Newsdesk Archive

Japanese scientists are celebrating the successful deployment of their solar sail, Ikaros.The 200-sq-m (2,100-sq-ft) membrane is attached to a small disc-shaped spacecraft that was put in orbit last month by an H-IIA rocket.Ikaros will demonstrate the principle of using sunlight as a simple and efficient means of propulsion.The technique has long been touted as a way of moving spacecraft around the Solar System using no chemical fuels.

When a hungry harbour seal sets off in pursuit of a fish diner, the animal has a secret weapon in its tracking arsenal: its whiskers. Detecting hydrodynamic trails in water with their sensitive whiskers, seals easily track passing fish even in the most turbid conditions.

Insects may have tiny brains the size of a pinhead, but the latest research from the University of Adelaide shows just how clever they really are.For the first time, researchers from the University's Discipline of Physiology have worked out how insects judge the speed of moving objects.It appears that insect brain cells have additional mechanisms which can calculate how to make a controlled landing on a flower or reach a food source. This ability only works in a natural setting.

Many famous comets may have formed in other Solar Systems, a new theory proposes.Astronomers now believe that when our Sun was still a young star, it may have gravitationally captured the "dusty" Oort cloud comets formed elsewhere in the galaxy.This contradicts the earlier theory that most comets were born in the Sun's protoplanetary disk.The scientists described their findings in the journal Science.The formation of the Oort cloud has long been a mystery.

A tooth and two fingers which belonged to pioneering Italian scientist Galileo have been put on display at a museum in Florence.The pieces were taken from his body in the 18th century and passed from collector to collector before going missing more than 100 years ag.

In an advance that sounds almost Zen, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado at Boulder, have demonstrated a new type of pulsed laser that excels at not producing light. The new device generates sustained streams of "dark pulses" -- repeated dips in light intensity -- which is the opposite of the bright bursts in a typical pulsed laser.

A Spanish researcher and a Paraguayan scientist have presented the most complete and detailed European study into the repertoire of sounds used by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) to communicate. The study reveals the complexity and our lack of understanding about the communication of these marine mammals.Until now, the scientific community had thought that whistles were the main sounds made by these mammals, and were unaware of the importance and use of burst-pulsed sounds. Researchers from the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute (BDRI), based in Sardinia (Italy) have now shown that these sounds are vital to the animals' social life and mirror their behaviour.

A Johns Hopkins and Japanese research team has generated the first comprehensive genetic "parts" list of a mouse hypothalamus, an enigmatic region of the brain -- roughly cherry-sized, in humans -- that controls hunger, thirst, fatigue, body temperature, wake-sleep cycles and links the central nervous system to control of hormone levels.Flaws in hypothalamus development may underlie both inborn and acquired metabolic balance problems that can lead to obesity, diabetes, mood disorders and high blood pressure, according to a report on the study published May 2 in the advance online publication of Nature Neuroscience.

Astronomers have taken what they say are the first-ever direct images of planets outside of our solar system, including a visible-light snapshot of a single-planet system and an infrared picture of a multiple-planet system.Earth-like worlds might also exist in the three-planet system, but if so they are too dim to photograph. The other newfound planet orbits a star called Fomalhaut, which is visible without the aid of a telescope. It is the 18th brightest star in the sky.The massive worlds, each much heftier than Jupiter (at least for the three-planet system), could change how astronomers define the term "planet," one planet-hunter said.

An international group of researchers reports the discovery of a set of rare genetic variations that may increase susceptibility to autism spectrum disorders. The new study, which came out of the Autism Genome Project Consortium, the largest database of genetic information from families with autism, was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that by applying chemicals to manipulate genes in a developing embryo, they've been able to change the brain of one type of cichlid fish to resemble that of another. The researchers also discovered differences in the general patterning of the brain very early in development before functional neurons form in a process known as neurogenesis. This finding is at odds with a well-held theory known as "late equals large."The research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The parents of a three-year-old girl say she has been smoking and drinking like an adult ever since she was in a road accident.Ya Wen lives in a shelter with her parents who collect and sell garbage for money in Huizhou in southern China's Fujian province.Her mother, Gao, says Ya Wen is now addicted to cigarettes and will also down glasses of beer whenever she gets the chance.

