Science
Latest stories
NASA Test Mars Rover Prototype in Chile

NASA scientists said Friday they were testing a prototype of a robot the U.S. space agency hopes to send to Mars in 2020 in Chile's Atacama desert.

NASA hopes to use this kind of rover to explore life-friendly sites found by Curiosity, the rover already searching for signs of life on Mars. It has been there since last August.

W140 Full Story
Discovery Could Boost Internet Bandwidth

A new fiber optic technology could increase Internet bandwidth capacity by sending data along light beams that twist like a tornado rather than move in a straight line, scientists said Thursday.

The discovery comes as Internet data traffic is reaching its limit amid mounting demand for bandwidth by users of smartphones and Internet-enabled devices, creating problems for network providers.

W140 Full Story
NASA Launches Satellite to Study Solar Material

The U.S. space agency launched a satellite late Thursday to unlock the secrets of the Sun's lower atmosphere.

NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph -- dubbed IRIS -- was launched at 0227 GMT aboard an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket off the California coast.

W140 Full Story
Did Humans Learn to Throw 2 Million Years Ago?

Scientists say they've figured out when our human ancestors first started throwing with accuracy and fire power, as only people can: Nearly 2 million years ago.

That's what researchers conclude in a study released Wednesday by the journal Nature. There's plenty of skepticism about their conclusion. But the new paper contends that this throwing ability probably helped our ancient ancestor Homo erectus hunt, allowing him to toss weapons — probably rocks and sharpened wooden spears.

W140 Full Story
Malaysia Pressures Indonesia over Haze Crisis

Malaysia on Thursday stepped up pressure on Indonesia to do more to stop outbreaks of smog after fires on Sumatra island sparked Southeast Asia's worst air pollution crisis for years.

Palls of smoke from slash-and-burn agricultural fires pushed haze levels to record highs in Singapore last week, shrouding the city in smog, and badly affected parts of Malaysia.

W140 Full Story
On the Hoof: Ancient DNA Reveals Story of the Horse

Scientists on Wednesday said they had unravelled the DNA of a horse that lived some 700,000 years ago, a record-breaking feat in the young field of palaeo-genomics.

The ancient find indicates that all horses today, as well as donkeys and zebras, shared a common ancestor that lived some four million years ago, twice as early as thought.

W140 Full Story
IEA: Renewable Energy Use Gaining Worldwide

Renewables like solar and wind represent the fastest-growing source of energy power generation and will make up a quarter of the global power mix by 2018, the International Energy Agency said in a report Wednesday.

The IEA said that in 2016 renewable energy will overtake natural gas as a power source and will be twice that of nuclear, and second only to coal as a source of power.

W140 Full Story
Japan Conversation Robot Ready for Outer Space

The world's first space conversation experiment between a robot and humans is ready to be launched.

Developers from the Kirobo project, named after "kibo" or hope in Japanese and "robot," gathered in Tokyo Wednesday to demonstrate the humanoid robot's ability to talk.

W140 Full Story
New Flame-Headed Bird Species Found in Cambodia Capital

A new species of bird with a distinctive orange-red coloured tuft of feathers on its head has been found in Cambodia's populous capital city, conservationists said on Wednesday.

The remarkable discovery of the Cambodian tailorbird, or orthotomus chaktomuk, in Phnom Penh -- and several other locations including a construction site just outside of the city of 1.5 million people -- has astounded conservationists.

W140 Full Story
China's Shenzhou-10 Spacecraft Returns to Earth

China completed its longest manned space mission Wednesday as its Shenzhou-10 spacecraft and three crew members safely returned to Earth, in a major step for Beijing's goal of building a permanent space station by 2020.

The return capsule touched down at 8:07 am (0007 GMT), live state TV footage showed, kicking up a cloud of dust on the grasslands of north China's Inner Mongolia region.

W140 Full Story