chaser Chrome Chrome: Specforce (Laggy - try low/middle settings) Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) CivCity: Rome Civilization IV Clive Barker's Undying Close Combat: First to Fight (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL) Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island Code of Honor 3: Desperate Measures (barely playable on minimum setting) Codename Panzers: Phase One Codename Panzers: Phase Two (Note: for both versions, if you encountered any problems running the demos, change Shadow to 1 under Options.ini file. This only applies to the demos, the full versions can function perfectly.) Cold Blood (Only XP) Cold Fear (3D Analyze 2.34 only, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL, other dx8.1 caps) Colin McRae Rally 2.0 Colin McRae Rally 2004 (Update to latest patch for removing graphical issues) Comanche 4 Combat Arms (Korean MMOFPS) Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars + Kane's Wrath (shader detail must be set to medium to avoid crashes) Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Command & Conquer: Generals + Zero Hour Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 + Yuri's Revenge Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 + Expansion (Too slow with Normal drivers,but much better with Modded drivers (addgame.reg, or patch game for more FPS increase.) Command & Conquer: Renegade Commandos (All Versions) Company of Heroes (xp-> Laggy even at very low settings, Vista + Modded drivers + addgame.reg-> smooth and playable) Conan (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL) Condemned: Criminal Origins Conflict: Desert Storm 2 Conflict: Vietnam Contract Jack Counter Strike 1.6 Counter Strike: Condition Zero Counter Strike: Source (Runs slow with normal drivers, with modded drivers you can run with settings and resulution on medium, tested on Vista) Crayon Physics Deluxe Crazy Taxi Cricket 2005 Cricket 2006 Cricket 2007 Crime Life: Gang Wars (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL - solves random restart problem) Crimson Skies Cross Racing Championship 2005 CrossFire Crysis v1.0 (Some textures buggy on the screen and a bit laggy) Crysis Warhead (945 - Modded drivers with addgame.reg Tweak. Also works with 3D Analyze but runs around 10-5 FPS) Crysis Wars Trial (945 - Modded drivers 1554 with registry of "1″ on crysis.exe) CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder D Darkest Island DarkStar One (Runs normally, but some blurring after 5 minutes - Recommended: 3D Analyzer: HW Texture and Lightning) Dead to Rights Delta Force: Black Hawk Down + Team Sabre (3D Analyze / RegTweak) Delta Force Xtreme 2 (3D Analyze / RegTweak) (Laggy) Deus Ex Deus Ex 2: Invisible War Devastation (All settings on High + highest resolution) Devil May Cry 3 ('addgame.reg' Tweak[Vista/Win7] 3DA, Emulate HW TnL, Force SW TnL, Emulate pixel shader caps, Check skip pixel shader version 1.1, Check skip pixel shader version 1.4, Check skip pixel shader version 2.0, Check force 100 hz, Check disable lighting. Note* :This only works on Devil May Cry 3 version 1.0) (Extra Note: Don't use Game Rips or you won't be able to go to the 2nd level. Thing is you can only use Virgil) Diablo Diablo II + Lord of Destruction (DirectDraw for best performance) Dino Crisis (only under XP) Dino Crisis 2 Dirt Track Racing Dirty Split Disciples Disciples II + Expansions Disciples III: Renaissance (addgame.reg) Divine Divinity Doom 3 (Better with Doom 3 Tweaker Screen RES: 512×384 Minimum Quality Preset 15-60 FPS) Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil Dracula : Origin Driver 4: Parallel Lines (Windows 7 with Modded drivers and 'addgame.reg' Tweak) Dredd vs Death Dungeon Lords (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL caps, force SW TnL) Dungeon Runners (Don't put bloom too high) Dungeon Siege I Dungeon Siege II Dynasty Warriors 6 (Slow but playable with addgame.reg + Modded Drivers) E Earth 2160 (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL) Empire Earth I + Expansion (The Art of Conquest) Empire Earth II + Expansion (The Art of Supremacy) Empire Earth III (Shaders set to Medium) Empire Total War + Special Forces Edition (Windows Vista/7 + Modded Drivers + 3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Empires: Dawn of the Modern World Emperor Battle for Dune full settings no lag Enter The Matrix Eragon (Windows Vista + Stock Drivers + Addgame.reg tweak) Europa Universalis: Rome Evil Dead: Regeneration Exteel F Fable: The Lost Chapters Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy Falcon 4.0: Allied Force Fantastic 4 Far Cry (Try patching first. 