The sun is about to get a lot more active, which could have ill effects on Earth. So to prepare, top sun scientists met Tuesday to discuss the best ways to protect Earth's satellites and other vital systems from the coming solar storms.Solar storms occur when sunspots on our star erupt and spew out flumes of charged particles that can damage power systems. The sun's activity typically follows an 11-year cycle, and it looks to be coming out of a slump and gearing up for an active period.

NASA has released the first-ever up close video available for the public, taken from inside a space shuttle after landing, showing the checkout procedures and the "towback" to the Orbiter Processing Facility. It was taken on May 26, 2010 following shuttle Atlantis' landing following the STS-132 mission.Following every shuttle landing, about 150 trained workers assist the crew out and prepare the shuttle for towing atop a large diesel-driven tractor to the OPF.

The world's largest DNA scan for familial autism has uncovered new genetic changes in autistic children that are often not present in their parents. Identified in less than 1 percent of the population, these rare variants occur nearly 20 percent more in autistic children.Published in the June 9 online edition of Nature, the findings emphasize the need for larger study samples to illuminate the diverse genetic causes of the brain disorder.

Distinct populations of snake species on three continents have crashed over the last decade, raising fears that the reptiles may be in global decline, according to a study published Wednesday.The pattern across the eight species monitored was alarmingly similar despite their geographical isolation, which points to a common cause such as climate change, the researchers said.Other factors known to play a role include habitat loss, pollution, disease, lack of prey and over-exploitation, either for food or trade.

LONDON: Scientists have claimed that a huge carbon "burp" from deep ocean kick-started global warming at end of the last Ice Age some 18,000 years ago.According to the scientists, the carbon dioxide was actually locked away in the deep ocean "repository" and as the Earth warmed, it was released into the atmosphere causing the global warming and ending the last Ice Age.

A stolen letter written by 17th-century thinker Rene Descartes and found in the United States was returned to France on Tuesday, ending a detective tale featuring a Google search and a thieving Italian count."I am, of course, a bit amazed at what a simple search at home from your home computer late at night can bring about," Erik-Jan Bos, a Dutch Descartes scholar who found the letter through the web, said before a handover ceremony.

A major UK-built radio telescope has been launched in Hampshire to help astronomers detect when the first stars in the universe were formed.The European Low Frequency Array (Lofar) telescope involves 96 radio antennae erected in a field at the Chilbolton Observatory near Andover.The telescope, which works on a low FM frequency, will collect data to help astronomers with their research.

A genetically modified vaccine originally used to eradicate yellow fever could be the key to stopping a mosquito-borne scourge that afflicts much of the developing world.There is no vaccine for malaria, which sickens almost a quarter of a billion people each year and kills a child every 30 seconds. That could be changing: researchers at The Rockefeller University have genetically transformed the yellow fever vaccine to prime the immune system to fend off the mosquito borne parasites that cause the disease. The researchers found that the modified vaccine, along with a booster, provided mice with immunity to the deadly disease.

The haunting mystery of Britain's headless Romans may have been solved at last, thanks to scars from a lion's bite and hammer marks on decapitated skulls.The results of forensic work, announced today, on more than 80 skeletons of well-built young men, gradually exhumed from the gardens of a York terrace over a decade, suggests that the world's best-preserved gladiator graveyard has been found.

For more than 25 years, our understanding of terrestrial space weather has been partly based on incorrect assumptions about how nitrogen, the most abundant gas in our atmosphere, reacts when it collides with electrons produced by energetic ultraviolet sunlight and "solar wind."New research published today, Tuesday 8 June, in IOP's Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics describes how scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology have fired electrons of differing energies through a cloud of nitrogen gas to measure the ultraviolet light emitted by this collision.

A new study pinpoints the genetic changes that enable Tibetans to thrive at altitudes where others get sick.In the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team has identified a gene that allows Tibetans to live and work more than two miles above sea level without getting altitude sickness.

Fancy your own space pad? Bigelow Aerospace has a couple orbital habitats that might be of interest. And the test launch of Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon 9 rocket today is pumping new life into the possibility of private space taxi service to such privately owned inflatable habitats."We're coming closer than ever before to having a space transportation system," said Mike Gold, chief counsel for Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, which launched its first prototype inflatable spacecraft into orbit in July 2006 and its second a year later.

Scotty won't beam anybody anywhere anytime soon, but a new report by Chinese scientists shows that it is possible to transmit information over long distances using quantum entanglement. The research, published in the current issue of the journal Nature Photonics, could lead to faster and smaller quantum-based computers and unbreakable, encrypted communication across the world.The team reported the were able to "teleport" information 16 kilometers, or 9.9 miles.

