Mercury's secrets revealed during fleeting flybys
In 2011 NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft will insert itself into Mercury’s orbit, ending a nearly seven-year journey spanning billions of miles.
Stories by John Matson
Be like an astronaut: Vote!
Many of us once dreamed of becoming astronauts. But faced with the prospect of attaining an advanced aeronautics degree, enduring g -force training, and, um, drinking recycled urine, most of us opted for more mundane careers...
Hubble hopes pinned to tricky remote-control reboot
The Hubble Space Telescope has had a long and illustrious run, helping to pin down the age of the universe and pointing the way to the existence of dark energy.
Mercury taking shape in images of previously unseen terrain
NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, launched in 2004, completed its second flyby of Mercury early Monday morning, passing within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the planet’s surface and snapping striking photographs of never-before-seen terrain...
Nambu, Kobayashi and Maskawa Win Physics Nobel
Work on so-called symmetry breaking helped to shape the Standard Model and explain why matter won out over antimatter
The white stuff: Falling snow spotted above Mars
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, having already uncovered water ice in the soil of the Red Planet's northern polar plains, has now spotted another sight familiar to those of us who dwell in the higher latitude climes back on Earth: falling snow...
Big and bigger: New prime numbers claim top two spots
Yesterday we reported on the impending announcement of two newly discovered mammoth prime numbers, and the details, now out, do not disappoint. According to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), the volunteer-powered distributed-computing group responsible for finding most of the largest known primes (a prime number is divisible only by 1 and itself), both are larger than any other known primes: one clocks in at nearly 13 million digits in length and the other at a slightly smaller 11.2 million digits...
It's twins! Two massive new primes (as in numbers) discovered
Prime numbers have long held a special appeal among the mathematically minded, from the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes, who devised a method for finding primes some 2,200 years ago, to the cryptographers who made them the foundation of today’s encryption protocols...
Angling for a Better Way to Farm Fish--And Vegetables, Too
Aquaponics fertilizes plant crops with bacteria-treated fish waste products. The plants return the favor by filtering the fish's water—and humans can eat both of them
Are Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs Dangerous?
Compact fluorescent lightbulbs contain a minuscule amount of mercury, and you can't safely ignore potential contact with it
Does Turning Fluorescent Lights Off Use More Energy Than Leaving Them On?
Incandescent lightbulbs are lumbering toward extinction. Now, how best to use their energy-efficient replacements?
Fact or Fiction?: Chewing Gum Takes Seven Years to Digest
A myth as durable as gum itself holds that the chewy confection sticks to your innards like it does to the bottom of a desk
Strange but True: Infinity Comes in Different Sizes
If you were counting on infinity being absolute, your number's up
Strange but True: Spiders Need UV Light to Feel Amorous
Forget turning out the lights to give jumping spiders privacy for mating
