NASA announced yesterday that the launch of space shuttle Discovery, which had been slated for February 12, will be delayed for at least a week.* The space agency said it needs more time to ensure that the valves controlling the flow of hydrogen gas into the external fuel tank do not pose a hazard...
The exoplanet express just keeps on rolling: The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced the discovery of the smallest known planet orbiting a normal star other than the sun.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a curious abundance of methane, both in its atmosphere and in massive liquid pools on the surface. As with Mars, the presence of the relatively short-lived compound on Titan raises questions about its origin...
A new study says the benefits don't add up
Comet Lulin, just discovered in 2007 and making what might be its maiden swing through Earth's neighborhood, should be visible in the sky throughout much of next month, drawing closest to our planet on February 24...
A phenomenon called entanglement sudden death can break critical quantum links
One corollary of the delayed start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator, is that it gives physicists—and the rest of the world—more time to mull the much-discussed possibility that the LHC could produce Earth-gobbling black holes...
The Spirit rover, one of two twin explorers sent to Mars in 2004, suffered a bit of confusion over the weekend. The rover mysteriously did not respond to its driving commands last Sunday, although it acknowledged receiving them, and did not record its activities as it usually does...
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this panorama is a J. K. Rowling–esque tome. Stitched together from 220 individual photographs, New York City photographer David Bergman's composite image of Pres...
The fields of space and climate science are growing ever more closely entwined: Japan launched a new satellite to monitor greenhouse gases late last week, and NASA is set to launch its own Orbiting Carbon Observatory next month...
Space travel is a dangerous business—everyone knows that. But even those astronauts who return to Earth safely may not be in the clear. A new study of International Space Station (ISS) veterans reveals a significant loss of bone strength, potentially upping their risk for injury later in life...
How can one quantify the importance of a given scientific paper? One simple and frequently utilized measure is the number of times that paper is cited in subsequent publications.
The far side of the moon may once have faced Earth, a new study suggests
Link between spatially separated ions could form the basis of quantum communications
The International Year of Astronomy (IYA), now under way, marks the 400th anniversary of the year that famed Italian astronomer Galileo began observing and documenting the heavens with increasingly powerful telescopes...
Tomorrow's inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., will offer space buffs a glimpse into the future: NASA's next-generation moon vehicle, the Lunar Electric Rover (LER), will roll down Pennsylvania Avenue to honor the incoming prez...
An international consortium of researchers a few months ago reported what appeared to be the smallest planet yet detected orbiting a star other than our own sun.
A mathematician with a passion for optics has devised a rearview mirror that he says eliminates that bane of lane-changing, the blind spot. Andrew Hicks, an associate math professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, designed a convex driver's side mirror that gives a wide field of view without significantly distorting the reflected image...
Physicist Steven Chu may be on the verge of becoming the nation's top energy official, but physics clearly is never far from his mind. To wit: on the day of his Senate confirmation hearing this week to become President-elect Barack Obama's energy secretary, a paper Chu co-wrote was posted by one of his co-authors on the Web site arxiv.org...
A NASA instrument aboard the moon-orbiting Indian satellite Chandrayaan-1 has provided the first glimpses inside shadowy lunar craters. The instrument, known as Mini-SAR, used radar soundings to map the floors of polar craters that are continually hidden from view...