The use of brain scanners must be regulated in order to prevent them being used to invade privacy and threaten civil liberties, a legal expert has warned.

While all eyes, red and otherwise, are on November's vote on marijuana legalization in California, the state Senate narrowly voted this week to reclassify possession of less than an ounce of weed as an infraction with a penalty of $100 rather than its current status as a misdemeanor with the same fine.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an indigenous cemetery dating back about 4 500 years on the island of Ometepe in southern Nicaragua, local media have reported.

A mysterious gray whale sighted off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea has been seen again off the north east coast of Spain.The second sighting, made 23 days and 3000km after the first, has continued to perplex whale experts.Gray whales were thought to be extinct across the Atlantic Ocean, so the appearance of an individual within the Mediterranean Sea was a major surprise.

In the book, I talk about global warming and overpopulation. I trace a lot of these issues back in time to the dawn of the Neolithic. This was a period when humanity made a sea change in its culture. We settled down and started growing our own food.Given that it has been so successful - 99.99% of the people in the world today are agriculturalists, and hunter-gatherers are a tiny minority - you would guess that it is successful for a reason. That it is a wonderful way of life, improved our health and so on.It turns out, that's not actually the case. Even if you look at very early communities, as they made the transition from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to farming in the same region, they became less healthy. They ended up shorter, they tended to die younger, the skeletal structure changed in a way that's consistent with a decreased level of nutrition. So the question is why did (farming) win out?

For the fourth year in a row, about a third of honeybee hives in the United States died off during the past winter. Worker bees are succumbing to a mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which scientists are still struggling to understand.

For over two years, paleontologists have been chipping away at Dakota, a rare mummified duck-billed dinosaur that remains encased in a "stone tomb," according to a Grand Forks Herald report.The dinosaur, however, is nearly 75 percent removed, revealing what appears to be fossilized skin, ligaments, tendons and, scientists hope, some fossilized internal organs.Dakota is an Edmontosaurus that lived 65 million years ago in what are now the North Dakota Badlands.

Previously the free feature length production dialogue between Graham Hancock & David Wilcock was split into 10 parts, but is now up in it's entirety in one complete video on YouTube. Enjoy watching!

V2G technology can turn an electric car into a moving power station. Jorge Ribas rides shotgun with Willett Kempton, the man behind the concept.

Less ice covers the Arctic today than at any time in recent geologic history. That's the conclusion of an international group of researchers, who have compiled the first comprehensive history of Arctic ice.For decades, scientists have strived to collect sediment cores from the difficult-to-access Arctic Ocean floor, to discover what the Arctic was like in the past. Their most recent goal: to bring a long-term perspective to the ice loss we see today.

If tectonic plate collisions cause volcanic eruptions, as every fifth grader knows, why do some volcanoes erupt far from a plate boundary?A study in Nature suggests that volcanoes and mountains in the Mediterranean can grow from the pressure of the semi-liquid mantle pushing on Earth's crust from below.

Ian Fasel, a UA assistant research professor, recently received two grants to fund research and design projects toward creating highly intelligent robots.Humans have trained robots to build vehicles, fly airplanes, automatically test blood pressure in hospital patients and even play table tennis.

AGAINST all the odds, a number of shape-shifting islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are standing up to the effects of climate change.For years, people have warned that the smallest nations on the planet - island states that barely rise out of the ocean - face being wiped off the map by rising sea levels. Now the first analysis of the data broadly suggests the opposite: most have remained stable over the last 60 years, while some have even grown.

Greenhouse-gas-pumping cars are, let's face it, never going to be green. But innovative sunlight-powered fuel production techniques could inch motor vehicles towards carbon neutrality.Experimental solar-powered reactors have shown they can create the building blocks for synthetic liquid fuels. They've got a way to go, but these projects could take a big chunk out of net carbon dioxide emissions without the need for major changes to either vehicles or refuelling infrastructure.

Elucidating the original peopling of the New World is a mammoth undertaking, in more ways than one. David Meltzer weaves everything from the extinction of said beasts to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals into First Peoples in a New World. He explains how our understanding of the initial colonization of the Americas evolved as the field of prehistoric archaeology emerged and matured in the United States, and as new scientific methods such as radiocarbon dating were developed. The troubled history between Native Americans and Europeans is also a part of the story.