3D Analyze, VendorID= 4098, DeviceID= 20040) F.E.A.R. (Patch v1.01 to v1.08 required) + Extraction Point F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate FIFA 2003 FIFA 2004 FIFA 2005 FIFA 2006 + Road To World Cup FIFA 2007 FIFA 2008 FIFA 2009 FIFA 2010 FIFA Manager 2006 FIFA Manager 2007 FIFA Manager 2008 Final Fantasy VII Final Fantasy VIII (If it seems bad, don't think it's the card, this game only runs at 640 x 480 with bad quality textures) Fallout 3 (http://www.oldblivion.com/sm/index.php?action=printpage;topic=6927.0) FlatOut FlatOut 2 (With low resolution, it runs without lag) Football Manager 2007 Football Manager 2008 Football Manager 2009 Football Manager 2010 Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood (smooth in high quality) Freedom Fighters Freelancer G Gangland Garry's Mod Gish (works with stock drivers in Windows 7) Gothic Gothic 2 Gran Turismo Racing 2 Gran Turismo Racing: Revolution Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Grandia 2 (only under XP) Great Battles Rome Grim Fandango (Requires newest patch, or it will run in hyperspeed) Grom: Terror in Tibet Ground Control 1 Guild Wars Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock (v1.3 patch and 3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL, disable lighting, force low precision pixel shader, emulate other DX8.1 caps, performance mode and Vendor ID: 4318 Device ID: 816) (You can find tweaks for GH3 in Google) Guitar Hero Aerosmith (Alpha Drivers + IDAMT 2.0) (Min 20 fps(when show all the crowd) and Max 55 fps(when shows only one person)) Gun H Half-Life Half-Life: Source (Software Vertex) Half-Life 2 (Software Vertex) Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (Software Vertex) Half-Life 2: Episode One (May crash in some cases, unknown reasons) (Software Vertex) Half-Life 2: Episode Two (Windows Vista/7) (May crash in some cases, unknown reasons too) (Software Vertex) Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (Software Vertex) Halo: Combat Evolved Halo: Custom Edition Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Windows Vista + Default Drivers + Addgame.reg tweak) (945G - Will run normally) Hellgate: London (Edit config in "My Documents" for lower resolutions) Heroes of Might and Magic III + Expansion Heroes of Might and Magic V (Patch up to 1.6 will solve all problems regarding crashing to desktop also officially remove the CD/DVD check. Note: There will be minor graphical glitches present if run normally. Use 3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, for better view. Try check force shader 1.1 in 3DA) Heroes of Might and Magic V - Tribes of the East (v3.0 Stand alone, no patch needed - Windows Vista and XP) Hidden & Dangerous Hidden & Dangerous II + Expansions Hitman 2: Silent Assassin Hitman 3: Contracts Hitman 4: Blood Money (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL - lags badly and textures corrupted-game runs but unplayable) House of the Dead 1 House of the Dead 2 House of the Dead 3 (Win7 and MD 1.1 + addgame + (0000,+0001,+0002).reg tweak for hod3pc.exe) Hulk Hunting Unlimited 2010 Hydro Thunder I Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit Infernal (Works great out of the box - 640 x 480 with DOF and Reflection off [Windows 7 + Modded Drivers]) International Cricket Captain 2008 Iron Man J Jade Empire: Special Edition Jade Dynasty James Bond 007: NightFire Juiced (XP, stock drivers)
 * - CSS SCI FI 3: HARDWIRED (Counter Strike: Source MOD) (On missions with APCs, restart the game with the -dxlevel 80 command on Set Lauch Options)

Jurassic Park Operation Genesis (3D Analyze, emulate pixel shader caps -VASH ) Just Cause (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, antidetect shaders) K K-Hawk: Survival Instinct Kabus 22 Kill.Switch Killing Floor (Everything on Low, 1024×768. Win7 and MD 1.1) King Kong Knights of the Temple 1+2 very playable no lag full graphics (just remember to use 3d analyze on 2 and tick force SW TnL and emulate HW TnL) Kohan + Expansions Kohan 2 KOS Secret Operations (Source Engine) (Modded Drivers with addgame.reg or SwiftShader) Kuma Games Kung Fu Panda (Windows Vista + Default Drivers + Addgame.reg tweak)

L Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green (Everything high. Some glitchs with shaders effect. Win7 and MD 1.1) Land Rover Off Road League of Legends (Laggy on vista/1gig ram/modded drivers, 10-20 FPS) Left 4 Dead (Software TnL gives graphical glitches, no support for darkness shader so everything is bright) Left 4 Dead 2 (Same as L4D1) Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 Legacy of Kain: Defiance (Vista/7 with addgame.reg) Legion Arena (bit of lag if you have slow processor i.e. 1.6 ghz but playable) Lego Batman Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 Lego Indiana Jones Lego Star Wars (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL caps, force SW TnL) Lego Star Wars 2 Line of Sight: Vietnam Live for Speed M Machinarium Madagascar Mafia Magic The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers (Testing on Vista, modded drivers. Game runs, but crashes on the real-game screen.) Making History + Gold Edition Manhunt Manhunt 2 (Windows 7 using addgame.reg tweak) Marine Heavy Gunner: Vietnam Marine Sharpshooter 2 Marvel Ultimate Alliance (Tested on Vista using default drivers and addgame.reg tweak) Matt Hoffman's Pro BMX Max Payne (Patch 1.05, tested on XP SP2) Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (Patch 1.01, tested on Vista SP2, runs smoothly on all high except post-process effects off || G945 Users - Run with all settings set to high and on) Mechcommander 2 Mechwarrior 3 + Pirate Moon Mechwarrior 4 + All Expansion Medal of Honor: Allied Assault + Expansions (Breakthrough, Spearhead) Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault Medieval + Expansions Medieval II: Total War Megaman X4 Megaman X5 Megaman X6 Megaman X7 Megaman X8 Metal Gear Solid Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 Microsoft Flight Simulator X + Deluxe Version Midnight Nowhere Monster Truck Madness 2 MotoGP 3 Mount & Blade (DirectX 7, DirectX 9 gives texture corruption) (945G - Run with DirectX 9 -No corruption) Mount & Blade Warband (DirectX 7, DirectX 9 gives texture corruption, but you can use it on DirectX 9 if you have everything exactly like I tell you above. This is going to be big! ok you can't put it any higher than this (putting something higher will result into white blue purple !!!) enjoy i am pcgameplayvidz on youtube so you can contact me for errors!!! P.S: This needs a powerful computer to run!!!!) Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest MX vs. ATV Unleashed MySims Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelation Myst V: End of Ages Myth I: The Fallen Lords (select "Software Renderer" in options) Myth II: Soulblighter Myth III: The Wolf Age N Nancy Drew: Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon Nancy Drew: Secret of the Old Clock Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek Nascar: SimRacing NBA Live 2006 NBA Live 2007 NBA Live 2008 Need for Speed: Carbon (Vista. On XP with Swiftshader - but low FPS) Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 Need for Speed: Most Wanted Need for Speed: Porsche Need for Speed: ProStreet (Swiftshader but it's laggy like Carbon on xp) Need for Speed: Undercover (Must have 1.5gb ram, Windows Vista and run the game in Windows 98 compatibility mode) Need for Speed: Underground Need for Speed: Underground 2 (Software Vertex) (945G - Runs perfectly. Recommended on medium settings) Nemesis of the Roman Empire NeoTokyo Neverwinter Nights + Expansions Neverwinter Nights 2 (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) NHL 2000 NHL 2001 NHL 2002 NHL 2003 NHL 2004 NHL 2005 NHL 06 NHL 07 NHL 08 NHL 09 NiBiRu: Age of Secrets Night Watch No One Lives Forever No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy In H.A.R.M.'s Way Nosferatu Nox O O2 Mania Obscure (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Obscure 2 Oddworld Oni Oniblade (the original Russian version, not X-Blades, runs smooth) Onimusha 3: Demon Siege Operation 7 (free online fps) OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast Overclocked: A History of Violence (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL. Got a BSOD sometime, still working for it and haven't used modded drivers) Overlord (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) (5-10 fps) Overspeed: High Performance