|  Big Bang, Deflated? Universe May Have Had No Beginning  | If a new theory turns out to be true, the universe may not have started with a bang. In the new formulation, the universe was never a singularity, or an infinitely small and infinitely dense point of matter. "Our theory suggests that the age of the universe could be infinite," said study co-author Saurya Das, a theoretical physicist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. The new concept could also explain what dark matter — the mysterious, invisible substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe — is actually made of, Das added.
| Read More » Rare Roman Tombstone Discovered in England  | A 1,800-year-old tombstone was discovered at a Roman cemetery in England this week. Because of its inscription, archaeologists know who was buried in the grave: a 27-year-old woman named Bodica. "It's incredibly rare," Neil Holbrook, of Cotswold Archaeology, told Live Science. For the last two months, Holbrook's team has been excavating a Roman cemetery just outside the ancient city walls of Cirencester, a town in Gloucestershire, to make way for the construction of a new office park.
| Read More » NASA Satellite Captures Amazing 3D Videos of Rain, Snow  | Mesmerizing and swirling animations of rain and snow dance across a map of the Earth, shown in a video released yesterday (Feb. 26) by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. The NASA video captures worldwide precipitation from April to September 2014, and even shows Hurricane Arthur twist into a tropical storm from July 2 to 4 in the Atlantic Ocean, said Gail Skofronick-Jackson, a GPM project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The "GPM mission is the first coordinated international satellite network that provides near real-time global estimates of rain and snow," Skofronick-Jackson said at news conference yesterday. The video is the product of the GPM Core Observatory, launched one year ago on Feb. 27 by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
| Read More » NASA resolves issue with spacesuit helmet water leak  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Water that leaked into an astronaut's helmet after a spacewalk on Wednesday poses no threat, clearing the way for another outing to rig the International Space Station for new space taxis, NASA said on Friday. Space station flight engineer Terry Virts was back in the station's airlock on Wednesday following a successful spacewalk when he noticed a small amount of water in his helmet. Another astronaut nearly drowned during a July 2013 spacewalk due to a helmet leak. Virts, who was making his second spacewalk in a week, was never in any danger, NASA said.
| Read More » White & Gold or Blue & Black? Science of the Mystery Dress David Williams, a vision scientist at the University of Rochester in New York, has a theory. Light is made up of different wavelengths, which the brain perceives as color. Read More » Monsanto says GM corn trial in final stage in India By Mayank Bhardwaj and Krishna N. Das NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Monsanto's Indian subsidiary expects to submit final trial results for its genetically modified (GM) corn to lawmakers within a year for the government to then decide on a commercial launch, the company's country head said on Friday. India does not currently allow the growing of GM food crops but the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, keen to improve farms' productivity, has encouraged open field trials after a five-year de facto ban. "We are close to the final stage in corn," Shilpa Divekar Nirula, chief executive of Monsanto India, told Reuters. Read More » NASA Spacecraft Arrives at Dwarf Planet Ceres This Week  | NASA's Dawn spacecraft will begin orbiting the mysterious dwarf planet Ceres this week, ending a deep-space chase that lasted 2 1/2 years. "We've been using the ion propulsion system for a long time gradually to reshape Dawn's orbit around the sun so that it matches Ceres' orbit," said Dawn Mission Director and Chief Engineer Marc Rayman, who's based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The $466 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007 to study Vesta and Ceres, which are 330 miles (530 kilometers) and 590 miles (950 km) wide, respectively. Dawn's observations of these planetary building blocks should shed light on the planet-formation process and the conditions prevalent during the solar system's early days, NASA officials have said.
| Read More » Astronauts leave space station for third spacewalk  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - Two U.S. astronauts left the International Space Station on Sunday for a seven-hour spacewalk to install communications and navigation aides for new commercial space taxis. Station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and flight engineer Terry Virts floated outside the station's Quest airlock shortly after 7 a.m. EST/1200 GMT to begin their third spacewalk in eight days, a NASA Television broadcast showed. The purpose of the outings is to prepare berthing slips for spaceships being developed by Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. One adapter will be installed at the berthing slip once used by NASA's space shuttles, which were retired in 2011.
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