Tens of thousands of tourists, scientists and amateur astronomers who traveled from around the world to see a total solar eclipse in northern Australia may be getting shortchanged by the weather.

Forecasters were predicting cloudy skies around dawn Wednesday, when the moon will pass between the sun and Earth and plunge a slice of Australia's northeast into darkness. Many worried that they will miss a rare chance to view the celestial phenomenon.

Their numbers already threatened by a slow breeding rate and rapid habitat loss, China's endangered giant pandas now also risk losing their staple food, bamboo, to climate change, a report said Sunday.

A study in China's northwestern Qinling Mountains, home to around 270 pandas -- about a fifth of the world's wild population -- predicts a "substantial" bamboo decline this century as the globe warms.

A turtle breeding farm in the Cayman Islands has postponed plans to release 150 green sea turtles into the wild due to rough seas.

The government-owned Cayman Turtle Farm says the release planned for Sunday has been called off because of choppy waters. Officials expect to release the captive-bred creatures next weekend.

A half mile (800 meters) below the ground at Prudhoe Bay, above the vast oil field that helped trigger construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline, a drill rig has tapped what might one day be the next big energy source.

The U.S. Department of Energy and industry partners over two winters drilled into a reservoir of methane hydrate, which looks like ice but burns like a candle if a match warms its molecules. There is little need now for methane, the main ingredient of natural gas. With the boom in production from hydraulic fracturing, the United States is awash in natural gas for the near future and is considering exporting it, but the DOE wants to be ready with methane if there's a need.

A build-up of carbon dioxide in the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere risks causing a faster accumulation of man-made space junk and resulting in more collisions, scientists said on Sunday.

While it causes warming on Earth, CO2 conversely cools down the atmosphere and contracts its outermost layer, the thermosphere, where many satellites including the International Space Station (ISS) operate, said a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Tens of thousands of people were flocking to Australia's tropical north Monday to watch a rare total solar eclipse, a phenomenon officials say has not been seen in the region in 1,300 years.

The Queensland state government expects up to 60,000 visitors will witness on Wednesday the alignment of the sun, moon and earth which creates one of the most spectacular sights in nature, essentially turning day into night.

A newly-discovered alien planet seven times bigger than Earth may be able to support life, astronomers wrote in a study appearing in the journal "Astronomy and Astrophysics."

The planet, dubbed HD 40307g, is one of only a few to be discovered in the "habitable zone": a sweet spot, neither too close or too far from its sun, where liquid water could exist.

An American regarded as a father of computer graphics, an Indian literary critic and a Japanese molecular cell biologist have received the Kyoto Prize, Japan's highest private award for global achievement.

The Inamori Foundation awarded its advanced technology prize on Saturday to U.S. computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, who developed the graphic interface program Sketchpad in 1963.

Scientists said Wednesday they have developed a method to "see through" layers of thin, solid material in a breakthrough that holds promise for medical imaging, nanotechnology -- and the spy trade.

Still in its infancy, the technique using laser and computer decoding has allowed a team from the Netherlands and Italy to "see" an object behind a non-see-through barrier made of ground glass.

New Zealand's government said Friday that it would not sign on for a second stage of the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty, a stance that angered environmentalists and political opponents.

The announcement came the same day that Australia said it would stay the course and commit to "Kyoto 2."