Sydney - An Aboriginal painting of two giant emu-like birds could be Australia's oldest rock art, archaeologists said Monday.The red ochre painting found in the far north of the continent could date back 40,000 years to the earliest days of its settlement.Archaeologist Ben Gunn said Genyornis, the species depicted in the painting, became extinct 40,000 years ago.

A privately-owned rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on its first test flight is believed to be responsible.But Doug Moffett from UFO Research NSW says he has a few problems with this theory."Firstly, the time of the launch was 18.45 GMT, which translates to 4.45am EST, the duration of the flight was 9 minutes 38 seconds - this is a full hour before the reported sightings," he said."Secondly, where was the glow from the boosters or from the friction created by the craft moving through the atmosphere, where was the tail of the rocket?"Thirdly, why would anyone launch a rocket on a maiden test flight with a trajectory that would take it over the most heavily populated parts of Australia?"And how big must this rocket have been to be seen so clearly, at the same time, over such a vast distance?".

The first thing you notice about the Mojave Air & Space Port is the large number of commercial airliners just sitting around under the desert sun. The climate here means it's the perfect place for aircraft manufacturers to store planes whose owners haven't managed to finish paying for them. If the spectre of this aviation elephants' graveyard wasn't strange enough, five miles to the west is the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm - the second-biggest in the world, with more than 5,000 wind turbines.

DNA recovered from ancient caribou bones reveals a possible link between several small unique caribou herds and a massive volcanic eruption that blanketed much of the Alaskan Yukon territory in a thick layer of ash 1,000 years ago, reports research published in Molecular Ecology.It's just part of the story being read from ancient caribou remains by an international team of scientists from the U.S., U.K. and Canada who have been studying the history of this iconic and fragile Canadian species.

Researchers in Germany have genetically modified fruitfly larvae so that they can smell light. The team, led by Klemens Störtkuhl of Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, managed to change the larvae's odour receptors so that they respond to blue light instead of smells1. The researchers hope that the move will allow them to unravel the way in which the larvae detect and interpret smells.Fruitfly larvae normally shy away from light, but will move towards favourable smells, such as those of food, or flee unpleasant odours. Trying to work out which receptors are responding to which odour, though, is difficult. "Multiple odorant receptors may be activated by one odour, a single odorant receptor may be sensitive to multiple odours," says biologist Elaine Fishilevich of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the work. "And then there is the timing of activation.

Scientists have discovered that the ancient velvet worm uses a glue unlike anything seen before in nature.The glue is easy to replicate and could have a range of applications, such as a medical glue for open wounds and burns.CSIRO Entomology scientist Dr Victoria Haritos, who uncovered the worm's secret, says "it's a case of using disorder as a weapon".Dr Haritos is looking for new types of silk and milked an Australian species of velvet worm called euperipatoides rowelli.

A bright spiralling light, believed by astronomers to be a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, was spotted in skies across Australia's east coast just before dawn today, sparking a UFO frenzy.Described by some witnesses as a "lollipop-type swirl", the cloud of light was seen over the country's three easternmost provinces -- New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory -- shortly before sunrise.

Here is a strange echo from history.It is a documentary made by the BBC in 1973 about the story of the ship, the Exodus.It was the ship full of Jewish refugees - many of them survivors of the Holocaust - that tried to break the British blockade of Palestine in 1947. The participants from both sides appear and describe in detail how British soldiers boarded the ship 21 miles off the coast of Palestine killing 3 of the refugees and wounding others.It caused an international scandal and was a PR disaster for the British government. It is seen in Israel today as one of the most significant events that led to the founding of the modern Israeli state.

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing new 3D maps of the interstellar gas in the local area around our Sun. A French-American team of astronomers presents new absorption measurements towards more than 1800 stars. They were able to characterize the properties of the interstellar gas within each sight line.This week, Astronomy & Astrophysics publishes new 3D maps of the interstellar gas situated in an area 300 parsecs around the Sun. A French-American team of astronomers presents new measurements of the absorption by the interstellar gas in the Sun's local area. Knowledge of the interstellar medium properties, including the spatial distribution, dynamics, and the chemical and physical characteristics, allow astronomers to better understand the interplay between the evolution of stars and their exchange of matter with the ambient interstellar medium. The local area around our Sun has been studied with many surveys at various wavelengths, but the whole picture is still far from being either complete or fully understood.

