A recent archeological find of 1000-year-old human remains in Skagafjördur in north Iceland may shed a new light on a period of Iceland’s history that is largely in the dark, the period around which Iceland converted to Christianity.

Archeologists have found bones that belonged to an infant and an old man under a layer of volcanic ash from 1104 during an ongoing excavation project at the farm Steinsstadir, Fréttabladid reports.

The builders of the world's biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.

Representatives at Fermilab in Illinois and at Europe's CERN laboratory, two of the defendants in the case, say there's no chance that the Large Hadron Collider would cause such cosmic catastrophes. Nevertheless, they're bracing to defend themselves in the courtroom as well as the court of public opinion.

University of Arizona optical scientists have broken a technological barrier by making three-dimensional holographic displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

The holographic displays ­ which are viewed without special eyewear ­ are the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory ever to be developed, making them ideal tools for medical, industrial and military applications that require "situational awareness."

"This is a new type of device, nothing like the tiny hologram of a dove on your credit card," UA optical sciences professor Nasser Peyghambarian said.

The sun may not shine as brightly, but nothing on Earth can compare to sunset drinks over the red Martian landscape. Veteran travelers and residents claim that you don’t notice the additional 39 minutes per day, but newcomers swear Mars-lag is real. No matter, after a morning spent off-roading across the red rocks and dust, the armchairs at the Two Seasons welcome sore bottoms like a loving mother’s embrace. And the gins and tonic are perfect; they even have a license to use real ice.

The Neanderthal's huge nose is a fluke of evolution, not some grand adaptation, research suggests.

The Neanderthal nose has been a matter of befuddlement for anthropologists, who point out that modern cold-adapted humans have narrow noses to moisten and warm air as it enters the lung, and reduce water and heat loss during exhalation.

Big noses tend to be found in people whose ancestors evolved in tropical climates, where a large nasal opening helps cool the body.

Much of life on Earth gets regularly wiped out every 27 million years, according to boffins. It had been thought that this was caused by a dark star named "Nemesis", but apparently that was wrong. The next globo-extinction event is due in about 16 million years' time.

The revelations are made in a new paper from paleontologist Richard K Bambach of the Smithsonian Institution and astronomer Adrian Melott, flagged up by the Physics arXiv blog and viewable online here.

PARIS – French authorities on Tuesday briefly detained the widow of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, who is being sought by Rwanda on charges related to the nation's 1994 genocide, officials said.

Agathe Habyarimana was taken into custody at her home in Courcouronnes, south of Paris, on a Rwandan warrant, said a judicial official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and could not be named.

Ever since astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the Moon, there has been an adamant group of conspiracy theorists who claim the whole event was concocted in a film studio.

In 2002, a frustrated Mr Aldrin even punched a documentary maker who claimed the Moon missions were faked.

Now new photos taken by Nasa's Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter (LRO) camera may settle the matter once and for all.

When the space shuttle Atlantis lands — planned for Saturday — it will cap off a mission to Hubble and mark the end of the servicing era.

The astronauts' fifth overhaul of the Hubble Space Telescope was the last planned mission to repair the telescope, or any satellite for that matter. And if NASA retires the space shuttle fleet in 2010 as planned, the agency will lose the ability to visit orbiting spacecraft and repair them in space.

More sightings of a huge flying creature, originally reported by KENS, have prompted an investigation to determine if it is a monster or myth.

"Even though it was dark, the thing itself was black. The blackest I'd ever seen," said Frank Ramirez.

Years ago, Ramirez thought he was after a prowler in the back of his mother's Southwest Side home. But what greeted him on the garage rooftop still gives him goosebumps now.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Scientists operating the "Big Bang" particle collider at CERN could solve the mystery of what gives mass to matter during a nearly two-year non-stop run lasting until late 2011, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

James Gillies told Reuters the long-sought but elusive Higgs Boson particle could well appear during the extended experiment after the world's biggest and most expensive scientific machine is turned on again later this month.

AMELBOURNE: Australian scientists have claimed that the human brain has the ability to "rewire itself" and the findings could revolutionize the way brain injuries are treated in the future.

The Hobart-based Menzies Research Institute has been investigating how the brain responds to trauma, particularly what occurs within the cerebral cortex or the outer layer of grey matter. "The most unique finding that we've found is that another group of these nerve cells are actually able to remodel their processes and change their shape in order to respond to the injury," Tracey Dickson, a senior researcher at the institute, said.

BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT, N.M. - Inside the dark, cliffside cave last occupied by the people of Frijoles Canyon some 500 years ago, is evidence of more recent human activity: graffiti proclaiming "2008" and "I love you" carved into a wall.

"Oh, man," art conservator Larry Humetewa muttered as he bent to inspect the damage in the "cavate," a large, cave-live room.

Organizers of an effort to get UFO reports taken more seriously teased journalists on Friday with glimpses at dark, grainy video showing what appeared to be a face peeping up from a window.

The video was played at a downtown Denver news conference, after days of buildup from a Denver resident who is circulating a petition calling on the city to create an "Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission" to deal with reports of alien encounters. The petition drive's organizer, Jeff Peckman, hopes to get 4,000 signatures to place his initiative on the ballot.

The young horse, who was born to a chocolate brown mare, is a British spotted pony whose father shares the same unusual colouring.

Perhaps rather predictably named Spotty, he was born just over a week ago at Wembury Point, near Plymouth although his family usually grazes on Dartmoor.

British spotted ponies have a variety of colour types including white spots on a dark background which are known as "snowflake".

An ancient tuft of dark-brown human hair suggests that a tribe of humans trekked from north Asia to settle in what is now Greenland more than 4000 years ago – and then vanished.

A team of Danish scientists has found that DNA collected from the hair traces back to Asians, not Native Americans or the Eskimos that currently populate the region. This suggests that the first humans to colonise the American Arctic were distinct from the first people who arrived in America more than 14,000 years ago.

BLIND children from Scotland are to be taught a pioneering echo-location technique copied from bats in an effort to help them visualise their surroundings.

The youngsters will be able to build up a mental library of images of the world around them by clicking their tongue and interpreting the sound as it echoes back. The technique, which is used by bats, dolphins and whales to navigate and hunt in the dark, is being piloted in Glasgow, where 10 children aged five to 17 are being taught by staff from the charity Visibility.