|  And The Merriam-Webster Word of the Year Is … Science! While the Oxford University Press honored "selfies" as its 2013 Word of the Year, celebrating those quickly snapped self-portraits, Merriam-Webster is taking a more academic approach to its annual linguistic spotlight. The dictionary has declared "science" its 2013 Word of the Year. If you haven't looked it up online, here's how Merriam-Webster defines science: "knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation." Science, according to Merriam-Webster Editor-at-Large Peter Sokolowski, is the word behind the news in 2013. Read More » NASA Teams With Asteroid-Mining Company to Crowdsource Space Rock Hunt  | NASA is partnering with the billionaire-backed company Planetary Resources Inc., to launch asteroid-hunting competitions, and they want your help. Then U.S. space agency and the asteroid-mining firm are seeking to crowdsource new ideas for software to find space rocks that could pose a threat to our planet — or at least be of interest to scientists and cosmic mineral prospectors. The venture is the first to come out of NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge, which launched in June. The initiative seeks to detect dangerous asteroids and devise strategies to stop them from colliding with Earth as well as identify asteroids that might be interesting candidates for scientific exploration.
| Read More » Signs of Water Found on 5 Alien Planets by Hubble Telescope  | NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected water in the atmospheres of five planets beyond our solar system, two recent studies reveal. But finding water in their atmospheres still marks a step forward in the search for distant planets that may be capable of supporting alien life, researchers said. "We're very confident that we see a water signature for multiple planets," Avi Mandell, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., lead author of one of the studies, said in a statement. "This work really opens the door for comparing how much water is present in atmospheres on different kinds of exoplanets — for example, hotter versus cooler ones." [?The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)]
| Read More » Seattle Football Fans Rock the House — and the Earth Rowdy fans stomping and roaring when the Seattle Seahawks scored a touchdown last night (Dec. 2) shook the football stadium so hard that a nearby seismometer registered an "earthquake." It's not the first time the seismometer, which monitors earthquakes, picked up ground-shaking vibrations from Seahawks fans. A 1988 showdown between Louisiana State University and Auburn University also registered on LSU's local seismometer, leading ESPN to dub it the "Earthquake Game." This Monday night, with a Guinness World Record for loudest recorded crowd noise on the line, a seismologist from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network watched the Earth shake in real time, with the game on one screen and the seismometer readings on another. Read More » Australia investigates suspected Chinese spy at top science centre Australia is investigating a suspected espionage case at the country's top scientific organization, with a Chinese national being probed for allegedly accessing sensitive data, Fairfax Media reported on Wednesday. The case may further test relations with China after the Australian foreign minister called in the Chinese ambassador to Canberra last week to ask for an explanation for a new air defence zone unilaterally set up by China in disputed international waters. Australian federal police and security agencies are investigating a Chinese national, who until last week worked at the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization, Fairfax reported. "CSIRO became aware of a matter involving an employee suspected of unauthorised use of CSIRO computers," the organization's spokesman Huw Morgan told Reuters in an email. Read More » SpaceX rocket lifts off on first commercial satellite launch  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned Falcon 9 rocket developed by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, blasted off on Tuesday to put the company's first commercial satellite into orbit, staking a potentially game-changing claim in a global industry worth nearly $190 billion a year. The 22-story rocket lifted off from its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:41 p.m. EST/2241 GMT. Two previous launch attempts last week were scuttled by technical glitches, including a last-second abort on Thursday. ...
| Read More » No return from the dead for Comet ISON  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The last vestiges of Comet ISON are fading from view after a sizzlingly close encounter with the sun, scientists said on Monday. "Comet ISON is now just a cloud of dust," astronomer Tony Phillips wrote on SpaceWeather.com, a NASA-backed website. "Experienced astrophotographers might be able to capture the comet's fading 'ghost' in the pre-dawn sky of early December, but a naked-eye spectacle is out of the question," he wrote. Scientists believe the comet broke apart as it passed through the sun's corona on Thursday.
| Read More » SpaceX Launches Falcon 9 Rocket On High-Stakes Commercial Satellite Mission  | A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up the night sky over Florida Tuesday (Dec. 3) in a landmark communications satellite mission that catapulted the private spaceflight company into the commercial launch business.
| Read More » Bold 'Razzle Dazzle' Camouflage Fools The Eye  | A controversial, high-contrast camouflage that once decorated the hulls of World War I battleships really exists in nature — though whether humans are fooled remains an open question. When a dark stimulus expands, it sends a "lights off" signal to the visual system, as a dark object replaces the bright background.
| Read More » Why the Platypus Will Never Have a Stomach  | Scientists wondered if all of these examples of stomach loss had anything in common. Since many animals have now had their genomes sequenced, researchers investigated 14 species with and without stomachs to see what genes they all might be missing. The scientists found that in all species examined, stomach loss was clearly linked with the complete loss of the genes responsible for pepsin and acid digestion. If these species adapted to survive without the need for a stomach, the genes for its function could then be lost by mutation over time without ill effect.