Doctors might one day be able to 'print' living body parts they need for surgery, including blood vessels and entire organs.The astonishing technique is known as bio-printing and it could make the transplant list a thing of the past.Currently patients on the transplant list have to wait months or even years before a suitable organ becomes available.

PASADENA, Calif. - Two new papers based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft scrutinize the complex chemical activity on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. While non-biological chemistry offers one possible explanation, some scientists believe these chemical signatures bolster the argument for a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to life on Titan's surface. According to one theory put forth by astrobiologists, the signatures fulfill two important conditions necessary for a hypothesized "methane-based life."One key finding comes from a paper online now in the journal Icarus that shows hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Another paper online now in the Journal of Geophysical Research maps hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene.

Fish oil helps schoolchildren to concentrate ran a headline in the Observer. Regular readers will remember the omega-3 fish oil pill issue. The entire British news media has been claiming for several years now that there are trials showing that the pill improves school performance and behaviour in mainstream children, despite the fact that no such trial has ever been published.There is something very attractive about the idea that solutions to complex problems in education lie in a pill.

Archaeological discoveries -1200 pieces of flint stones dating back to 250, 000 years ago were unearthed at al-Sharar Valley near Daraa, Southern Syria.The pieces were discovered by the expedition of Damascus University in cooperation with the Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in the governorate. Head of the expedition Prof. Ahmad Diab said the findings prove that the Acholic and Mousteric civilizations existed in Horan, proved to be in light of the findings one of the most important and old-inhabited places in Syria.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs spoke at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference Tuesday night where co-hosts Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher interviewed him onstage about all things Apple.Jobs, for the first time, said that he started working on the iPad "in the early 2000s" before the company developed the iPhone. When his engineers showed him the multi-touch interface, he realized it would be a good design for a phone. The tablet project was "put on a shelf" but the rest is history. Jobs said that Apple has sold 2 million iPads since it went on sale on April 3rd -- an iPad is sold every three seconds.

On the morning of the ascent, Peter Kinloch was elated. The 28-year old Scotsman knew he was about to realize his lifelong dream of conquering Mount Everest.But the view he saw from the roof of the world was his last.Minutes after reaching the summit, Kinloch went blind.

The Spanish tech corporation Tecnalia recently unveiled a bright orange electric vehicle in Madrid that it says can go from 0 to 87 miles per hour (140 kilometers) in 10 seconds. EVs are turning a corner, and Tecnalia's "Dynacar" is joining the ranks of those taking that turn at a very high rate of speed.Tecnalia, an international corporation based in Spain that specializes in technological research and innovation, presented Dynacar at the International Eco Friendly Vehicle & Sustainability Mobility Show, which took place in Madrid recently. This colorful two-seater has a permanent magnet synchronous electric motor that provides 100 kilowatts of peak power. Its storage capacity is 15 kilowatt hours and its operating range is nearly 44 miles, or 70 kilometers.

The origin of Mars' tiny moon, Phobos (fear in ancient Greek), is a mystery, but three theories are considered plausible. The first is that the moon is a captured asteroid; the second is that it formed in-situ as Mars formed below it, and the third is that Phobos formed later than Mars, from debris flung into martian orbit when a massive meteorite struck the Red Planet. A fourth, far more speculative and controversial (although thoroughly intriguing) theory is one that has been kicking around for decades: that Phobos is a artificial object in Mars orbit -in short, a 1.5-mile-long, extremely ancient and battered spacecraft.The European Space Agency Mars Express past and future Phobos flybys are designed to provide clues that might solve the mystery of its origins.

Neanderthal man was living in Britain at the start of the last ice age - 40,000 years earlier than previously thought, archaeologists have said.

An astronomer says a bright spiralling light spotted in the sky by people across eastern Australia this morning was probably a satellite, space junk or a rocket.The UFO was seen moving through the sky just before sunrise in New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT.ABC News Online has received dozens of emails, pictures and videos from those who were awe-stricken by the huge white light.See a collection of photos here.

A stone age axe head, believed to be 7,000 years old, has been uncovered in Derry.The artefact was found on freshly ploughed land on the banks of the River Foyle near Thornhill College. The suspected axe head was spotted by a man walking his dog in the area and he took the item home.Local archaeologist Ian Leitch believes the item dates from the Mesolithic period or middle stone age and was around 7,000 years old.And he believes the finds significant in terms of the wider archaeology of the area. "The axe head from Culmore suggests that there may be a mesolithic site on or near to the find spot. It may have been dropped or lost by its owner while out hunting on land near the river.

