|  Solar powered car racers set off in Australian challenge BARROW CREEK, Australia - More than 40 racing teams from two dozen countries left Darwin on Sunday to race across Australia to the southern city of Adelaide in the 2015 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. The 3,000 kilometer (1,864 mile) trek is one of the most prestigious solar car races. The biannual event first began in 1987 and is based on the original notion that a 1000 watt car would complete the trip from Darwin to Adelaide in 50 hours. Read More » Ancient crystal suggests life on Earth appeared 4.1 billion years ago (Reuters) - An ancient zircon crystal unearthed in Western Australia may hold evidence that life appeared on the planet 4.1 billion years ago, or about 300 million years earlier than previously thought, according to a team of U.S. researchers. Scientists from Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles said they recently collected some 10,000 multibillion year-old zircons in Jack Hills, Australia, including one believed to contain a carbon deposit that is 4.1 billion years old, give or take 10 million years. Read More » Obama, budding astronomers look at moon, dream of Mars at White House  | By Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama got a guided tour of the moon on Monday, peering at its craters through a large reflective telescope set up on the South Lawn of the White House to promote science and technology careers at "Astronomy Night." Obama was joined by budding young scientists who checked out a moon rock and took selfies with NASA astronauts and other science celebrities. Chief among the selfie targets: Ahmed Mohamed, better known as "clock boy. ...
| Read More » Puzzling Reaction: Sudoku Brainteasers Trigger Man's Seizures Sudoku puzzles can be brainteasers, but one man's brain had an unusual response to solving the numerical grid puzzles: He developed seizures. The 25-year-old German man didn't always react this way to Sudoku, according to a new report of his case. Read More » 'Herbal Viagra' and Lamar Odom: What's in These Supplements? Former NBA championship winner and reality TV star Lamar Odom awoke from a coma on Friday (Oct. 16) after he was found unconscious earlier in the week at the Love Ranch brothel in Nevada. Odom took a diet supplement touted as "herbal Viagra" before falling unconscious, and while it isn't clear exactly what happened to the 35-year-old athlete, federal agencies and researchers have warned that such supplements may contain hidden drug ingredients, and cause severe side effects. Authorities reported that Odom had also used several drugs, including cocaine and opiates, before losing consciousness. Read More » Meet Jane, the Most Complete Adolescent T. Rex Ever Found  | An adolescent Tyrannosaurus rex named Jane may settle a dispute more than 70 years in the making: Whether small carnivorous dinosaurs are younger versions of T. rex, or another species altogether, a new study finds. The authors of the new study contend that small and slender Jane is a young, 11-year-old T. rex. Before Jane, there was a critical gap between juvenile and adult T. rex dinosaur specimens, and it was unclear how their body structures changed over time, said study lead researcher Thomas Carr, an associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin.
| Read More » Bloody Ancient Arrowhead Reveals Maya 'Life Force' Ceremony  | An ancient arrowhead with human blood on it points to a Maya bloodletting ceremony in which a person's "life force" fed the gods, two researchers say. The ceremony took place around 500 years ago in Guatemala at a temple at the site of Zacpetén. "The general consensus (among scholars) is that bloodletting was 'feeding' the gods with the human essential life force," said Prudence Rice, a professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
| Read More » Chasing Wormholes: The Hunt for Tunnels in Space-Time  | Science fiction literature is full of stories in which tunnels in space-time — known as wormholes — are used for time travel. Scientists are looking at ways to use traversable wormholes (if they exist) to travel faster than the speed of light — and even to travel through time itself. "A traversable wormhole is a hyperspace tunnel, also called a throat, that connects together two remotely distant regions within our universe, or two different universes — if other universes exist — or two different periods in time, as in time travel, or different dimensions of space," physicist Eric Davis told Space.com by email.
| Read More » Mars Water Discovery Sparks Exploration Debate  | The revelation that dark streaks flowing downhill on Mars are signs of present-day liquid water has sparked debate on how best to investigate the Red Planet features. These dark streaks, called Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL), flow down steep slopes during warm seasons and fade when the weather is cooler. The streaks are caused by liquid water laden with salts, scientists announced last month.
| Read More » 20 Years On, Future Bright for Exoplanet Science  | On Oct. 6, 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory announced the discovery of the huge, scorching-hot 51 Pegasi b, the first alien planet ever found around a sunlike star.
| Read More » Take a Trip to Comet 67P in This Awesome Video from the Philae Lander  | As the Philae lander plunged down to land on a comet in 2014, it captured a view of the great comet closer than any had ever seen. Now a new video lets viewers ride along, showing exactly what the lander saw as it descended. The European Space Agency put together the video to celebrate the one-year anniversary of choosing Philae's prime landing site.
| Read More » BRIEF-Shenghua Biok Biology to acquire info tech firm for 1.6 bln yuan Oct 20 (Reuters) - Zhejiang Shenghua Biok Biology Co Ltd * Says to acquire information technology firm for 1.6billion yuan ($252.05 million) via cash, share issue * Says plans to raise up to 1.5 billion yuan in privateplacement of shares to fund acquisition, project Source text in Chinese: http://bit.ly/1QOBD1d Further company coverage: ($1 = 6.3480 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Hong Kong and Singapore newsrooms) Read More » Search For Intelligent Aliens Near Bizarre Dimming Star Has Begun  | The search for signs of life in a mysterious star system hypothesized to potentially harbor an "alien megastructure" is now underway. Astronomers have begun using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a system of radio dishes about 300 miles (483 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, to hunt for signals coming from the vicinity of KIC 8462852, a star that lies 1,500 light-years from Earth. NASA's Kepler space telescope found that KIC 8462852 dimmed oddly and dramatically several times over the past few years.
| Read More » Chasing Wormholes: The Hunt for Tunnels in Space-Time  | Science fiction literature is full of stories in which tunnels in space-time — known as wormholes — are used for time travel. Scientists are looking at ways to use traversable wormholes (if they exist) to travel faster than the speed of light — and even to travel through time itself. "A traversable wormhole is a hyperspace tunnel, also called a throat, that connects together two remotely distant regions within our universe, or two different universes — if other universes exist — or two different periods in time, as in time travel, or different dimensions of space," physicist Eric Davis told Space.com by email.
| Read More » Search For Intelligent Aliens Near Bizarre Dimming Star Has Begun  | The search for signs of life in a mysterious star system hypothesized to potentially harbor an "alien megastructure" is now underway. Astronomers have begun using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a system of radio dishes about 300 miles (483 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, to hunt for signals coming from the vicinity of KIC 8462852, a star that lies 1,500 light-years from Earth. NASA's Kepler space telescope found that KIC 8462852 dimmed oddly and dramatically several times over the past few years.
| Read More » Orionid Meteor Shower Promises Bright Sky Show This Week  | Now, one of the more reliable meteor showers — sort of a junior version of the Perseids — is set to reach its maximum before sunrise on Thursday morning (Oct. 22). This upcoming display is known as the Orionids, because the meteors seem to fan out from a region to the north of the constellation Orion's second-brightest star, ruddy Betelgeuse. Currently, Orion appears to be ahead of Earth as the planet journeys around the sun, and the constellation has not completely risen above the eastern horizon until after 11:00 p.m. local daylight time.
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