Street Racing P Painkiller (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Painkiller: Battle out of Hell (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Painkiller: Overdose (sun smoothly on Win7 + Modded drivers, on xp use 3D Analyze) Pariah Pathologic (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Peggle Deluxe Peggle Extreme Peggle Nights Perfect World (Works on lowest quality on Windows Vista) Peter Jackson's King Kong Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst Phantasy Star Online Ver 2 Phantasy Star Universe Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of Illuminus (Both original and expansion will have post effect glowing problem most likely on XP. Use Swiftshader with d3d9 to solve the post effect problem. Should work without any problems for Windows Vista) Plants vs. Zombies Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor Port Royale 2 Portal (Software Vertex) Praetorians Prey Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (3D Analyze v2.34, emulate HW TnL) Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Prison Tycoon 4 Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (tested with XP, stock drivers, black title screen) Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 Project IGI Project IGI 2: Covert Strike Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy Psychonauts (Runs in 800×600 with Medium Details) Pyroblazer (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL caps and force 100 Hz) Q Quake 3 Quake 4 (Better performance with Modded drivers) Quake Live R Ragnarok Ragnarok Online 2: The Gate of the World Rally Trophy Ratatouille (Windows Vista + Stock Drivers + Addgame.reg tweak) Raven Squad: Operation Hidden Dagger Rayman 2: The Great Escape Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc Red Faction 2 Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 (Everything on Very Low, laggy. Win7 and MD 1.1) Rent a Hero Reservoir Dogs Resident Evil 1 (Works on Windows XP, Vista, and Win7 with Windows 95 compatibility) Resident Evil 2 (Works on Windows XP, Vista, and Win7 with Windows 98/2000 compatibility) Resident Evil 3 Resident Evil 4 (Modded drivers on Windows Vista/7 works. Windows XP only on low 640×480, 15-25 FPS) rFactor Restaurant Empire 2 (Windows XP, Normal Drivers, You can max the resolution but all others to low or the game will crash) Rise of Nations + Thrones and Patriots Rise of Nations 2: Rise of Legends Rising Kingdoms (everything high 30-50 fps) Rogue Trooper RollerCoaster Tycoon + Expansions RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 + Expansions RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 + Expansions Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI Rome: Total War Rune Runescape + HD (All settings lowered for best performance) S Sacred Sacred Underworld Sam & Max Season 1 + 2 Samurai Warriors 2 / Sengoku Musou 2 SAS: Secure Tomorrow Scarface: The World Is Yours (Windows Vista/7 with 1545 Modded drivers and 'addgame.reg' Tweak) Second Sight (3DA crashes randomly) Secret Files: Tunguska Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis Secret Weapons Over Normandy Serious Sam Serious Sam II Shade: Wrath of Angels Shadowman Shadow Ops: Red Mercury Sherlock Holmes : The Silver Earring Sherlock Holmes : The Awakened Ship Simulator 2006 + Add On Shogun: Total War Sid Meier's Railroad Silent Hill 2 (flashlight fix) Silent Hill 3 (with addgame.reg) Silent Hill 4: The Room (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Silent Hunter 3 (Lags when looking out onto the horizon) Silent Storm Sim Copter SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition SimTower: The Vertical Empire
 * -Antialiasing:None
 * -Shadow Quality:Ultra High
 * -Texture quality: 100 %
 * -Shader Quality:Medium
 * -(no instancing)
 * -Grasss Density: 0 %
 * -Realistic Shadows On Plants: Full
 * -Tree Detail: High
 * -Tree Degrade Distance: 100 %
 * -Character Detail: Highest (100%)
 * -Character shadow Detail: Highest (100%)
 * -Number of corpses and ragdolls: unlimited
 * -Blood Stains: On
 * -Dynamic lighting: On
 * -Character Shadows : On
 * -Enviroment Shadows: Off
 * -Particle Systems:On
 * -Anisotropic Filtering : On
 * -Fast water Reflections: Off
 * -Fast water Reflections: Off
 * For 945G Users + Some tips: Use 3D Analyzer(HW Lightning) -Everything on High, Use MOUSEAIM patch to enable mouse.)

