|  Newly discovered planets may boost search for life beyond Earth  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The discovery of three planets that circle a small, dim star could bolster the chances of finding life beyond Earth, astronomers said on Monday. The Earth-sized planets are orbiting their parent star, located in the constellation Aquarius relatively close to Earth at 40 light years away, at a distance that provides the right amount of heat for there to be liquid water on their surface, a condition scientists believe may be critical for fostering life. The discovery marked the first time that planets were found orbiting a common type of star known as an ultra-cool dwarf, the scientists said.
| Read More » Solar-powered plane lands in Arizona on round-the-world flight  | By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A solar-powered airplane midway through a historic bid to circle the globe completed the tenth leg of its journey on Monday, landing in Arizona after a 16-hour flight from California, the project team said. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived in Phoenix shortly before 9 p.m., following a flight from San Francisco that took it over the Mojave Desert.
| Read More » Scientists win $3 mln for detecting Einstein's waves  | By Joseph Ax NEW YORK (Reuters) - Researchers who helped detect gravitational waves for the first time, confirming part of Albert Einstein's theory in a landmark moment in scientific history, will share a $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize, according to the prize's selection committee. The Breakthrough Prizes for scientific achievements were created by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner along with several technology pioneers, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. In February, a team from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced a pair of giant laser detectors had measured the tiny ripples in space and time first theorized by Einstein a century ago, capping a decades-long quest.
| Read More » Scientists win $3 million for detecting Einstein's waves  | By Joseph Ax NEW YORK (Reuters) - Researchers who helped detect gravitational waves for the first time, confirming part of Albert Einstein's theory in a landmark moment in scientific history, will share a $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize, according to the prize's selection committee. The Breakthrough Prizes for scientific achievements were created by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner along with several technology pioneers, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. In February, a team from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced a pair of giant laser detectors had measured the tiny ripples in space and time first theorized by Einstein a century ago, capping a decades-long quest.
| Read More » Long-Lost Revolutionary War Shipwreck May Have Been Found The wreck of a famous research vessel turned Revolutionary War troopship may soon be discovered. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) will announce its progress in the hunt for a ship dubbed "Lord Sandwich" on Wednesday (May 4). This ship is better known by its previous name: the HMS Endeavour, the British Royal Navy vessel that James Cook took to explore Australia and New Zealand between 1768 and 1771. Read More » Airing of Grievances: First-Class Cabins Raise 'Air Rage' Risks You've seen the headlines about airline passengers losing their cool on flights, but is there a reason behind these mile-high rages? Rather, the presence of a first-class cabin — and whether all passengers need to walk through it when boarding, to get to their own seats — may be playing a role in these incidents of "air rage," according to the study, published today (May 2) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read More » Hangry No More: Dieting Actually Improves Mood "We found that normal-weight and mildly overweight people who wish to lose weight need not worry about decreased quality of life," said Corby Martin, the director of the Ingestive Behavior Laboratory at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana and the lead author on the study. Researchers have hypothesized that calorie restriction "might negatively affect mood, stamina and libido, and increase irritability, particularly among normal-weight people," Martin told Live Science. The participants were divided into two groups: a calorie-restricted group, which included 145 people, and a control group, which included 75 people, according to the study. Read More » Diving Robot 'Mermaid' Lends a Hand (or 2) to Ocean Exploration  | In Mediterranean waters, off the coast of France, a diver recently visited the shipwreck La Lune — a vesssel in King Louis XIV's fleet — which lay untouched and unexplored on the ocean bottom since it sank in 1664.
| Read More » Jet-Powered Hoverboard Sets New World Record  | Franky Zapata flew a hoverboard 7,388 feet (2,252 meters) from a height of 164 feet (50 m), according to Guinness World Records. The daredevil set the new record on the Flyboard Air, a futuristic craft developed by his company, Zapata Racing. Previous world record holder Catalin Alexandru Duru piloted a hoverboard prototype of his own design that flew 905 feet, 2 inches (275.9 m).
| Read More » Ancient American: Kennewick Man's Tribal Links Confirmed  | The origins of a man who lived some 8,500 years ago, and whose skeleton was discovered in 1996 in Kennewick, Washington, have finally been pinned down. The ancient remains are most closely related to modern Native Americans, a new study led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirmed. Now that the skeleton's Native American link has been confirmed — a 2015 analysis of Kennewick Man found similar results — the re-burial of the remains must follow the guidelines of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the Army Corps said.
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