|  Radiation and Boredom: Manned Mars Mission Faces Challenges  | "After all these years, we may actually be going to Mars," Phil Plait, an author and astronomy blogger for Slate magazine, said here today (April 9) at an event hosted by Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, the nonprofit New America Foundation and Arizona State University. NASA is building rockets and spaceships to get people there, and this equipment will be ready soon, Plait said. Indeed, NASA aims to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet by the mid-2030s. First of all, NASA needs to figure out how to keep people healthy for long periods in zero gravity.
| Read More » Fears over Roundup herbicide residues prompt private testing U.S. consumer groups, scientists and food companies are testing substances ranging from breakfast cereal to breast milk for residues of the world's most widely used herbicide on rising concerns over its possible links to disease. The focus is on glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Testing has increased in the last two years, but scientists say requests spiked after a World Health Organization research unit said last month it was classifying glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans." "The requests keep coming in," said Ben Winkler, laboratory manager at Microbe Inotech Laboratories in St. Louis. The commercial lab has received three to four requests a week to test foods and other substances for glyphosate residues. Read More » 3,000 Goldfish! Dumped Aquarium Pets Multiply in Lake  | They multiply like … fish! Apparently, a handful of goldfish dumped into a lake in Boulder, Colorado, just three years ago have reproduced and now number in the thousands. "Based on their size, it looks like they're 3-year-olds, which were probably produced from a small handful of fish that were illegally introduced into the lake," Ben Swigle, a fish biologist at the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), told Live Science. A ranger noticed the 3,000 to 4,000 goldfish a couple of weeks ago in Teller Lake #5 off Arapahoe Road and reported it to CPW. "If they escape and move downstream, they'll directly compete with our native species, all of which were here before the land was even settled," Swigle said.
| Read More » Solving the Four Corners Mystery: Probes Map Methane 'Hot Spot'  | A methane "hot spot" over the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest is undergoing serious scrutiny as scientists work to figure out why levels of the gas in the area are so high. The mysterious methane was first detected from space, via a European Space Agency satellite that can measure this potent greenhouse gas. Researchers reported the discovery in October in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, but couldn't explain where the extra methane was coming from.
| Read More » Ocean of Acid Blamed for Earth's 'Great Dying'  | Death by acid was the fate of the sea monsters that perished in Earth's biggest mass extinction, some 251 million years ago, a new study finds. Nearly every form of ocean life disappeared during this "Great Dying" at the end of the Permian period, when more than 90 percent of all marine species vanished, from the scorpionlike predators called eurypterids to various types of trilobites, some with alienlike stalked eyes. It's the closest Earth has ever come to completely losing its fish, snails, sea plankton and other marine creatures. Now, there is direct evidence that ocean acidification dealt the final blow to species already suffering from these huge environmental changes.
| Read More » 'Warm Blob' in Pacific Ocean to Blame for Wonky US Weather  | A blob of warm water in the Pacific Ocean may be to blame for some of the bizarre weather in the United States this year, a new study suggests. From the dry spell in the West to the East Coast's endless snow season, the country has seen its share of weird weather so far in 2015. For that, scientists say, you can thank (or curse) a long, skinny blob in the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) off the West Coast, stretching all the way from Mexico to Alaska. So by spring of 2014, it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year," study co-author Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the University of Washington, said in a statement.
| Read More » A Longer Life May Lie in Number of Anti-Inflammatory Genes From mouse to man — and across 12 other mammal species examined — researchers found that those with more copies of genes called CD33rSIGLEC, which is involved in fighting inflammation, have a longer life span. So the new findings make sense in that having more CD33rSIGLEC genes would place firefighters on the scene, to control the fire of the immune system, Gagneux added. Read More » Towering 'Terror Bird' Stalked Prey by Listening for Footsteps  | Now, researchers have found a nearly complete skeleton of a new species of these so-called terror birds, and are learning surprising details about their hearing and anatomy. To their delight, the fossil is the most complete skeleton of a terror bird ever found, with more than 90 percent of its bones preserved, said the study's lead researcher, Federico Degrange, an assistant researcher of vertebrate paleontology at the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra and the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. Given its extraordinary condition, the fossil has helped researchers study the terror bird's anatomy in detail. The specimen is the first known fossilized terror bird with a complete trachea and complete palate (the roof of the mouth).
| Read More » New Controversy Surrounds Alleged 'Jesus Family Tomb'  | A new piece of evidence is reigniting controversy over the potential bones of Jesus of Nazareth. A bone box inscribed with the phrase "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" is potentially linked to a tomb in Talpiot, Israel, where the bones of people with the names of Jesus' family members are buried, according to a new chemical analysis. Aryeh Shimron, the geologist who conducted the study, claims that because it is so unlikely that this group of biblical names would be found together by chance, the new results suggest the tomb once held the bones of Jesus. "If this is correct, that strengthens the case for the Talpiot or Jesus Family Tomb being indeed the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth," said Shimron, a retired geologist who has studied several archaeological sites in Israel.
| Read More » NASA Astronaut Is Photographing Every Baseball Stadium from Space  | An astronaut aboard the International Space Station has made a game of photographing every Major League Baseball stadium from orbit — and he wants you to play along. NASA astronaut and baseball fan Terry Virts is taking pictures of the 28 North American cities that host a major-league team, then posting the photos to his Twitter and Instagram accounts (@AstroTerry and astro_terry, respectively), along with the hashtag #ISSPlayBall. The goal is to help give people a new perspective on their surroundings and inspire them to learn more about the International Space Station, NASA officials said.
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