Also Try Science Current Events Archives Science News Sources Lists New Planets New planets have been discovered and they are outside of our solar system (extrasolar). The first extrasolar planet was discovered in 1995. syst Materials News Feeds (Google) Provides RSS news readers. 03-06 Multimedia Pictures and Sounds of Galaxies (CosmicLog.msnbc.msn.com) "Help yourself to the biggest pictures and the coolest sounds from space." 06-08 News -011-03-09 Crack in Africa Will, in a Million Years, Form a New Ocean (Yahoo News) "Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began 'unzipping' the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today." 11-09 -04-28-09 Astronomers Find Most Distant Object (CBS News) "Astronomers have spotted a burst of energy from a dying star, setting a record for the oldest and most distant object seen by Earth yet." 04-09 -05-09-09 Hubble Space Telescope Gets Final Upgrade (MSNBC News) "When astronauts from the shuttle Atlantis open up the Hubble Space Telescope for its final extreme makeover, much of the work will be aimed at fixing what's been ailing the world's premier orbiting observatory. It'll get fresh batteries and brand-new gyros, and if all goes well, Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph will be back in full working order for the first time in years." "But this is not just a fix-up mission. Two new instruments are due to be swapped into the mix, and those enhancements should give Hubble superpowers it never had before: for example, three-in-one vision that spans the spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared, and the ability to make out the cosmic cobwebs that stretch out between galaxies." 05-09 -05-21-09 Important Transitional Fossil Found (Time.com) "The fossil is so perfectly preserved because Ida probably died quickly and nonviolently; her resting place was an abandoned quarry called the Messel Pit, near Frankfurt." "The second reason the discovery is so important is its age. Ida — her scientific name is Darwinius masillae — dates to about 47 million years ago, when temperatures were warmer than they are today and when mammals underwent a burst of evolutionary diversification. In particular, that's when primates began splitting off into two branches. One became anthropoids, whose descendants are monkeys, apes and humans. The other turned into prosimians — lemurs and their kin." "Ida is intriguing because she has some characteristics of both branches, which suggests that she could be a transitional animal that gave rise to the anthropoids and, ultimately, to us." 05-09 -05-29-09 The World's First Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction (National Ignition Facility) "The world's largest and highest-energy laser was certified to operate by the U.S. Department of Energy on March 27, 2009. In 2010, NIF will focus the intense energy of 192 giant laser beams on a BB-sized target filled with hydrogen fuel — fusing, or igniting, the hydrogen atoms' nuclei in the world's first controlled thermonuclear reaction. This is the same fusion energy process that makes stars shine and provides the life-giving energy of the sun." 05-09 -06-08-09 Measuring the Universe (MSNBC News) "How far away is that galaxy? The more precise your answer is, the more you can find out about mysterious dark energy. In the past, astronomers have used variable stars and a special kind of supernova to make their distance estimates - and now two new measuring sticks are being added to the toolbox." 06-09 -06-28-09 The Suns's Protection is Not Constant (NewScientist.com) "The sun protects us from cosmic rays and dust from beyond the solar system by enveloping us in the heliosphere - a bubble of solar wind that extends past Pluto. These cosmic rays would damage the ozone layer, and interstellar dust could dim sunlight and trigger an ice age. However, when the solar system passes through very dense gas and dust clouds, the heliosphere can shrink until its edge is inside Earth's orbit." 06-09 -08-24-09 New Clues in Mass Death of Bees (Time.com) "In late 2006, something strange began to happen to America's honeybees. Colonies that were once thriving suddenly went still, almost overnight. The worker bees that make hives run simply disappeared, their bodies never to be found. Over the past couple of years, nearly one-third of all honeybee colonies have collapsed this way, which led to a straightforward name for the phenomenon: colony collapse disorder (CCD)." -09-05-09 Massive Ancient Wall Uncovered in Jerusalem (CNN News) "An archaeological dig in Jerusalem has turned up a 3,700-year-old wall that is the largest and oldest of its kind found in the region, experts say." 09-09 -09-06-09 Stunning New Close-Ups of Mars (CNN News) "What would you see if you could fly over Mars in a plane and look out the window?" "It must be something like the thousands of curious, intriguing and spectacular images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera mounted on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter." 09-09 -09-09-09 Hubble Telescope Fixed and Improved (BBC News) "Astronomers are celebrating the release of remarkable new images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)." Some of the pictures are included in the article. Hubble discoveries to date include: "In what was a prime mission objective, Hubble fixed the Universe's age at about 13.7 billion years - later confirmed by other instruments" "Hubble's ability to detect faint supernovae contributed to the discovery