SiN Episodes: Emergence (Uses the source engine like Half Life 2, expect similar results) Singles 2: Triple Trouble (A copy of The Sims 2, runs perfect with Modded drivers)(945G -Perfect with Stock Divers) Sins of a Solar Empire Sniper Elite Sniper Path of Vengeance Soldier Front Soldier of Fortune Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix Sonic Adventure DX Director's Cut Sonic Heroes Sonic Worlds Sorades Space Rangers Space Rangers 2: Reboot (The Original Dominator is Playable) Spartan+ Expansion works PERFECT Special Forces Nemesis Specnaz 2 (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL. Windows Vista/7 - a bit laggy) SpellForce 2: Shadow Wars (Windows XP + Modded drivers, 1024×768 4x antisotropic Filtering Texture:High ~20fps) Spider-Man 2 Spider-Man: Friend or Foe (Windows Vista + Default Drivers + Addgame.reg tweak) Splinter Cell 1 (To fix thermal vision crash, open SplinterCell.ini, look for "EmulateGF2Mode=0″ and change to "EmulateGF2Mode=1″) Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (Windows Vista with Modded Drivers and the 'addgame.reg' Tweak for splintercell2.exe not Pandora.exe ) Spore + Expansions Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run (Windows 7 with 'addgame.reg' tweak) S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl (Tweaking Guide - http://www.tweakguides.com/STALKER_1.HTML) Starcraft + Brood War Starcraft 2 Starship Troopers Star Trek Elite Force 2 (XP, stock drivers, runs okay) Star Trek Starfleet Command 3 (XP, stock drivers, highest settings) Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy (highest) Star Wars: Battlefront 1 ( All low - 40 FPS ) Star Wars: Battlefront 2 ( All low - 20 FPS, depends on map ) Star Wars: Empire At War Star Wars: Galactic Battles Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2 - Jedi Outcast Star Wars: Jedi Knight 3 - Jedi Academy Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Some graphic glitches, but otherwise runs fine) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - The Sith Lords Star Wars: Republic Commando (Low end systems (vista/1gig ram) will find this laggy in my experience) Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D Street Fighter Alpha 2 Street Racing Syndicate Streets of SimCity Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People Episode 1 - 5 Stronghold Stronghold 2 Stronghold: Crusader Stronghold Crusader Extreme Stronghold Legends Sudden Attack (Korean fps) Sudeki Supreme Ruler Supreme Ruler : Global Crisis SWAT (Windows XP - compatibility mode for Windows 95) SWAT 2 (Windows XP - compatibility mode for Windows 95) SWAT 3 (Windows XP - compatibility mode for Windows 95) SWAT 4 + Expansion Swashbucklers Blue vs. Grey Swing Plus Syberia (for windows 7 user run the game and then open task manager, find syberia.exe and end that process wait about one minute then run the game again [ i don't even know what this for but it actually works] running at ~58 FPS) Synergy System Shock 2 T Team Fortress 2 (Software Vertex) (Windows Vista and Modded Drivers. Type vertices 1024 command in console to obtain playable FPS) Terminator 3: War of the Machines (a bit laggy on Win7) Terrorist Takedown 2 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Windows Vista + Default Drivers + 3D Analyze 2.26) The Club The Cosen: Well of Souls (Rpg) The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind + Expansions (Everything on Maximum. Sometimes laggy in town. Win7 + MD 1.1)(945G- Perfect in all settings high + Stock Drivers) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion + Expansions (best to play with oldblivion but if you don't want to play with oldblivion change these settings on your ini http://www.oldblivion.com/?page=faq#q13 ) The Fall: Last Days of Gaia The Godfather The Guild + Expansions The Guild 2 The Hell in Vietnam The Hobbit The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth I The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II + Expansion (The Rise of the Witch King) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Software Vertex) (Help provided on Intel site and also works with 