| Read More » SpaceX rocket lifts off on first commercial satellite launch | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned Falcon 9 rocket developed by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, blasted off on Tuesday to put its first commercial satellite into orbit, staking a potentially game-changing claim in a global industry worth nearly $190 billion a year. The 22-story rocket lifted off from its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:41 p.m. EST/2241 GMT. Perched on top of the rocket was a 7,000-pound (3,175 kg) communications satellite owned by Luxembourg-based SES S.A., which operates a 54-satellite fleet, the world's second-largest. "I'd like to thank SES for taking a chance on SpaceX," company founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitter an hour before the launch.
| Read More » Astronaut Hopefuls Face Off for Axe Apollo's Free Trip to Space This Week  | A group of would-be astronauts are heading down to Florida this week for the chance to win the opportunity of a lifetime: a free trip to the edge of space and back. More than 100 participants from all over the world are converging on NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the AXE Apollo Space Academy — the final step in a yearlong contest designed to send 23 lucky winners to the edge of space. The 23 winners — chosen from the larger group in Florida — will receive tickets to fly from Space Expedition Corporation. "Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience," astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who became the second person ever to walk on the moon during NASA's 1969 Apollo 11 mission, said in a statement when the contest began.
| Read More » Spooky Physics Phenomenon May Link Universe's Wormholes Wormholes — shortcuts that in theory can connect distant points in the universe — might be linked with the spooky phenomenon of quantum entanglement, where the behavior of particles can be connected regardless of distance, researchers say. These findings could help scientists explain the universe from its very smallest to its biggest scales. Currently, researchers have two disparate theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, which can respectively mostly explain the universe on its tiniest scales and its largest scales. In principle, these warps in the fabric of space and time can behave like shortcuts connecting any black holes in the universe, making them a common staple of science fiction. Read More » Dangerous Global Warming Closer than You Think, Climate Scientists Say Dangerous Global Warming Closer than You Think, Climate Scientists Say Read More » Bizarre Microbes Discovered in Desert Cave  | Tucked beneath the desert in southern Arizona is Kartchner Caverns, a maze of remote, largely uninhabited underground passages and caverns that are cloaked in perpetual darkness. A team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Arizona in Tucson discovered communities of microorganisms that live in the limestone caves of Kartchner Caverns State Park. The unexpected discovery, published online Sept. 12 in the journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology, could help scientists understand how bacteria, fungi and other microbes survive in extreme environments. "We didn't expect to find such a thriving ecosystem feasting on the scraps dripping in from the world above," Julie Neilson, an associate research scientist in the University of Arizona's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said in a statement.
| Read More » Climate Model of the Month: New Wall Calendar Humanizes Science  | The idea started as a joke at Columbia University, thrown around as a pun of climate scientists modeling themselves, not their data, in an effort to engage the public with climate change in a fresh way by humanizing the people behind the research. Science writers Francesco Fiondella of Columbia's International Research Institute for Climate and Society and Rebecca Fowler of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory began throwing around the idea in early 2013 and, after weeks of ongoing chuckles, decided to look for funding and get serious about the project. "There is so much out there in climate research, but we thought a new mechanism was needed for showing people what it all means," Fowler told LiveScience. Fowler and Fiondella hand-picked a group of 13 Columbia climate scientists who represented a balance of males and females and a range of climate-research fields, from hyrdology to physics to marine science.
| Read More » Science Defines Booty Calls, One-Night Stands And unsurprisingly, the point of these casual relationships is (drumroll, please) … sex. That's why Peter Jonason, a psychologist at the University of Western Sydney in Australia, focused on these relationships in a new study, published Nov. 1 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. The results, he surmised, could explain why people might get involved in a booty-call relationship versus a one-night stand or long-term affair. Each participant was asked to rank how likely booty calls, friends with benefits (people who have casual sex while remaining "just friends"), long-term relationships and one-night stands were to fulfill each of four functions: sexual gratification, social and emotional support, a "trial run" for a serious relationship and a placeholder to stave off boredom or to bide time until something better came along. Read More » The Replication Myth: Shedding Light on One of Science s Dirty Little Secrets  | The Replication Myth: Shedding Light on One of Science s Dirty Little Secrets
| Read More » Safe Limit for Global Warming Is Lowered Dramatically by Experts Safe Limit for Global Warming Is Lowered Dramatically by Experts Read More » 28 Tiny Satellites Launching Together In December to See Earth from Space  | San Francisco-based startup Planet Labs delivered the 28 tiny satellites that will make up its "Flock 1" fleet to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia earlier this month. The constellation is slated to blast off for the International Space Station aboard a private cargo vessel on Dec. 15, then be deployed from the orbiting lab a month or so later, Planet Labs officials said. "We'll be producing imagery of the whole Earth with unprecedented frequency," Planet Labs co-founder Will Marshall told SPACE.com. "We will thus be able to always be covering the whole Earth, not just pointing and shooting at specific targets."
