Most Viewed Science News

Peering beneath the ice at the north pole of Mars has now revealed the red planet may be surprisingly colder than was thought.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers are baffled after finding an exotic type of star called a pulsar apparently locked in an elongated orbit around a star much like the sun -- an arrangement defying what had been known about such objects.

The Allied airmen and women of World War II were certainly brave and skilled in battle, but even they couldn't win the war on their own.

The universe is twice as bright as it appears, astronomers now suggest.

WASHINGTON - While carbon dioxide has been getting lots of publicity in climate change, reactive forms of nitrogen are also building up in the environment, scientists warn.

WASHINGTON - The El Nino phenomenon that has puzzled climate scientists in recent decades may have assisted the first trip around the world nearly 500 years ago.

Pulsars are like cosmic lighthouses sending out sweeping beams that blink at us across the galactic expanse. Now scientists have spotted a wacky pulsar that doesn't behave exactly like its fellows: Instead of circling a white dwarf star, this one orbits a sun-like star along an oval path.

TOKYO - A Japanese man who developed the world's smallest helicopter will take flight in the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci in tribute to the Renaissance genius' original idea.

The 7.9-magnitude earthquake that hit China's Sichuan province, leveling buildings and taking tens of thousands of lives, might not have wrought such destruction in the United States, experts say.

NASA is expecting delays for the first tests of the rocket that will replace its aging space shuttles after they retire in 2010, agency officials said Thursday.

This week, the giant planet Jupiter, poised against the stars of Sagittarius, looms up into view low in the southeast in the middle of the night. It rises around 11:30 p.m. local daylight time, and is best seen in telescopes just before morning twilight, when it's fairly high in the south or southeast. A medium-size telescope of high quality on a night of good seeing will show the disk of this creamy white giant richly, though subtly patterned.

Wet weather was expected Friday from New England all the way south to the Gulf Coast.

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile's Chaiten volcano groaned, rumbled and shuddered on Thursday, raising new concerns among authorities, as lightning bolts pierced the huge clouds of hot ash hovering ominously above its crater.

Weather around the U.S.A.

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian cargo ship Progress M-64 set off from Kazakhstan overnight on Wednesday for the International Space Station, the centre for control of space flights (Tsoup) told national news agencies.

Fossil microbes found along an iron-rich river in Spain reveal how signs of life could be preserved in minerals found on Mars. The discovery may help to equip the next generation Mars rover with the tools it would need to find evidence of past life on the planet.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU farmers have mostly started vaccinating animals against bluetongue, the virus that ravaged northern Europe's cattle and sheep in 2007, but success depends on vaccine supply and speed of applying it, officials say.

What's the definition of "premature ejaculation?" Glad you asked. There's never really been one, until now.

CONCORD, N.H. - Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest — dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronomers have discovered the youngest known supernova in the Milky Way galaxy, still just a baby at 140 years old. The scientists, who announced their findings Wednesday, used a radio observatory in New Mexico and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in space to identify when the supernova, or stellar, explosion occurred. They put the star-dying event at sometime around 1868.

ROME (AFP) - The destruction of mangrove forests along parts of Myanmar's coast contributed to the damage wreaked by cyclone Nargis, the UN food agency said Thursday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and Europe are teaming up to build a spaceship which will fly astronauts to the moon, Russia said on Wednesday, although the European Space Agency struck a more cautious note.

The sun bounces up and down as it roams the Milky Way, and such wavering might have hurled showers of comets Earth's way that caused mass extinctions, including the one that killed the dinosaurs, a new study claims.

MELKOEYA, Norway (AFP) - When Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro fired up the world's northernmost liquefied natural gas plant here last year it was hailed as an industry pioneer.