3D Analyze) The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring The Simpsons: Hit & Run The Sims + Expansions The Sims 2 + Expansions The Sims 3 (All low quality) (945G - you can set Sim Details and Texture Quality to Medium, won't do any harm) The Suffering The Suffering: Ties That Bind The Thing The Westerner The Witcher (Windows Vista/7 + Modded Drivers) Thief 3: Deadly Shadows Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 Toca Race Driver Tom Clancy's HAWX (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL or Modded drivers with a registry value of 1 on HAWX.exe, playable with textures on low and highest resolution) Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL) Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Raven Shield Tomb Raider: Anniversary Tomb Raider: Legend Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (Laggy on vista/1gig ram/modded drivers) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 Tony Hawk's Underground (Works perfectly) Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (Some levels slightly laggy, mostly smooth) Torchlight Total Overdose Trackmania Nations Forever (Higher FPS with Modded drivers or 3D Analyze) Trackmania Sunrise / Trackmania Sunrise Extreme Transformers: The Game Trials 2 SE True Crime: New York City (Runs using addgame.reg, inside buildings runs perfect/outside city runs a little slow) True Crime: Streets of LA (Runs on vista, but game is very glitchy, (patch advised), Fps:15-20 using 1GB) Turok: Evolution (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL, force SW TnL, force 100hz) Two Worlds (3D Analyze, force SW TnL) U Ultimate Spider-Man (3D Analyze for better graphics) Universe at War: Earth Assault Unreal 2: The Awakening (tested on XP, works with highest settings-no lag) Unreal Tournament 1999 (works great with updated OpenGL drivers, and STC3 textures) Unreal Tournament 2003 Unreal Tournament 2004 Urban Freestyle Soccer Urban Terror (Quake 3 modification ported to IOQuake3, runs perfectly on anything) V Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (Systems with 2GB ram or more must use 3D Analyze v2.26 or game will crash) Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption Virtua Tennis 3 (Update to latest patch. Works smoothly on 1024×768 with all low) W Wall-E (Windows Vista + Stock Drivers + Addgame.reg tweak) War Rock Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (if -swtnl is used, said to give more performance) Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (if -swtnl is used, said to give more performance) Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (Software Vertex) Warlords Battlecry Warlords Battlecry II Warlords Battlecry III Warriors Orochi (Software Vertex) Warriors Orochi 2 Warrior Kings: Battles playable highest ( a tiny bit of lag but with low perfect) World in Conflict (Version 1.0 with Pixel Shaders set to high) World of Goo World of Warcraft + The Burning Crusade + Wrath of the Lich King (if you have a lower CPU speed, disable addgame.reg effect) (Runs best under XP) Worms Worms 2 Worms 3D Worms 4: Mayhem Worms Armageddon Worms Blast Worms Forts: Under Siege Worms World Party WWE RAW WWE RAW Ultimate Impact 2009 X X3: Reunion (Update to the latest patch and use the 'addgame.reg' Tweak) XIII XIII Century: Death or Glory (Win7 + Modded drivers) X-Blades (Win7 + Alpha Drivers + IDAMT 2.0) X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (Tested on Vista using default drivers and addgame.reg) X-Men: The Official Game (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Xpand Rally Xtreme Y Yager (3D Analyze, emulate HW TnL) Ys: The Ark of Napishtim (Patch to 1109, apply English translation) Ys: The Oath in Felghana Z Zeno Clash (Windows 7 with Modded drivers and software vertex processing mode) Zeus: Master of Olympus Zoo Tycoon + Expansions Zoo Tycoon 2 + Expansions Zombie Panic! Zombie Panic!: Source (addgame.reg + Modded Drivers under Vista/7) Zombie Shooter Zombie Shooter 2 Zwei II HAPPY GAMING !!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nishantsingh990611 (talk • contribs) 07:58, 1 August 2013 (UTC)