Annular eclipse creates 'ring of fire' in Australia and south Pacific

The moon glided between the Earth and sun, blocking everything but a dazzling ring of light, for the few skygazers lucky enough to see Friday's "ring of fire" eclipse in northern Australia and the south Pacific.

The celestial spectacle is the second solar eclipse visible from northern Australia in six months. In November, a total solar eclipse plunged the country's north-east into darkness, delighting astronomers and tourists who flocked to the region from across the globe to witness it.

Scientists at the UnIversity of Edinburgh in the UK suggest that the heart-health benefits of sun exposure may outweigh the risk of developing skin cancer.

In the landmark study, the researchers found that when sunlight touches our skin, a compound called nitric oxide that helps lower blood pressure, is released into our blood vessels.

One person's trash may be another person's treasure, but sometimes, trash is just trash.

So-called junk DNA, the vast majority of the genome that doesn't code for proteins, really isn't needed for a healthy organism, according to new research.

"At least for a plant, junk DNA really is just junk — it's not required," said study co-author Victor Albert, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo in New York.

Two spacewalking astronauts may have fixed an ammonia leak outside the International Space Station today (May 11), perhaps bringing the outpost's vital cooling system back up to full strength.

Clad in bulky spacesuits, NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn replaced a pump control box thought to be responsible for the leak of ammonia, which cools down the orbiting lab's systems. It looks like this fix did the trick, as no ammonia flakes were seen streaming into space when Mission Control turned on the newly installed gear.

Scientists have studied two dead stars that give us a glimpse, they say, of what our Solar System might look like a few billion years from now.

Our Sun will expand outwards when its nuclear fuel runs low and will ultimately blow off its outer layers.

Some of the inner planets will be consumed in the process and asteroids will be thrown out of their orbits.

A Cambridge-led team says it has seen evidence for this big upheaval in the atmospheres of the two burnt-out stars.

The only way forward is back: to retrace our steps and seek to return atmospheric concentrations to around 350ppm

The data go back 800,000 years: that's the age of the oldest fossil air bubbles extracted from Dome C, an ice-bound summit in the high Antarctic. And throughout that time there has been nothing like this. At no point in the preindustrial record have concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air risen above 300 parts per million (ppm). 400ppm is a figure that belongs to a different era.

For the second time in just two weeks, the discovery of a lost city has been announced. This one is in the Kalahari Desert in Africa, now one of the most desolate places on Earth. It appears to be similar in many ways to the Nazca site in Peru, only much larger. The 'city' was found by a crowd-sourced research project using Google Maps, and has not yet been explored on the ground. Until that happens, the exact nature of the find cannot be determined.

If you’re abducted by alien beings, are you physically absent?

This happens to be an important issue for the media-shy people gathered one afternoon last July on the porch of Anne Ramsey Cuvelier’s blue Victorian inn on Narragansett Bay, in Rhode Island, once called “the most elegantly finished house ever built in Newport.” Co-designed in 1869 by a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, it has been in Cuvelier’s family since 1895, when her great-grandfather bought it as a summer getaway from his winter home blocks away, just as the Gilded Age cottages of the Vanderbilts and Astors began springing up across the island, redefining palatial extravagance. Still imposing with its butternut woodwork, ebony trimmings, and four-story paneled atrium frescoed in the Pompeian style, the harborside mansion turned B&B seemed a fittingly baroque setting for the group of reluctant guests Cuvelier describes as “not a club anyone wants to belong to.”.

Heinrich Olber asked in the early 19th century, why, if the universe was static and infinite, was the night sky dark? Nowadays we know that the universe had a beginning in the Big Bang and has been expanding ever since, making Olber’s Paradox a bit of a moot point. However, the night sky isn’t completely dark, as there is a faint background light in all directions and in all wavelengths. Astronomers using the newly revamped Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, have resolved one component of this ever present sky glow — the radio background.

Plants can communicate the onset of an attack from aphids by making use of an underground network of fungi, researchers have found.

Instances of plant communication through the air have been documented, in which chemicals emitted by a damaged plant can be picked up by a neighbour.

But below ground, most land plants are connected by fungi called mycorrhizae.

On June 9, 2008, at least 60 dolphins stranded along the coast of Cornwall, England, in what was by far the largest common dolphin mortality ever seen in British waters. For hours, rescuers tried to lead them back to sea — often unsuccessfully, as some of the animals were panicked and others just milled about in tight circles, resistant to saving. The forensic investigation that followed involved 24 experts from five countries and multiple government agencies.

Now their verdict is in, and the most probable cause was naval exercises.