AMEXICO CITY.- Created under the orders of Bernardino de Sahagun by 20 tlacuilos or painters and 4 Indigenous masters, Florentine Codex is one of the greatest expressions of the Renascence in America.Bilingual and bicultural, this ancient encyclopedia was written in two columns, one in Nahuatl and the other in Spanish as a summary, and is integrated by 4,000 handwritten pages with 2,686 colored images; each book has a prologue where Sahagun places the work in its dimension and time.

OTSU--A clay figure believed to be 13,000 years old and one of the oldest in the country, was found in an archaeological site in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, the Shiga Prefectural Association for Cultural Heritage said.The tiny figure, 3.1 centimeters in height and 14.6 grams in weight, depicts a female torso with breasts and a waistline.The figure, which was discovered at the Aidanikumahara archaeological site, is from an incipient era of the Jomon Pottery Culture, according to the association.

Sydney - An Aboriginal painting of two giant emu-like birds could be Australia's oldest rock art, archaeologists said Monday.The red ochre painting found in the far north of the continent could date back 40,000 years to the earliest days of its settlement.Archaeologist Ben Gunn said Genyornis, the species depicted in the painting, became extinct 40,000 years ago.

Fragments of stone tools found at the Sunabara remains in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, may not be as old as originally thought, according to archaeologists.At a meeting of the Japanese Archaeological Association in Tokyo on Sunday, the fragments were estimated to date from 70,000 to 127,000 years ago.

An extremely rare and pristine meteorite was found on the side of the road in Eastern Oregon and experts say it's 4.5 billion years old.Don Wesson found the rock 11 years ago. VIDEO.

The only known photo of the two together is revealed. VIDEO.

Academic sleuths have used fine art and old newspapers to figure out exactly which meteor Walt Whitman was talking about in his poem "Year of Meteors (1859-60)." It's the latest example of a historical exercise known as "forensic astronomy."The "strange huge meteor procession" that Whitman saw occurred on July 20, 1860, researchers from Texas State University at San Marcos report in the July 2010 edition of Sky & Telescope magazine. The event inspired not only Whitman, but the famed landscape painter Frederic Church as well - and it was Church's painting that helped solve the mystery.

Six would-be cosmonauts have entered a sealed facility where they will spend 18 months with no windows and only e-mail contact with the outside world.The men are taking part in the Mars500 project, which aims to simulate a mission to Mars.They entered the craft, located at a medical institute in Moscow, just before 1100 BST on Thursday.

The mobile satellite services provider Iridium has ordered 81 spacecraft to upgrade its global network.Thales Alenia Space of France will build the satellites - 66 to form the operational constellation, the remainder to act as spares.The order makes the Iridium Next venture the biggest commercial space project in the world today.The $2.1bn deal has largely been underwritten by the French export credit guarantee organisation, Coface.

The Duke of Edinburgh has opened what is thought to be the first water desalination plant on the UK mainland.The facility in Beckton, east London, is part of Thames Water's plan to tackle water shortages in the capital.It said the £270m centre would deliver up to 140 million litres of water to 400,000 homes in a drought.The plant will be run by using renewable biofuels such as cooking oil and waste fat in an effort to reduce its impact on the environment.

A study of discarded oyster shells has reinforced the idea that the first British colonists in America had to endure an unusually severe drought.Founded in 1607, Jamestown in Virginia was the first successful English settlement in North America.Chemical analysis of shells thrown away from 1611-1612 shows that the James River where the oysters were harvested was much saltier then than it is today.

An unmanned Japanese spacecraft designed to return samples from an asteroid has completed an important step on its journey back to Earth.Hayabusa achieved the second and largest of four engine firings designed to guide the probe back home.The probe visited the asteroid Itokawa in 2005, making close approaches designed to capture soil samples.But the mission has been plagued by technical glitches affecting the engines and communications with Earth.

Severe torrential rain has resulted in flooding and mudslides across much of Guatemala, causing some communities to be entirely cut off and requiring the evacuation of thousands of people. Tropical Storm Agatha, the first named storm of the Pacific hurricane season, made landfall on 29 May 2010 in Guatemala and left a trail of destruction across much of Central America. The World Heritage Centre deeply regrets the loss of life resulting from these events.

