Science Glance
Our galactic neighborhood just got a lot bigger. NASA on Wednesday announced the discovery of 715 new planets, by far the biggest batch of planets ever unveiled at once.
By way of comparison, about 1,000 planets total had been identified in our galaxy before Wednesday. Four of those planets are in what NASA calls the "habitable zone," meaning they have the makeup to potentially support life.
The planets, which orbit 305 different stars, were discovered by the Kepler space telescope and were verified using a new technique that scientists expect to make new planetary discoveries more frequent and more detailed.
NASA discovers 715 new planets
Space boulder rocks Moon
A space rock has slammed into the Moon, leaving a huge crater and causing a bright and long-lasting explosion that was visible from Earth, scientists said Monday. They said the event could shed light on the risk of similar objects hitting Earth.
Jose Maria Madiedo said Monday that he witnessed the refrigerator-sized meteor smashing into the Moon in what is believed to be the biggest such lunar impact ever recorded.
At 4.4 Billion Years Old, Oz Crystals Confirmed As World's Oldest
Scientists have used a powerful new technique to prove that some tiny crystals found in Western Australia are indeed the oldest known materials formed on Earth. Back in 2001, scientists reported that one of the zircon crystals was about 4.4 billion years old — so old that not everyone believed it.
"There have been challenges, because nothing in science goes without being questioned. It always has to be proven," says , a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The crystals formed just tens of millions of years after an early proto-Earth was melted by a violent impact with a Mars-sized object. The crash created the moon and turned our young planet into a red ball of molten rock.
Massive skull of 'strange-looking' dinosaur unearthed in Canada
A fossil find in Canada has revealed a "strange-looking" dinosaur with a skull the size of a small car, a paleontologist revealing it to the world said.
University of Calgary paleontologist Darla Zelenitsky, who discovered the skull of the Pachyrhinosaurus in Alberta, said it's one of the most complete ever found and of impressive size.
African fossil reveals clues to evolution of ape-human lineage
Scientists say evidence of an African environment inhabited by an ancient ape species provides insights into the early diversification of the ape-human lineage.
Knowledge of the environment inhabited by the early ape Proconsul can help in understanding and interpreting the connection between habitat preferences and that diversification, they said.
Proconsul and a primate relative, Dendropithecus, inhabited "a widespread, dense, multistoried, closed canopy" forest on Rusinga Island in Kenya, the researchers report in the journal Nature Communications.
1 In 4 Americans Thinks The Sun Goes Around The Earth, Survey Says
A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the .
The survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an annual meeting of the
To the question "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth," 26 percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly.
British police question CNN's Piers Morgan over phone-hacking
Piers Morgan, one of the biggest names in British media and a CNN television host, has been questioned by London police in connection with allegations of phone-hacking at the Daily Mirror tabloid he used to edit.
Morgan, a former judge on "America's Got Talent" show who replaced Larry King on CNN in 2011, said in a statement on Thursday he had been interviewed by officers after voluntarily attending a police station in December.
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