The Venus Express spacecraft has found convincing evidence that Earth is not the only geologically active planet in the solar system. Infrared emissions from lava flows on the surface of Venus indicate that they are relatively young, which means the planet may still be capable of volcanic eruptions. “The solidified lava flows, which radiate heat from the surface, seem hardly weathered. So we can... 

Early this morning, two proton beams collided in the Large Hadron Collider’s 17-mile-long ring at a combined energy of 7 TeV, three times higher than ever before. Finally, the flood of data particle physicists have been anticipating for years for has begun. “It’s a great day  to be a particle physicist,” said General Rolf Heuer, director of CERN where the LHC is located, in a press release... 

Bats can subtly adjust the frequency of the sounds they use to do echolocation to adjust to particularly cluttered terrain. In a laboratory testing room filled with dangling plastic chains, bats wearing tiny, half-gram microphones were recorded flying through the obstacle course. When confronted with the forest of chains, the bats tended to reduce or increase the sounds they emitted by a few kilohertz.... 

Lines at the grocery store might become as obsolete as milkmen, if a new tag that seeks to replace bar codes becomes commonplace. sciencenewsResearchers from Sunchon National University in Suncheon, South Korea, and Rice University in Houston have built a radio frequency identification tag that can be printed directly onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. The tag uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes... 

Extrasolar planet hunters are excited about a not-so-hot discovery. For the first time, they’ve found a relatively cool extrasolar planet that they can study in detail. sciencenews The finding is a milestone, says study co-author Hans Deeg of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Tenerife, Spain, because it is the first time astronomers have found an extrasolar planet that not only is cool... 

The best thermal images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot yet captured have revealed surprising weather and temperature variation within the solar system’s most famous storm. The darkest red part of the spot turns out to be a warm patch inside the otherwise cold storm. The temperature variation is slight: “Warm” in this case translates to -250 degrees Fahrenheit while cold is an even frostier -256... 

A fierce attempt to keep endangered Virginia big-eared bats alive in captivity has shown just how difficult that noble task may be. The effort was prompted by the discovery of white nose syndrome, an extremely virulent disease that has killed more than a million bats since 2007, in one of the handful of caves where Virginia big-eared bats live. Of 40 bats moved to the Smithsonian National Zoo last... 

Wind power has made incredible inroads into the U.S. energy system thanks to big, efficient machines standing hundreds of feet tall. But the future of wind power may be underground. In the abandoned mines and sandstones of the Midwest, compressed-air storage ventures are trying to convert the intermittent motions of the air into the kind of steady power that could displace coal. Compressed-air energy... 

An extra-tall wave struck a cruise ship off the Mediterranean coast of Spain this week, claiming two lives and injuring one person on board. Though the wave may not qualify as a “rogue wave,” it could have been created by the same forces. To officially be rogue, the wave’s height must be more than double the “significant wave height” of the area, which is calculated by averaging the height... 

A moon probe has found millions of tons of water on the moon’s north pole, NASA reported Monday. The vast source of water could one day be used to generate oxygen or sustain a moon base. A NASA radar aboard India’s Chandrayaan-I lunar orbiter found 40 craters, ranging in size from 1 to 9 miles across, with pockets of ice. Scientists estimate at least 600 million tons of ice could be entombed... 

The connection between gut bacteria and obesity has gained some weight, with new findings demonstrating links in mice among immune-system malfunction, bacterial imbalance and increased appetite. Mice with altered immune systems developed metabolic disorders and were prone to overeating. When microbes from their stomachs were transplanted into other mice, they also become obese. “This supports the... 

Prodigious plumes of planet-warming methane are bubbling from sediments across a broad region of Arctic seafloor previously thought to be sealed by permafrost, new analyses indicate. The resulting increase of methane gas in the atmosphere may accelerate climate warming, scientists say. sciencenewsThough immense amounts of carbon are known to be trapped in the peatlands of Siberia, a larger, often... 

Scientists have discovered 243-million-year-old fossils of dinosaurs’ closest relatives, pushing back the origin of dinosaurs by at least 10 million years. The dinosaur-like creature, Asilisaurus kongwe, was about the size of a Labrador retriever and had teeth and jawbones ideally shaped for eating plants, indicating it ate a mostly vegetarian diet. “This shows that the lineage leading to dinosaurs... 

Atrazine is receiving lots of attention for turning male frogs into girls, but that’s not all the common herbicide does. It also weakens amphibian immune systems, leaving the fragile creatures vulnerable to disease. Though less obvious than gender bending, immunosuppression could play just as large a part in the worldwide decline of amphibians, which have porous skin and easily absorb chemicals... 

Scientists have found a 67 million-year-old fossil of a snake coiled around dinosaur eggs and a hatchling. This is the first evidence of snakes eating dinosaurs. “It’s a stunning, once-in-a-lifetime find,” said paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. “We’ve caught one of the rarest moments in the fossil record, which is prey and predator,... 

Long before human communication evolved into incessant tapping on computer keys, people scratched on eggshells. sciencenewsDon’t laugh—researchers say a cache of ostrich eggshells engraved with geometric designs demonstrates the existence of a symbolic communication system around 60,000 years ago among African hunter-gatherers. The unusually large sample of 270 engraved eggshell fragments, mostly... 

A new study has identified the best way to flash freeze living tissue, which could lead to better human egg and stem cell storage. The technique could dramatically improve the odds that frozen, unfertilized eggs could be thawed out and still be healthy enough to be fertilized. That would reduce how many eggs must be harvested, raising success rates and lowering the number of costly, painful procedures... 

Stars shine amidst a luminous, cotton-candy nebula in this new image of NGC 346, the largest star-forming region in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud. The star cluster, located about 210,000 light-years away and measuring around 200 light years across, is home to a group of brilliant stars. Many of the stars in the nebula are just a few million years old. These young suns were born... 

Seen in the right light, yellow reef fish become spotty pains in the tail fin. sciencenewsMembers of one damselfish species use facial patterns of speckles and swooshes to identify the fish species they regularly attack, researchers report in an upcoming issue of Current Biology. These markings show up only in ultraviolet light, says visual ecologist Ulrike Siebeck of the University of Queensland... 

A painstaking, multidecade study of 33,000 individual trees may finally have uncovered the roots of biodiversity. That biodiversity’s origin needs uncovering is surprising because the word seems to be everywhere. But scientists still don’t quite understand why one place has more species than another, or fewer. The traditional explanation — every organism has its niche, competing not with other...