| Read More » How Do You Train to Become a Space Tourist?  | So far, he has bought three tickets from companies offering space tourism: Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures and XCOR Aerospace. In his investment bank, Wimmer Financial, in the heart of London, Wimmer somehow looks out of place in between corporate office walls.
| Read More » Stealth Mode: Killer Whales Go Dark to Stalk Prey  | SAN FRANCISCO — For killer whales, silence is golden as they hunt in complete darkness, listening for sounds of their marine mammal prey, and then rushing in for the kill, new research suggests. "The mammal hunters are very, very silent," said study co-author Volker Deecke, an animal behavior researcher at the University of Cumbria in England. That conclusion, presented here today (Dec. 3) at the 166th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, came from studying a population of killer whales that live in the waters off southeastern Alaska and hunt prey such as porpoises and seals. Killer whales, also known as orcas, often hunt in packs and can take down whales and sharks, giving them the reputation as "wolves of the sea." Two distinct populations of killer whales — ones that feed primarily on salmon, and a second group that prowls for marine mammals such as seals, porpoises and sea lions — live in the region where Deecke and his colleagues were studying orcas.
| Read More » Speciesism Is Bad News for Animals (Op-Ed)  | Marc Bekoff, emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is one of the world's pioneering cognitive ethologists, a Guggenheim Fellow, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Why speciesism makes no sense: A new documentary tells it all So it was with great pleasure that I learned about the release of an outstanding documentary by Mark Devries called "Speciesism: The Movie." I've watched it a number of times, and each time I discover something new.
| Read More » Oil Boom is a Bust at Pump (Op-Ed) He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The reason: Oil prices are set on the world market, and gasoline prices follow. Since President Obama was elected in 2008, U.S. oil production has risen 48 percent to its highest level in two decades. Gasoline prices are down slightly over the past couple years. Read More » The New World After Oil, Cars and Suburbs (Op-Ed)  | Eric W. Sanderson is a senior conservation ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the author of "Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars, and Suburbs" (Abrams, 2013) and "Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City" (Abrams, 2009). He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. As we tuck into our Thanksgiving feasts this week, let's give thanks for the blessings of America. Since World War II, America built over 90 million housing units, mostly in the suburban rings around cities.
| Read More » Oldest Human DNA Reveals Mysterious Branch of Humanity  | The oldest known human DNA found yet reveals human evolution was even more confusing than thought, researchers say. These new findings could shed light on a mysterious extinct branch of humanity known as Denisovans, who were close relatives of Neanderthals, scientists added. Although modern humans are the only surviving human lineage, others once strode the Earth. These included Neanderthals, the closest extinct relatives of modern humans, and the relatively newfound Denisovans, who are thought to have lived in a vast expanse from Siberia to Southeast Asia.
| Read More » Apollo Couture: Astronaut Offers Replica of Iconic NASA Flight Jacket  | An Apollo astronaut, looking to keep the "right stuff" forefront in the public's eye, has recreated his iconic NASA-issued blue flight jacket down to the last button. Al Worden, who in 1971 flew to the moon as the pilot of the Apollo 15 command module Endeavour, wore out his original flight jacket years ago. Worden, collaborating with British attorney Steve Pidcock, has founded "Still The Right Stuff" to create what Worden labels as the "Apollo Flight Jacket." [NASA's 17 Apollo Missions in Pictures] "The answer," Al Worden explained, "was to offer authentic Apollo-era flight jackets to a small but dedicated group of space enthusiasts."
| Read More » The Wind Energy Threat to Birds Is Overblown (Op-Ed) Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Wind energy is one of the cleanest, most abundant, sustainable — and increasingly cost-effective — ways to generate electricity. One of the most prominent is Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a New York City-based, pro-market, anti-government think tank backed by ExxonMobil and Charles Koch, the billionaire co-owner of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries. Over the last few years, Bryce has been bashing wind energy in the pages of the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and other publications, charging that wind turbines are, among other things, ugly, noisy and a threat to public health. Read More » The Real Truth About Tornadoes (Op-Ed)  | The authors contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Rather, the larger numbers come from improved detection and reporting of weak tornadoes, particularly EF0 tornadoes, where "EF" refers to the enhanced-Fujita scale used by the National Weather Service (NWS).
| Read More » How a Mysterious 'Moho' Forms Beneath Earth's Crust  | A dense crystalline "rain" falling into Earth's mantle could explain how a mysterious seismic boundary forms beneath the crust, according to a study published today (Dec. 4) in the journal Nature. The model, based on rock evidence from volcanic islands that smashed into Asia and Alaska, confirms long-standing ideas about how continents are born. "There are a lot of things I think this study will resolve and a lot of questions that will remain," said lead author and MIT geologist Oliver Jagoutz. The seismic boundary investigated by Jagoutz and co-author Mark Behn, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., is called the Moho, after Croatian seismologist Andrija Mohorovicic.
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