Who are Saraswats?In India, there are at least five Brahmin communities who claim themselves as 'Saraswat Brahmins', including: Gaud Saraswat Brahmins, Chitrapur Saraswats, Rajapur/Bhalavalikar Saraswat Brahmins, Kashmiri Saraswats, Punjabi Saraswats, Sindh Saraswats, Kutch Saraswats and Rajasthan Saraswats. This community, as a whole, has produced eminent personalities including Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, Vijay Mallya, Dr TMA Pai, Nandan Nilekani, Girish Karnad, Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Deepika Padukone, Shyam Benegal, and Guru Dutt.

A dig site at the Yanghai Tombs with the Gobi Desert's Huoyan Shan mountain range in background. Archaeologists uncovered a 2,700-year-old grave here that contained a stash of marijuana.

Venice, Louisiana (CNN) -- Kindra Arnesen's husband often calls while he's out on a shrimping trip, so she wasn't surprised to hear her cell phone ring the night of April 29 while he was on an overnight fishing expedition.However, this time, her husband, David, wasn't calling to tell her about the day's catch or to wish their children Aleena and David Jr. a good night. He was calling to tell her he was sick, and the strange thing about it, so were men on the seven other shrimping boats working near his.

A short entry - AP Photographer Charlie Riedel just filed the following images of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana's East Grand Terre Island. As BP engineers continue their efforts to cap the underwater flow of oil, landfall is becoming more frequent, and the effects more evident. (8 photos total).

GPS is getting an upgrade costing $8 billion (US), which aims to increase the system's accuracy, improve its reliability, and make the technology even more widespread.The Global Positioning System (GPS) is almost everywhere these days, not just as navigational aids in vehicles and mobile phones but in many everyday industrial and commercial applications. GPS enables courier companies to track their shipments, for example, and it enables ATMs and financial institutions to time-stamp transactions. It is used in emergency hospital paging systems, and helps firefighters to find fires. Colonel David B. Goldstein, chief engineer for the upgrade said they know the world relies on GPS, but the ever increasing number of devices using GPS also increases the strain on the system.

A new U.S.-German infrared observatory mounted in a jumbo jet has made its first in-flight night observations.NASA said Friday that the highly modified Boeing 747SP jetliner carrying the 100-inch-diameter telescope achieved the milestone on May 26 during a six-hour flight from its base in Palmdale, Calif.

A spacecraft built by students has been launched towards another planet for the first time, but it has fallen ominously silent.The toaster-oven-sized cube called UNITEC-1 was launched towards Venus on 21 May. It hitched a ride on the same rocket that launched a half-tonne Venus orbiter named Akatsuki, which was built by Japan's national space agency.UNITEC-1 was designed and built largely by students, though the project was led by University of Tokyo professor Shinichi Nakasuka.

Flavio Barbiero, retired admiral in the Italian Navy & author of several books, including The Bible Without Secrets and The Secret Society of Moses, will be with us in our Author Of The Month messageboard throughout June to discuss their latest book featured in our most recent Forum Article

NASA authorities report that an unknown object approaching the Earth from deep space is almost certainly artificial in origin rather than being an asteroid. Object 2010 KQ was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona earlier this month, and subsequently tracked by NASA's asteroid-watching service, the Near-Earth Object Program headquartered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.Observations by astronomer S J Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that 2010 KQ's spectral characteristics do not match any of the known asteroid types, and the object's absolute magnitude (28.9) suggests it is only a few meters in size.

What does it feel like to kill a man? James Lenihan of Brooklyn, New York, knew.He fought in Europe in World War II and he killed a German soldier during a battle in Holland. He described how it felt in a poem.I shot a man yesterdayAnd much to my surprise,The strangest thing happened to meI began to cry.So begins "Murder: Most Foul," a work that echoes poetry about war in the tradition of William Shakespeare and borrows its title from the bard's "Hamlet."As powerful as the poem is, the story behind it is also fascinatin.

Doctors believe that a burst of brain activity occurs just before death and this could account for vivid "spiritual" experiences reported by those who come back from the brink.

A new article is up online by Scott Creighton, titled: The Orion Key: Unlocking the Mystery of Giza. Enjoy.

Charles Darwin's theories of evolution have revolutionized the way mankind understands its origin. Now, engineers suggest that the process of natural selection may have surprising implications for spacecraft as well. An ion engine designed to power future spacecraft has achieved its optimal design via software that simulates Darwinian evolution.