that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating" "Hubble was one of two telescopes to make the first direct images of planets orbiting another star - historic images made public last November" "Hubble provided the first direct measurements of the three-dimensional distribution of dark matter in space" "Hubble has shown that monster black holes, with masses millions to billions times the mass of our Sun, inhabit the centres of most galaxies" 09-09 -09-17-09 Miniature T. Rex Discovered (USA Today) "Tyrannosaurus Rex's likely ancestors started small, but perfectly armed, some 125 million years ago, dinosaur researchers reported Thursday.Puny arms, massive jaws, swift legs — all the ingredients of the king of the carnivores — adorned a newly discovered dinosaur, Raptorex kriegsteini, reported by the journal Science. But Raptorex was only about 1/90 the size of Tyrannosaurus, and flourished about 40 million years before T.Rex appears in the fossil record." 09-09 -09-21-09 Students Launch Camera to the Edge of Space (CNN New) "These enterprising students seem to have hit a nerve with the public, probably because their effort costs so little, suggesting that anyone with some know-how and a few common tools can photograph the edge of space. That's something normally reserved for big-budget agencies like NASA." "They've gotten so many inquiries they had to post this warning: 'CAUTION/DISCLAIMER: Launching things into the stratosphere can be DANGEROUS! Please contact the FAA before trying ...' " 09-09 -09-24-09 India Discovers Water on the Moon (ABC News) "India's newspapers are filled with headlines about its first lunar mission's Chandrayan-1 discovering water on the moon." 09-09 -10-06-09 Nobel Prizes Awarded in Physics (CNN News) "Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for two breakthroughs that led to two major underpinnings of the digital age -- fiber optics and digital photography, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said." 10-09 -10-09-09 Blind Boy Learns to "See" With His Ears (CNN News) "To 'see' the world around him, he clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth and listens to the echo that bounces back. From the sound, he can make out the location, depth and shape of objects around him, allowing him to navigate even unfamiliar areas." 10-09 -11-12-09 Fifty Best Inventions for 2009 (Time.com) "From a rocket of the future to a $10 million lightbulb, here are TIME's picks for the best new gadgets and breakthrough ideas of the year." 11-09 -11-13-09 Scientists: The Moon Has Significant Water (USA Today) " 'There's water, and it is not just a little water, but significant amounts,' says NASA's Anthony Colaprete, chief science investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)." 11-09 Breaking News in Astronomy (SpaceFlightNow.com) Provides news key news stories. 9-00 Fishermen Catch Rare Megamouth Shark, Then Eat It (CBS News) "Fishermen in the Philippines accidentally caught and later ate a megamouth shark, one of the rarest fishes in the world with only 40 others recorded to have been encountered, the World Wildlife Fund said Tuesday." 04-09 News on Missions to Mars (NASA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Provides news on missions to Mars, including two unmanned rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landing in January 2004. 12-03 Science News (Awesome Library) Provides news and articles by discipline in science. 5-03 Science News (BBC News) Provides news stories daily. 8-04 Science News (Nature.com) Provides refereed articles. Science News (ScienceDaily.com) Provides current events in science and technology. 9-05 Science and Technology News (Christian Science Monitor) Provides news and articles on current events. 01-06 Space Station and Shuttle (NASA Human Spaceflight - Dismukes and Humphries) Provides news on events surrounding space stations and shuttles. 2-01 Survival of the Weakest: Why Neanderthals Went Extinct (Newsweek.com) "Because Neanderthals were not adept at tracking herds on the tundra, they had to retreat with the receding woodlands. They made their last stand where pockets of woodland survived, including in a cave in the Rock of Gibraltar. There, Finlayson and colleagues discovered in 2005, Neanderthals held on at least 2,000 years later than anywhere else before going extinct, victims of bad luck more than any evolutionary failings, let alone any inherent superiority of their successors." 07-09 Technology News (News.com.com) Provides news on technology. 6-04 Papers -07-20-09 Up to $23.7 Trillion to Fix Financial System? (ABC News) ""The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the government's efforts to fix the financial system." "Granted, Barofsky is not saying that the government will definitely spend that much money. He is saying that potentially, it could." 07-09 -Simulation Results: Temperature Rise Caused a Mass Extinction (BBC News) "A computer simulation of the Earth's climate 250 million years ago suggests that global warming triggered the so-called 'great dying'." "A dramatic rise in carbon dioxide caused temperatures to soar to 10 to 30 degrees Celsius higher than today, say US researchers." "Some 95% of lifeforms in the oceans became extinct, along with about three-quarters of land species." 