|  Scientists: Sun-grazing comet likely broke up  | STOCKHOLM (AP) — Scientists say it appears a comet from the fringes of the solar system didn't survive its close encounter with the sizzling sun.
| Read More » No sign of comet after pass around sun: scientists  | A comet's 5.5-million-year journey to the inner solar system apparently ended during a suicidal trip around the sun, leaving no trace of its once-bright tail or even remnants of rock and dust, scientists said on Thursday. The comet, known as ISON, was discovered last year when it was still far beyond Jupiter, raising the prospect of a spectacular naked-eye object by the time it graced Earth's skies in December. Comet ISON passed just 730,000 miles (1.2 million km) from the surface of the sun at 1:37 p.m. EST/1837 GMT on Thursday. Astronomers used a fleet of solar telescopes to look for the comet after its slingshot around the sun, but to no avail.
| Read More » No sign of comet after pass around sun - scientists  | A comet's 5.5-million-year journey to the inner solar system apparently ended during a suicidal trip around the sun, leaving no trace of its once-bright tail or even remnants of rock and dust, scientists said on Thursday. The comet, known as ISON, was discovered last year when it was still far beyond Jupiter, raising the prospect of a spectacular naked-eye object by the time it graced Earth's skies in December. Comet ISON passed just 730,000 miles (1.2 million km) from the surface of the sun at 1:37 p.m. EST/1837 GMT on Thursday. Astronomers used a fleet of solar telescopes to look for the comet after its slingshot around the sun, but to no avail.
| Read More » Last-second glitch halts SpaceX rocket launch The launch of an unmanned Space Exploration Technologies' Falon 9 rocket was aborted one minute before liftoff on Thursday due to an unexplained technical issue, company officials said. It was the second attempt this week to launch a communications satellite for SES, which operates the world's second largest fleet. An initial attempt on Monday was called off after unusual pressure readings in the rocket's liquid oxygen tank. 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. Read More » Journal withdraws controversial French Monsanto GM study  | By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - The publisher of a controversial and much-criticized study suggesting genetically modified corn caused tumors in rats has withdrawn the paper after a yearlong investigation found it did not meet scientific standards. Reed Elsevier's Food and Chemical Toxicology journal, which published the study by the French researcher Gilles-Eric Seralini in September 2012, said on Thursday the retraction was because the study's small sample size meant no definitive conclusions could be reached. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) issued a statement in November 2012 saying the study by Seralini, who was based at France's University of Caen, had serious defects in design and methodology and did not meet acceptable scientific standards. In its retraction statement, the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal said that in light of these concerns, it too had requested to view the raw data from the study.
| Read More » Did Comet ISON survive? Scientists see tiny hope | STOCKHOLM (AP) — Scientists are studying spacecraft images to find out whether a small part of Comet ISON survived its close encounter with the sun.
| Read More » Virgin Galactic Now Takes Bitcoin for Private Spaceflights, Sir Richard Branson Says  | British billionaire Sir Richard Branson said his company Virgin Galactic is now accepting the digital-only currency for its commercial spaceflights aboard SpaceShipTwo. On Friday (Nov. 22), Virgin accepted its first bitcoin payment from a flight attendant in Hawaii, Branson announced in a blog post, saying he expects "many more to follow in her footsteps." So it makes sense we would offer Bitcoin as a way to pay for your journey to space," Branson wrote. A seat on one of the six-passenger private flights costs $250,000 and more than 600 space tourists already have signed up for a ride, including Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher.
| Read More » SpaceX Aborts Thanksgiving Rocket Launch Due to Engine Trouble  | Topped with a television broadcasting satellite, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket fired its engines and was moments away from liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, but the commercial booster aborted the launch after computers detected the engines were too slow building up thrust. Engineers raced to understand and resolve the problem, but they could not get comfortable enough to attempt the launch again before Thursday's time-constrained flight opportunity closed.
| Read More » Seeing Coldest Blobs in the Universe in New Light  | Physicists have come up with a new way to gaze longingly at some of the weirdest matter on Earth — the super-cold, super-calm gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate. While scientists have been able to steal quick glimpses of the unusual gas, until now, simply snapping a picture of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) often destroyed it by adding extra energy from light. "The absorption of a single photon (the smallest packet of light) is enough to break one," lead study author Michael Hush, a physicist at the University of Nottingham, told LiveScience in an email interview. By creating a new computer model, detailed today (Nov. 28) in the New Journal of Physics, the researchers have figured out a way to re-route this heat and keep BECs chilled even during long imaging sessions.
| Read More » Bonobos Face Shrinking Habitat in Africa  | The endangered apes, also called pygmy chimpanzees, are only found in the lowland forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Researchers found that it is getting harder for bonobos to avoid areas with high human activity; "Bonobos that live in closer proximity to human activity and to points of human access are more vulnerable to poaching, one of their main threats," study researcher Janet Nackoney, of University of Maryland, said in a statement. "Our results point to the need for more places where bonobos can be safe from hunters, which is an enormous challenge in the DRC."
| Read More » Becoming King: Why So Few Male Lions Survive to Adulthood  | Only about 1 in 8 male lions survive to adulthood, Dereck said. But when male lions begin to reach sexual maturity around age 2, the older males within the pride kick them out, Dereck said. For a young male, "the betrayal by his own blood must be confusing to him, but this is an ancient rite — the casting out of young males into a world of unknowns — a world where he will be able make it, or die," said Dereck, 57, who sports a white beard and looks every bit the wilderness gentleman. Dereck and Beverly, 56, seem to belong here in Duba, where they made other films about lions, including "The Last Lions" and "Relentless Enemies." [In Photos: A Lion's Life]
| Read More » Comet ISON Gets Roasted by Sun and Vanishes, But Did It Survive?  | The much-anticipated Comet ISON appeared to disintegrate during its Thanksgiving Day slingshot around the sun Thursday, but something — it seems — may have survived. The sungrazing Comet ISON vanished from the view of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during an extremely close encounter with the sun on Thursday (Nov. 28), leading scientists to suspect the worst. But late Thursday night, images from another sun-watching spacecraft, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) run by NASA and the European Space Agency, picked up a blip of something rounding the sun in a camera called LASCO C3. "Now, in the latest LASCO C3 images, we are seeing something beginning to gradually brighten up again," comet expert Karl Battams, of the U.S. Navy Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., wrote in an evening blog post. "One could almost be forgiven for thinking that there's a comet in the images!"
| Read More » A Universe Made of Stories: Why We Need a Science and Technology Dialogue  | A Universe Made of Stories: Why We Need a Science and Technology Dialogue
| Read More » Journal withdraws controversial French Monsanto GM study | Reed Elsevier's Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT)journal, which published the study by the French researcher Gilles-Eric Seralini in September 2012, said the retraction was because the study's small sample size meant no definitive conclusions could be reached. "Ultimately, the results presented - while not incorrect - are inconclusive, and therefore do not reach the threshold of publication for Food and Chemical Toxicology." At the time of its original publication, hundreds of scientists across the world questioned Seralini's research, which said rats fed Monsanto's GM corn had suffered tumors and multiple organ failure. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) issued a statement in November 2012 saying the study by Seralini, who was based at France's University of Caen, had serious defects in design and methodology and did not meet acceptable scientific standards. In its retraction statement, the FCT said that, in light of these concerns, it too had asked to view the raw data.
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