Most Emailed Science News

Those photos you post on Facebook could paint an accurate picture of your personality, new research on first impressions suggests.

TOKYO (AFP) - It may sound like a sci-fi vision, but Japan's space agency is dead serious: by 2030 it wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves.

Helpful acts, such as grooming or foster parenting, are common throughout the animal kingdom, but accounts of animals rescuing one another from danger are exceedingly rare, having been reported in the scientific literature only for dolphins, capuchin monkeys, and ants. New research shows that in the ant Cataglyphis cursor, the behavior is surprisingly sophisticated.

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

WASHINGTON — Off the coast of Washington state, mysterious algae mixed with sea foam have killed more than 8,000 seabirds, puzzling scientists. A thousand miles off California, researchers have discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling vortex roughly twice the size of Texas filled with tiny bits of plastic and other debris.

Editor's Note: This is Part 6 in a 10-part LiveScience series on the origin, evolution and future of the human species and the mysteries that remain to be solved.

From their very first days, the cries of newborns already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, scientists now find.

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.

Recently excavated Mayan murals are giving archaeologists a rare look into the lives of ordinary ancient Maya.

Space explorers have yet to get their hands on the replicator of "Star Trek" to create anything they might require. But NASA has developed a technology that could enable lunar colonists to carry out on-site manufacturing on the moon, or allow future astronauts to create critical spare parts during the long trip to Mars.

One day artificial penis tissue could be grown to help men, new findings in rabbits now suggest.

AVELLA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania landowner is suing an energy company for polluting his soil and water in an attempt to link a natural gas drilling technique with environmental contamination.

A small chunk of space trash made an uncomfortably close pass by the International Space Station late Friday, but not close enough to force the astronauts aboard to take shelter in their Russian lifeboats.

With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context.

Circle Nov. 17 on your calendar, for early that morning a moderate to possibly very strong showing of annual Leonid meteor shower is likely.

Antarctica's icy lakes are home to a surprisingly diverse community of viruses, including some that were previously unidentified.

MOSCOW - Vitaly Ginzburg, a Nobel Prize-winning Russian physicist and one of the fathers of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, has died in Moscow. He was 93.

A Seattle-based team has won $900,000 in this year's Space Elevator Games, a NASA-sponsored contest to build machines powered by laser beams that can climb a cable in the sky.

The brightest lights in the universe often come from the blackest pits of deep space.

The small earthquakes that sporadically rattle the central United States may actually be aftershocks from a few extremely large quakes that occurred in the region almost 200 years ago, according to a new study

LOKOJA, Nigeria (AFP) - After decades of delay and wrangling by resisting riverine communities, Nigeria has launched a multi-million-dollar dredging exercise to boost navigation and commerce on the Niger River.

LONDON (Reuters) - A mouse that can speak? A monkey with Down's Syndrome? Dogs with human hands or feet? British scientists want to know if such experiments are acceptable, or if they go too far in the name of medical research.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vitaly Ginzburg, a Russian physicist who survived Stalin's purges by working on the Soviet atomic bomb project and later won the Nobel Prize for physics, died in Moscow late on Sunday after a long illness. He was 93.

When a NASA spacecraft rammed into the moon in October, it tossed up a hard-to-see plume of lunar material.

A new Russian room that doubles as a docking port for the International Space Station is ready for a planned Tuesday launch toward the orbiting laboratory.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have engineered artificial penises in rabbits, using cells from the animals, who then used their new organs to father baby rabbits.

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - New uses of genetic testing can help track how animal diets may change due to global warming and are helping crack down on wildlife smuggling, experts said on Saturday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The world is not coming to an end on December 21, 2012, the US space agency insisted Monday in a rare campaign to dispel widespread rumors fueled by the Internet and a new Hollywood movie.

One of the greatest mysteries of astronomy is the problem of the missing mass: All of the matter scientists can see in the universe accounts for only a small percent of the observed gravity.

WASHINGTON — When it comes to combating global warming, Sen. Lindsey Graham is right where he loves to be — ahead of the curve, in the mix on a major issue, at the table for high-level, bipartisan talks behind closed doors.