8-05 Andromeda Galaxy Way Bigger Than Thought (CNN News) "The discovery of several large, metal-poor stars located far from the center of the Andromeda galaxy suggests our nearest galactic neighbor might be up to five times larger than previously thought." " 'We're typically used to thinking of Andromeda as this tiny speck of light, but the actual size of the halo...extends to a very large radius and it actually fills a substantial portion of the night sky,' said study team member Jason Kalirai of the University of California, Santa Cruz." 01-07 Ants Rule (LiveScience.com) "Scientists estimate that about 20,000 ant species crawl the Earth. Taxonomists have classified more than 11,000 species, which account for at least one-third of all insect biomass. The combined heft of ants in the Brazilian Amazon is about four times greater than the combined mass of all of the mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, according to one survey." 01-07 Astronomers Capture First Images of New Planets (CNN News) "The first-ever pictures of planets outside our solar system were released today in two studies." "According to the the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, there have been 322 planets found outside our solar system. The latest findings bring that total to 326." 11-08 DNA Kits Available to Learn Our Own Ancestry (PBS.org) "With advances in DNA technology, researchers are learning more about the origins and diversity of humans, allowing companies to offer DNA test kits and analysis for people who want to learn more about their ancestry." 07-07 Editorial: One Giant Leap to Nowhere (New York Times) "NASA’s annual budget sank like a stone [after reaching the moon] from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3 billion in the mid-1970s. It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun." "It’s been a long time, but I remember him saying something like this: Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of." 07-09 Editorial: The Absurd Divide Between Pure and Applied Research (New York Timesr) "These transcendent figures in the history of science flourished by moving back and forth between pure and applied problems. In today’s more specialized world, there are numerous artificial divisions between pure and applied work: different departments, different professional societies, and different journals. The stereotyped view is that the applied scientists control the lion’s share of funding, while the basic scientists control the most prestigious journals and prizes. The reality is more complicated and lies somewhere in between." "What remains true is that practical problems can be equally compelling as fundamental ones, and often lead in turn to the discovery of new fundamental science. In particular, there is an intimate connection between the invention of new technology and its application to scientific discovery." 02-09 Evolution of the Universe (NASA) "The myriad galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field represented the first big step for Hubble astronomers to understand galaxy evolution. But studying galaxy evolution in the Hubble Deep Field is like trying to understand the population of a country by sampling a small village. Astronomers don't know if the galaxies in that village are representative of the universe's galactic population. The GOODS survey, on the other hand, is akin to sampling the population of a large city to make inferences about galaxies in the cosmos." 6-03 Extinction 200 Million Years Ago (CNN) Describes a very rapid mass extinction of life on earth 200 million years ago. 5-01 Hobbit-Sized Ancient Humans Found (ABC News) "Subsequent finds of other similarly sized, 3-foot-tall humans with brains the size of grapefruits in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores suggest these 18,000-year-old specimens weren't a quirk of an ancient hominin, but part of an entire species of miniature people whose existence overlapped with that of modern Homo sapiens." "Brown and the other authors suggest that the newly found species, named Homo floresiensis, arrived on the island of Flores, in Indonesia's Nusa Tenggara region, in the form of Homo erectus, the first large-brained hominin that emerged some 2 million years ago in Africa and Asia." 10-04 Hubble Survey Finds Missing Matter (HubbleSite.org) "Although the universe contains billions of galaxies, only a small amount of its matter is locked up in these behemoths. Most of the universe's matter that was created during and just after the Big Bang must be found elsewhere." "Now, in an extensive search of the local universe, astronomers say they have definitively found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, in the spaces between the galaxies. This important component of the universe is known as the 'intergalactic medium,' or IGM, and it extends essentially throughout all of space, from just outside our Milky Way galaxy to the most distant regions of space observed by astronomers." "Astronomers caution that the missing baryonic matter is not to be confused with 'dark matter,' a mysterious and exotic form of matter that is only detected via its gravitational pull." 06-08 Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Completed (Time.com) "Scientists believe the LHC's results will help fill in gaps in the Standard Model, the far-reaching set of equations on the interaction of subatomic particles that is the closest that modern physics comes to a testable 'theory of everything.' For example, scientists believe the LHC will produce a particle, the Higgs Boson, that will end debate over how matter in the universe acquires mass. Or, it could even provide evidence for more ambitious theories of the universe, such as string theory, which unites quantum mechanics and general relativity, the previously known laws of the small and large that are currently incompatible in the Standard Model." 