The growing sphere of space junk surrounding the Earth is a hazard to spaceflight, as International Space Station astronauts found out Thursday when their home was buzzed by a five-inch piece of debris. As the story about the near miss was unfolding this morning, Twitter users quickly made a provisional claim about where the debris came from by examining space junk data visualized on Google Earth.... 

For those of you disappointed to learn that cow tipping is just an urban legend, take heart: you can tell tall tales about how you once demagnetized a cow. Satellite images of cattle and deer herds suggest that low-frequency magnetic fields disrupt the tendency of four-legged animals to align their bodies with geomagnetic fields. When herds stand next to power lines, which emit a mild electromagnetic... 

10. Narcissus These cheerful yellow and white harbingers of spring, aka daffodils and jonquils, are actually mildly toxic if the bulbs are eaten in large quantities (Narcissus pseudonarcissus is shown). Some people confuse them for onions. Daffodil bulb diners tend to experience nausea, vomiting, cramps and diarrhea. A doctor might recommend intravenous hydration and/or drugs to stave off nausea... 

Peking man—the group of early humans whose 1920s discovery gave a big boost to the theory of evolution—lived hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously believed, a new study says. Some researchers believe the discovery hints at two separate migrations of Homo erectus (of which Peking man is a subspecies) out of Africa: one into northeastern China and another into Southeast Asia. The... 

Rick Simpson and the crew at Evo Design Solutions know a thing or two about speed, having worked on grand-prix motorcycles and Le Mans race cars. Now they’re applying that expertise to a race-ready electric motorcycle as unusual as it is innovative. Everything about the EV-0 RR seems to break from traditional motorcycle design: the carbon-fiber monocoque chassis, the forkless single-sided front... 

While he may not want to suck your blood, the male fish seen above does sport spooky-looking fangs that have earned it the name Danionella dracula. Researchers at London’s Natural History Museum found several of the new species (bottom) in a tank of aquarium fish. Initially museum staff had thought the 0.7-inch-long (1.7-centimeter-long) creatures, caught in Myanmar (Burma), were part of an... 

The iPod Chimera for 2010 comes standard with 500gig or 1TB of memory. It’s made of Titanium and scratch/smear resistant touch screen display. It runs on OS-mmX, Bluetooth V4. Wi-Fi/WiMax, Hi-Def screen resolution of 1280×720, works vertically or horizontally. Wireless stereo earphones supplied by Shure. USB4 connectors with auto-locking mechanism. Options: 4GSM iPhone, Two-way iSight,... 

Until last December, no one had ever seen the bottom of the Tasman Fracture, a trench that drops more than four kilometers below the surface of the ocean. A group of Australian and American researchers recently spent a month hundreds of kilometers southwest of the Tasmanian coast, exploring the fracture’s depths. Jess Adkins, a professor at Caltech and one of the project’s lead scientists,... 

The Blue Brain Project Scientists rely on computer models to understand the toughest concepts in science: the origin of the universe, the behavior of atoms, and the future climate of the planet. Now a computer model is being designed to take on the human brain. Neuroscientist Henry Markram of the Brain Mind Institute at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, has spent the last... 

When Mark Taylor’s computer crashed, he suspected he had a “worm” virus in the system, but was surprised to discover the problem was caused by an actual earthworm. Mark Taylor The discovery was made by IT repairmen who found the 5in worm lodged inside the computer. The creature had crawled into his £360 old laptop through an air vent and wrapped itself around the internal fan,... 

Large Telescope, astronomers have gained valuable new insights about the atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto. The scientists found unexpectedly large amounts of methane in the atmosphere, and also discovered that the atmosphere is hotter than the surface by about 40 degrees, although it still only reaches a frigid minus 180 degrees Celsius. These properties of Pluto’s atmosphere may be due to... 

Explosions are tricky to measure. For one, what’s the criteria? And most data on “blasts from the past” are speculation at best. So consider this list “10 of the biggest explosions since the dawn of time,” measured by magnitude of the blast, loss of lives and impact on world history. In no particular order: 1. Atomic blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9,... 

Amazing, we underestimate animals intelligence all the time. It really is incredible what they are capable of. Check out this amazing story with these amazing pictures! Bill owns a company that manufactures and installs car wash systems. (Magic Wand Car Wash Systems, just in case you want to buy one.) Bill’s company installed a car wash system in Frederick, Md. Now understand that these are complete... 

This title is like the title for a children’s book, however this is the title of our anime food news report! This is Jackie Chan at Shanghai G Sushi about to devour the World’s Largest Sushi Roll! In Japanese cuisine, sushi (寿司, 鮨, 鮓 ?) is vinegared rice, usually topped with other ingredients, including fish, dishes.[1] In Japan, sliced raw fish alone is called sashimi and is distinct... 

MIT’s latest solar race car might look like a funky Ikea table with a hump, but don’t laugh. It’ll do 90 mph and is packed with technology that may end up in the hybrids and EVs the rest of us will soon be driving. The university’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team, the oldest such team in the country, unveiled the $243,000 carbon-fiber racer dubbed Eleanor on Friday and is shaking... 

English physicist James Chadwick’s 1932 discovery of the neutron won him the 1935 Nobel Prize for Physics. Photo: Corbis 1932: English physicist James Chadwick publishes a letter on the existence of the neutron. His discovery helps clear the way for splitting the nuclei of even the heaviest atomic elements, making possible the development of the atomic bomb. Unlike the proton, the other large... 

Rather than relying on warm, fuzzy feelings to protect animals, conservationists suggest appealing to something more reliable: greed. By selling financial contracts pegged to species health, the government could create a market in the future of threatened animals, making their preservation literally valuable to investors. “The incentive to conserve would increase as the likelihood of species... 

Now you see sadness, now you don’t. A new study has found that removing just the tears out of pictures of people crying reduces the sadness that viewers perceive in the photos, even though the rest of the expression remains intact. The research subjects said when the tears were digitally erased, the faces’ emotional content became ambiguous, ranging from awe-filled to puzzlement. “One... 

Toyota is looking to a greener future — literally — with dreams of an ultralight, superefficient plug-in hybrid with a bioplastic body made of seaweed that could be in showrooms within 15 years. The kelp car would build upon the already hypergreen 1/X plug-in hybrid concept, which weighs 926 pounds, by replacing its carbon-fiber body with plastic derived from seaweed.  As wild as it might sound,... 

Wii Boxing just got a whole lot more realistic. While these Everlast branded gloves are little more than a regular pair of boxing gloves, with the addition of pockets into which you can slide a couple of Wiimotes, they change the game, especially if you go up against a “friend” in two-player mode. Instead of just waving around a couple of plastic sticks, you can now pummel and beat your...