Today's Reuters Science News Headlines - Yahoo! News: | | Rise in sea level can't be stopped: scientists Sun,1 Jul 2012 10:02 AM PDT Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - Rising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next several hundred years, even if deep emissions cuts lower global average temperatures, but they can be slowed down, climate scientists said in a study on Sunday. A lot of climate research shows that rising greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for increasing global average surface temperatures by about 0.17 degrees Celsius a decade from 1980-2010 and for a sea level rise of about 2.3mm a year from 2005-2010 as ice caps and glaciers melt. ... Full Story | Top | Soyuz spacecraft ends mission with smooth landing Sun,1 Jul 2012 08:05 AM PDT Reuters - MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz capsule landed on the Kazakh steppes on Sunday, safely delivering a trio of astronauts who helped to dock the first privately owned spacecraft during a six-month stint on the International Space Station. The descent capsule, carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, touched down with its parachute in a cloud of dust at 0814 GMT. The crew left the space station early on Sunday after serving 183 days in orbit, often sharing their experiences with the public via blogs and Twitter. ... Full Story | Top | Cosmic discovery week ahead for science, perhaps Sun,1 Jul 2012 05:30 AM PDT Reuters - GENEVA (Reuters) - It has been fancifully dubbed the angel of creation and, to the particular scorn of physicists, the god particle. The Higgs Boson is said to have appeared out of the chaos of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago and turned the flying debris from that primeval explosion into galaxies, stars, and planets. Its formal discovery, according to a broad scientific consensus, would be the greatest advance in knowledge of the universe in decades. ... Full Story | Top | Enjoy the long weekend, if only for second Fri,29 Jun 2012 04:22 AM PDT Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - The world is about to get a well-earned long weekend but don't make big plans because it will only last an extra second. A so-called 'leap second' will be added to the world's atomic clocks as they undergo a rare adjustment to keep them in step with the slowing rotation of the earth. To achieve the adjustment, on Saturday night atomic clocks will read 23 hours, 59 minutes and 60 seconds before moving on to midnight Greenwich Mean Time. Super-accurate atomic clocks are the ultimate reference point by which the world sets its wrist watches. ... Full Story | Top | China hails space mission's success as crew returns to Earth Thu,28 Jun 2012 09:50 PM PDT Reuters - BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Shenzhou 9 spacecraft returned to Earth on Friday, ending a mission that put the country's first woman in space and completed a manned docking test critical to its goal of building a space station by 2020. The spacecraft's gumdrop-shaped return capsule descended to Earth by parachute and touched down shortly after 10 a.m. EDT (0200 GMT) in China's northwestern Inner Mongolia region with its three-member crew, including female astronaut Liu Yang. Beijing has hailed the nearly two-week mission as a technical breakthrough for the country's growing space program. ... Full Story | Top | West's wildfires a preview of changed climate: scientists Thu,28 Jun 2012 06:14 PM PDT Reuters - (Reuters) - Scorching heat, high winds and bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic wildfires in the U.S. West that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists said on Thursday. "What we're seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like," Princeton University's Michael Oppenheimer said during a telephone press briefing. "It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster ... This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future. ... Full Story | Top | Saturn's largest moon likely has an underground ocean Thu,28 Jun 2012 05:04 PM PDT Reuters - CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found strong evidence for an ocean of water beneath the frozen crust of Saturn's largest moon Titan, scientists said Thursday. The finding propels Titan into a short list of places including Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's smaller moon Enceladus suspected of harboring underground seas. "The evidence is strong that Titan is squishy," said planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine, with Cornell University. The evidence was put together during six passes over Titan by Cassini, which is orbiting Saturn, between 2004 and 2011. ... Full Story | Top | Privately owned telescope to hunt for killer asteroids Thu,28 Jun 2012 02:55 PM PDT Reuters - CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A California space research group plans to build, launch and operate a privately funded space telescope to hunt for asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth, project managers said on Thursday. The B612 Foundation - named after a fictional planet in the book "The Little Prince" - is counting on private donors to raise money for the wide-angle, infrared telescope and its operations, estimated at a few hundred million dollars. The goal is to chart 500,000 asteroids that fly relatively close to Earth. ... Full Story | Top | Scientists develop spray-on battery Thu,28 Jun 2012 09:56 AM PDT Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists in the United States have developed a paint that can store and deliver electrical power just like a battery. Traditional lithium-ion batteries power most portable electronics. They are already pretty compact but limited to rectangular or cylindrical blocks. Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have come up with a technique to break down each element of the traditional battery and incorporate it into a liquid that can be spray-painted in layers on virtually any surface. ... Full Story | Top | World awaits latest in hunt for Higgs particle Thu,28 Jun 2012 03:54 AM PDT Reuters - LONDON/GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists hunting the Higgs subatomic particle will unveil results next week that could confirm, confound or complicate our understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe. Seldom has something so small and ephemeral excited such interest. The theoretical particle explains how suns and planets formed after the Big Bang - but so far it has not been proven to exist. The CERN research centre near Geneva will on July 4 unveil its latest findings in the search for the Higgs after reporting "tantalizing glimpses" in December. ... Full Story | Top | "Blade Runner" still subject of scientists' debate Wed,27 Jun 2012 10:07 AM PDT Reuters - (Reuters) - While South African athlete Oscar Pistorius attempts to become the first amputee runner to compete at the Olympic Games, scientists are still arguing whether his artificial limbs give him a critical advantage or not. Pistorius, born without fibulas and who had his lower legs amputated when a baby, uses carbon fiber prosthetic running blades and is hoping to qualify for the 400 meters at the Games. Pistorius beat the Olympic qualifying time of 45. ... Full Story | Top | Promoting health? It's all in the game Tue,26 Jun 2012 04:42 AM PDT Reuters - LONDON (Reuters) - Meet Roxxi - a feisty and fully-armed virtual nanobot. Billed as "medicine's mightiest warrior", she's fighting an epic battle deep inside the human body where she launches rapid-fire assaults on malignant cells. Or, if it's not cancer but diabetes you're fighting, why not join Britney and Hunter, two digital kids whose adventures to other worlds are spurred on by regular and timely updates of your blood sugar levels. ... Full Story | Top | China manned docking a key step for space station Sun,24 Jun 2012 03:22 AM PDT Reuters - SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China re-affirmed its goal of building a full-fledged space station by 2020 on Sunday, following a successful manual docking between a manned spacecraft and an experimental orbiting lab module. "Mastery of rendezvous and docking technology is a decisive step towards realizing the goals of the second stage in the development of China's manned space flight program. It also lays a firm foundation for the further construction of a space station," said Wu Ping, the spokesman for China's manned space program at a press conference following the docking exercise. ... Full Story | Top | U.S. seizes Tyrannosaurus bones on suspicion of smuggling Fri,22 Jun 2012 02:38 PM PDT Reuters - NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. officials on Friday seized the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus dinosaur that Mongolia wants returned on suspicion that it was smuggled to the United States from the Gobi desert. The bones of the tyrannosaurus bataar, an eight-foot-tall, 24-foot-long cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex, were taken in a moving van from the Cadogan Tate Fine Art storage company in Queens, where they had been stored in four large wooden crates. The President of Mongolia, Elbegdorj Tsakhia, demanded that the skeleton be returned to his country after it was auctioned on May 20 for $1. ... Full Story | Top | U.S. close to seizing disputed dinosaur skeleton Thu,21 Jun 2012 05:41 AM PDT Reuters - (Reuters) - U.S. authorities said they expect this week to seize a 70-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton that was discovered in Mongolia more 65 years ago and now is stored in New York and at the center of an international legal dispute. A federal judge in New York has signed a warrant that allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to seize the skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus bataar - an Asian cousin of the North American Tyrannosaurus rex - from Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. "We should have it by the end of the week," said Luis Martinez, a spokesman for U.S. ... Full Story | Top |
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