The idea that slight shifts in Earth's axis might have been enough to trigger the ice ages is a century old.

But a Harvard earth sciences Professor Peter Huybers has finally proved it, using computer models to test competing ideas - and finding that earth's tilting axis is the only one that works.

The finding could have profound implications for our understanding of our planet's climate - and could, its author says, be crucial to 'predicting long-term changes in future climate.'

Two 'cycles' in the way Earth's axis spins have an effect on the cycle - one lasting 10,000 years and one lasting roughly 40,000 years.

Scientists in Cape Cod are trying to determine what is causing dolphins to swim dangerously close to shore, with more than 100 becoming stranded in the last three weeks.

Members of Congress are due to be briefed on Friday about the strandings, the worst such event in more than a decade. Volunteers are maintaining coastal vigils and trying to get the animals back to sea.

"What is different about this particular event is that instead of having one discrete event, it is this string of ongoing strandings that started on 12 January and is just continuing," said Katie Moore, who manages marine mammal rescue operations for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "It's day after day after day.

Climate change sceptics have acquired a new explanation for why glaciers are retreating: it's not global warming, it's theft.

Police in Chile have arrested a man on suspicion of stealing five tonnes of ice from the Jorge Montt glacier in the Patagonia region to sell as designer ice cubes in bars and restaurants.

Local media reported that last Friday police intercepted a refrigerated truck with an estimated £3,900 worth of illicit ice allegedly bound for whiskies, rums and cocktails in the capital Santiago.

Mars may have been arid for more than 600 million years, making it too hostile for any life to survive on the planet’s surface, according to researchers who have been carrying out the painstaking task of analysing individual particles of Martian soil. Dr Tom Pike, from Imperial College London, will discuss the team’s analysis at a European Space Agency (ESA) meeting on 7 February 2012.

The researchers have spent three years analysing data on Martian soil that was collected during the 2008 NASA Phoenix mission to Mars. Phoenix touched down in the northern arctic region of the planet to search for signs that it was habitable and to analyse ice and soil on the surface.

Astronomers have created the world's largest virtual optical telescope linking four telescopes in Chile, so that they operate as a single device.

The telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal observatory form a virtual mirror of 130 metres in diameter.

A previous attempt to link the telescopes last March failed.

Thursday's link-up was the system's scientific verification - the final step before scientific work starts.

The origins of rice cultivation can be traced to the valleys of China's Yangtze River, with some estimates putting it at over 7,000 years ago. In that time, rice has become an integral part of Chinese life and culture. It dictates the lives of millions of farmers in the Chinese countryside, feeds over a billion Chinese citizens each year and is synonymous with Chinese cuisine and culture. And Yunnan, in southwestern China is where much of this rice originates from.

Groundhog Day 2012 hoopla is tickling the nation. Maybe it's a sign of too much technology in our lives or of boredom with the upcoming election, but Americans really seem to be getting a kick out of the quaint and quirky tradition of letting a groundhog predict the weather.

How else to explain why thousands of people showed up on this cold and dark winter's morning at Gobblers Knob -- seriously, it's called Gobblers Knob -- in Punxsutawney, Pa., to see whether Punxsutawney Phil would catch a glimpse of his shadow? And why "Groundhog Day" stories are setting the Web on fire, with no less than six of the Top 10 most frequently searched terms on Google relating in some way shape or form to prognosticating groundhogs?

But, come on, people, it can't all be butterflies and rainbows and groundhogs. We have to ask: Can groundhogs really predict what Mother Nature has in store?

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Spain has won a major victory in its long court battle with a Florida-based deep-sea salvage company over rights to an estimated $500 million in silver and gold coins, officials said Wednesday.

The treasure was recovered in 2007 from a 19th century sunken ship off the Spanish coast.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Tuesday turned aside another motion from the U.S.-based company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, and Spanish officials said they now expect the coins -- nearly 600,000 of them -- to arrive in Spain soon.

Meadows of seagrass found in the Mediterranean Sea are likely to be thousands of years old, a study shows.

Researchers found genetically identical samples of Posidonia oceanica up to 15km apart, which suggested that the species was extremely long-lived.

The team added that the organism - which provides food and shelter for many species - is under threat from climate change.

They report their findings in the open access journal Plos One.

The ACTA agreement will breach users' rights and change the course of internet evolution, argued a branch union of Bulgarian ISPs Wednesday.

"ACTA aims at obliterating anonymity and entirely transform the structure of the global network," said the Bulgarian Union of Independent Internet Providers.

In addition, Bulgarian ISPs argue that the agreement will breach privacy of users and will go as far as reverse the presumption of innocence.

Last Thursday, Bulgaria became one of 21 EU member states who joined countries such as the USA, Japan, Canada, Australia, South Korea and Switzerland as signatories to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

The team analysed data from the European Southern Observatory about a star known as GJ 667C, which is known as an M-class dwarf star and puts out much less heat than our Sun.

At least three planets are orbiting close to the star, and one of them appears to be close enough that it likely absorbs about as much incoming light and energy as Earth, has similar surface temperatures and perhaps water.

The new rocky planet, GJ 667Cc, orbits its star every 28.15 days – meaning its year equals about one Earth month – and has a mass at least 4.5 times that of Earth, according to the research published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Primitive moss-like plants could have triggered the cooling of the Earth some 470 million years ago, say researchers.

A study published in Nature Geoscience may help explain why temperatures gradually began to fall, culminating in a series of "mini ice ages".

Until now it had been thought that the process of global cooling began 100 million years later, when larger plants and trees emerged.

The eruption of some of the largest volcanoes on the planet could be predicted several decades before the event, according to researchers.

Analysis of rock crystals from the Greek island of Santorini suggests eruptions are preceded by a fast build-up of magma underground, which might be detected using modern instrumentation.

Such volcanoes can produce enough ash and gas to temporarily change the global climate.

The research is in the journal Nature.

A 6,500-year-old Sumerian gold jar, the head of a Sumerian battle axe and a stone from an Assyrian palace were among 45 relics returned to Iraq by Germany on Monday.

The items were among thousands stolen from Iraq's museums and archeological sites in the mayhem that followed the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The tiny gold jar, dating to 4,500 BC, the bronze axe head, clay tablets bearing cuneiform script, a metal amulet and other artifacts were seized by German police at public auctions and turned over to Iraqi officials in a ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Germany this week returned an ancient pre-Islamic sculpture looted during Afghanistan's civil war, giving hope to Kabul's cultural mavens that the rest of its stolen treasures will also make their way home.

Eight figures, one missing a torso and others without noses, make up the 30-cm high (12 inches) limestone antiquity from the second century AD, a reminder of Afghanistan's rich classical past as a confluence of cultures on the crossroads of Asia.

The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins.

The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.

Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time.

A spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down. But it also makes blood pressure and cholesterol go up, along with your risk for liver failure, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Sugar and other sweeteners are, in fact, so toxic to the human body that they should be regulated as strictly as alcohol by governments worldwide, according to a commentary in the current issue of the journal Nature by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

In a piece in Nature magazine, Dr David Bowman, an ecologist at the University of Tasmania, proposed bringing in large "grass-eating machines" such as elephants and rhinoceroses to limit the damage from the continent's rampant bushfires.

"It's out of control," he said. "Last year we had a fire in the outback in Central Australia the size of Tasmania." But critics said the elephants could be as difficult to control as the African grass they are supposed to contain.