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Researchers began decoding the glyphic language of the ancient Maya long ago, but the Internet is helping them finish the job and write the history of the enigmatic Mesoamerican civilization. | ![]() |
Astrophysicists know full well that the biggest of Saturn's retinue of moons, Titan, is one of our solar system's most mysterious worlds.
Might it one day turn out to harbour extraterrestrials, albeit of the most elementary kind? With its organic-rich chemistry and Earth-like processes sculpting the surface, Titan resembles a frozen version of the Earth, billions of years ago, before primordial life started pumping oxygen into the atmosphere.

The largest galaxies in the Universe aren't beautiful spirals like our Milky Way; they are enormous egg-shaped structures known as giant elliptical galaxies. We don't know how they formed, but observations of very distant and bright galaxies revealed information about the formation of smaller elliptical galaxies. The giants remained mysterious.
While various parties continue to debate whether harpooning space junk or collecting it with giant nets is the best course of action, an Australian company says it's close to being able to knock debris off collision courses with a 10 kilowatt ground laser. | ![]() |
The Ecuadorean space agency (EXA) is trying to pick up signals from its satellite after it crashed in space into debris from an old rocket. | ![]() |
The dramatic meteorite strike that blasted out a big crater on the moon two months ago shows just how perilous manned lunar exploration can be. | ![]() |

EARTH is shoving the moon away faster now than it has done for most of the past 50 million years, says a new model for the way tides influence the lunar orbit. The result helps solve a mystery concerning the moon's age that has long vexed astronomers.
The moon's gravity creates a daily cycle of low and high tides. This dissipates energy between the two bodies, slowing Earth's spin on its axis and causing the moon's orbit to expand at a rate of about 3.8 centimetres per year. If that rate has always been the same, the moon should be 1.5 billion years old, yet some lunar rocks are 4.5 billion years old.

Morning dew and roaring falls inspire poets. Hurricanes and typhoons wreak devastation. Melting glaciers and rising tides challenge us all, even in an ever more thirsty world.
Water is so vital to our survival, but strangely enough, we don’t know the first thing about it—literally the first. Where does water, a giver and taker of life on planet Earth, come from? When I was in junior high school, my science teacher taught us about the water cycle—evaporation from oceans and lakes, condensation forming clouds , rain refilling oceans and lakes—and it all made sense. Except for one thing: None of the details explained where the water came from to begin with. I asked, but my teacher looked as if I’d sought the sound of one hand clapping.
The future of year-round farming could lie not in farms, but in huge warehouses lit with an eerie pink light, researchers have claimed. | ![]() |

Farmers have resumed planting rice for market only 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, a local official said Wednesday.
It was the first time since the March 2011 earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster that farmers have gone inside the former 20-kilometre "no-go" zone around the doomed plant to sow rice intended for sale.
Severe water shortages will affect more than half the world’s future population of nine billion people by 2050 if governments fail to collaborate on international efforts to protect and conserve life’s most vital ingredient, experts have warned. One of the first indications of a future water crisis will be mass migrations of people away from areas without water. | ![]() |
Humans spent centuries conspiring to fly, so it might be hard to imagine that any creature would give up the skill, and yet penguins waddle among us. A new study helps confirm that these seabirds traded flight to become better swimmers. | ![]() |
Do you have a special talent for reading scribbled handwriting and an interest in looking at dead bugs?
Rather than setting a handful of bleary-eyed undergrads with the task of transcribing hand-written field notes that correspond with its more than a million insect specimens, Calbug, a consortium of nine major entomological collections from across California, is opening the project up to the public, asking citizen scientists to help convert the records into an electronic form so they can be made available worldwide.
People with higher IQs are slow to detect large background movements because their brains filter out non-essential information, say US researchers. | ![]() |

Testing for intelligence can be a tricky proposition, with the tests themselves often being the product of cultural or intellectual biases.
Researchers from the University at Rochester believe they have found a simple, context-free visual test that can determine a person’s IQ regardless of cultural background, according to their report in the journal Current Biology.

Toking up may help marijuana users to stay slim and lower their risk of developing diabetes, according to the latest study, which suggests that cannabis compounds may help in controlling blood sugar.
Although marijuana has a well-deserved reputation for increasing appetite via what stoners call "the munchies," the new research, which was published in the American Journal of Medicine, is not the first to find that the drug has a two-faced relationship to weight.
The Egyptian Museum, located in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, displays the world’s largest collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. Despite its vast wealth, worsening conditions at the museum are having a detrimental impact on the ancient artefacts it seeks to protect. | ![]() |

Zahi Hawass doesn’t like what he’s seeing. Clad in his familiar denim safari suit and wide-brimmed bush hat, the famed archaeologist is standing inside the burial vault of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, a six-tiered, lopsided mound of limestone blocks constructed nearly 5,000 years ago. The huge, gloomy space is filled with scaffolding. A restoration and conservation project, at Saqqara outside Cairo, initiated by Hawass in 2002, has been shoring up the sagging ceiling and walls and staving off collapse. But the February 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak—and also ended Hawass’ controversial reign as the supreme chief of all Egypt’s antiquities—is now threatening to unravel Hawass’ legacy as well.

Detroit Electric has announced its return to the Motor City, the birthplace of the electric vehicle, touting the creation of new jobs and a range of exciting 100-percent electric vehicles. Can an innovative electric car manufacturer revive a brand after an absence of over 70 years and navigate a highly competitive market?
Detroit Electric was revived in 2008 by Albert Lam, former CEO of the Lotus Engineering Group and executive director of Lotus Cars of England. Detroit Electric’s goal is “to produce an electric vehicle that seamlessly integrates refined aesthetics, innovative technology, superior handling, and performance.”
When a new documentary promised to unveil DNA tests on a 6-inch-tall humanoid found 10 years ago in Chile, everyone weighed in with an opinion.
UFO researchers hoped this might finally be proof of alien visitations. Skeptics were sure it was nothing more than shameless movie promotion.
The latest ripple in this controversy might be the most bizarre turn yet.
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