Newly released Hubble Space Telescope photos show Pluto is changing color and its ice sheets are shifting. That’s got astronomers surprised.
The pictures show nitrogen ice growing and shrinking, getting brighter in the north and darker in the south. Astronomers say Pluto is changing more than the surfaces of other bodies in the solar system.
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Stephen Schafer, the kite surfer killed by a swarm of sharks off the coast of Florida Wednesday, was the victim of a terrifying but rare attack.
The overall number of attacks had risen slightly in recent years, largely because more people go into the water where sharks are, but that trend has reversed of late.
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A group of paleontologists has used a new scientific method to reconstitute the vibrant colors that adorned the plumage of a tiny dinosaur over 150 million years ago, a study said on Thursday.
“This was no crow or sparrow, but a creature with a very notable plumage,” said Richard Prum, a professor of ornithology, ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University and a co-author of the study, which appeared in the February 4 online edition of Science.
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Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on Thursday requested explanations from a previous government on Russias release of toxic waste into Swedish waters in the Baltic Sea, his spokeswoman told AFP.
The network also said the Social Democrat government that came into power in 1994 was informed of the dumping by military intelligence in the late 1990s, but failed to act on the information.
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NASA has begun counting down toward the planned predawn launch of the space shuttle Endeavour on Sunday.
“Were right on schedule, where were supposed to be,” said NASA test director Jeff Spaulding during a Thursday status briefing.
Endeavour is poised to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday morning at 4:39 a.
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Toyotas problems in the United States deepened Thursday as its flagship hybrid, the 2010 Prius, became the latest model to be targeted in an expanding web of investigations.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), part of the US governments transportation department, announced it was expanding its efforts to look into the popular Prius after 124 complaints from consumers.
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In high-school health class films, sperm cells are shown zooming around with quick flicks of their tails, but they only jump into action when they are in the right chemical conditions - usually thats in the female reproductive tract. Researchers have now figured out the precise chemical switch that turns on the sperms motors, which could lead to the development of new treatments for infertility.
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Twenty-five lapel pins, each bearing the logo of NASAs now-canceled Constellation program to return astronauts to the Moon, are packed and poised to launch next week on space shuttle Endeavour for a round trip mission to the International Space Station .
The kits contents were approved on Feb. 1, the same day that President Barack Obama released his budget request for NASA, calling for Constellation to be canceled in favor of extending the ISS and launching astronauts on a new fleet of commercially provided spacecraft.
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Washington residents braced Thursday for life to become a little less bearable as Tai Shan, the panda born and raised in the National Zoo, prepared to leave for China.
A specially decked-out cargo plane, nicknamed the Panda Express, was due to take off from Dulles at around 11:30 am (1630 GMT), to take four-and-a-half-year-old Tai Shan to a new life in China.
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In the latest blow to Toyota Motor Corp, safety regulators opened a formal probe into problems with the brakes of the Prius, the worlds top-selling hybrid and a vehicle that has powered the automakers reputation for fuel-efficiency.
Drivers reported four crashes related to the braking problems, NHTSA said.
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