09-08 Longest Solar Eclipse of the Century (MSNBC News) "Hordes of scientists, students and nature enthusiasts prepared Tuesday for the longest total solar eclipse of this century, while millions planned to shutter themselves indoors, giving in to superstitious myths about the phenomenon." "Wednesday's eclipse will first be sighted at dawn in India's Gulf of Khambhat, just north of the metropolis of Mumbai, before being seen in a broad swath moving north and east to Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China." 07-09 Memories Have "Plasticity" (ScienceDaily.com) "Dissecting the mechanisms behind emotional memory is important because the region of the brain that governs this also controls fear and anxiety. That is why an emotional memory, such as a traumatic car accident, can activate the autonomic nervous system, causing bodily responses like an increase in heart rate, sweating and blood pressure -- even if you don't realize it." 01-07 Moon or Mars? (CNN News) "When humans are ready to go, the agency envisions seven-day missions at first, followed by 180-day stays once a lunar outpost is in place." " 'We're not doing flags and footsteps,' Olson said. 'We're going for a long-term sustained human presence that's affordable and safe and built so that we can use the moon as a stepping stone to Mars and near-Earth asteroids and other exciting locations in the solar system.' " "A potential manned mission to the Red Planet wouldn't take place until at least 2030, Olson added." "Is it the right way to go? Critics say NASA should skip the moon and set its sights directly on Mars." 07-09 Music Training May Increase Memory in Children (CBS News) "Researchers have found that not only did the brains of young, musically trained children respond differently to hearing music, but musical training also appeared to improve the children's memories over the course of a year." 09-06 Neanderthal DNA Genes Decoded (MSNBC News) "Humans and their close Neanderthal relatives began diverging from a common ancestor about 700,000 years ago, and the two groups split permanently some 300,000 years later, according to two of the most detailed analyses of Neanderthal DNA to date." "In popular imagination, Neanderthals are often portrayed as prehistoric brutes who became outsmarted by a more advanced species, humans, emerging from Africa. But excavations and anatomical studies have shown that Neanderthals used tools, wore jewelry, buried their dead, cared for their sick, and possibly sang or even spoke in much the same way that we do. Even more humbling, perhaps, their brains were slightly larger than ours." 11-06 Oldest Animal Discovered (BBC News) "A clam dredged up off the coast of Iceland is thought to have been the longest-lived animal discovered." "Scientists said the mollusc, an ocean quahog clam, was aged between 405 and 410 years and could offer insights into the secrets of longevity." 10-07 Only 10% of Life on Earth Discovered (MSNBC News) "“We’ve only touched the surface of understanding animal life,” said entomologist Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences. 'We’ve discovered just 10 percent of all living things on this planet.' " 08-07 Planets in Other Solar Systems (Exoplanets.org) Provides news about the latest findings on planets in other solar systems. Also provides latest findings on existing planets, techniques for finding planets, and more. 8-01 Super-Smasher Targets Mysteries of the Universe (MSNBC News) "It will take months for the machine to reach full power. But eventually, those protons will be whipped up to 99.999999 percent of the speed of light, slamming together with the energy of two bullet trains colliding head-on. Underground detectors as big as cathedrals will track the subatomic wreckage on a time scale of billionths of a second. Billions of bits of data will be sent out every second for analysis." "As big as the numbers surrounding the LHC are, the mysteries it was built to address are bigger:" "What was the newborn universe made of?" "What causes things to have mass?" "Why is most of that mass hidden?" "Where did all the antimatter go?" "Is our entire universe a mere sliver of all that is?" 09-08 Water Found on Mars (MSNBC News) "The Phoenix spacecraft has tasted Martian water for the first time, scientists reported Thursday." 07-08 Where Humans Are Headed Genetically (U.S. News) "Hawks is among a growing number of scientists who are using whole-genome sequencing and other modern technologies to zero in on just how we've changed. Their research is helping illuminate not only how humans became what we are but also where we might be headed." 07-08 World's Fastest Animal (MSNBC News) "The giant palm salamander of Central America shoots out its tongue with more instantaneous power than any known muscle in the animal kingdom, a new study finds." "Bolitoglossa can extend its tongue more than half its body length in about 7 milliseconds, or about 50 times faster than an average eye blink." "The findings revealed the tongues were propelled outward much faster than could be achieved by muscle contraction alone." 03-07

Arabic, Chinese-Simple, Chinese-Traditional, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese,   Index, New, Search Engines, Dictionary, Bookstore, Licenses, Email Us, About Us, Link to Us, Sponsorships, or Privacy Policy.