NASA engineers have fully revived the far-flung Voyager 2 probe on the edge of the solar system after fixing a computer glitch that scrambled its messages home for nearly three weeks.A single bit flip in one location in the 33-year-old probe's memory storage caused the problem, and was remotely reset Sunday by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. After a computer reset, the Voyager 2 is back on track, they said.

Ex US President Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was informed about the presence of aliens on Earth and was invited to meet them.Junior retiring State Representative of New Hampshire, Henry W. McElroy said that President Eisenhower was briefed about the presence of ETs on earth.

Scientists have discovered the secret behind an ancient Chinese super-strong mortar made from sticky rice, the delicious "sweet rice" that is a modern mainstay in Asian dishes. They also concluded that the mortar ― a paste used to bind and fill gaps between bricks, stone blocks and other construction materials ― remains the best available material for restoring ancient buildings.Their article appears in the American Chemical Society (ACS) monthly journal, Accounts of Chemical Research.

A giant sinkhole larger than a street intersection has swallowed a three-storey building and a house in Guatemala, as residents reel from a storm that has killed at least 146 people across Central America.In the north of Guatemala City, the giant sinkhole opened up in the wake of Tropical Storm Agatha, reportedly killing a security guard although local officials have not confirmed the death.

Rochom P'ngieng, now 29 years old, first disappeared into thick hilly jungle in 1989 when she was a little girl. She was "discovered" in early 2007 and reunited with her family.However, attempts to reintegrate her have failed. She has not learnt either of the local languages, Khmer or Phnang, prefers to crawl rather than walk, refuses to wear clothes and has made several attempts to return to the forest where she grew up.Her father, Sal Lou, a policeman, said that she had been making progress recently, but disappeared on Tuesday evening. "She took off her clothes and ran away from the house without saying a word to any of our family members," Mr Lou said.

It was an age when reindeer roamed the Scottish landscape, competing for territory with human raiding parties from what is now the North Sea.The country lay under glaciers as far south as the Highland Line, and a mini ice-age was fast approaching.Today, for the first time, Scottish archaeologists will tell the story of this remarkable period at a national conference in Glasgow.

Archaeologists carrying out routine excavations at Lahoun in Fayoum last week chanced upon what is believed to be an ancient Egyptian cemetery. The Egyptian team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) found 45 tombs from different times in the Pharaonic era, each tomb containing a painted wooden sarcophagus with the mummy of the deceased still inside it.

AMMAN - Archaeological finds in the northern Jordan Valley are forcing experts to rethink the patterns of the earliest civilisations.In Tabqat Fahel, 90 kilometres north of Amman, recent finds indicate that the ancient site of Pella, which spans across the earliest pre-historic times to the Mameluke era, may have been a part of the cradle of civilisations.

Europe requires space-borne laser instruments that can provide information on the vertical scale of volcanic ash clouds.That was one thought to come out of a meeting of some 50 experts gathered this week in Frascati, Italy, to assess Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull eruption.Such information can be used to work out ash concentration and thus determine the risk to aircraft engines.The US Calipso lidar was shown to be very effective in returning this data.

From the beginning, exoplanets have defied our expectations for what a solar system would look like.The first planets were discovered around pulsars, then we got "hot Jupiters" which hug close to their parent stars. Lately, we've seen a planet being engulfed by its star and all kinds of weird, eccentric orbits.

How hot were woolly mammoths and dinosaurs? A new technique enables scientists to determine the precise body temperatures of these long-gone animals, along with those for other living and extinct species, according to a new study.The method, described in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has already revealed the body heat of an extinct rhinoceros (97.8 degrees Fahrenheit), an extinct alligator (86.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and woolly mammoths, which disappeared from most of their range about 10,000 years ago.

Scientists have found the possible source of a huge carbon dioxide 'burp' that happened some 18,000 years ago and which helped to end the last ice age.The results provide the first concrete evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) was more efficiently locked away in the deep ocean during the last ice age, turning the deep sea into a more 'stagnant' carbon repository - something scientists have long suspected but lacked data to support.

For two decades, the laboratory mouse has been the workhorse of biomedical studies and the only mammal whose genes scientists could effectively and reliably manipulate to study human diseases and conditions.Now researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have added another experimental research animal to the scientific stable: the rat.

Talk about gazing into the future. Imagine ultra high-definition TVs not much thicker than a millimeter. How about electronic books made with plastic screens that flex like a magazine? Or perhaps a display that lets you touch a virtual version of yourself on the other side of the glass?.