A German woman who feared the Earth would be sucked into oblivion in a black hole failed Tuesday in her court bid to stop the work of the world's most powerful atom smasher.

The higher administrative court in Muenster, western Germany, rejected her claims, ruling there was no evidence the work of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) posed a danger to public safety.

Two American scholars won the Nobel economics prize Monday for work on match-making — how to pair doctors with hospitals, students with schools, kidneys with transplant recipients and even men with women in marriage.

Lloyd Shapley of UCLA and Alvin Roth, a Harvard University professor currently visiting at Stanford University, found ways to make markets work when traditional economic tools fail.

Daredevil Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking jump raises hopes that pilots and even astronauts can be saved from accidents in the stratosphere, experts said on Monday.

Michel Viso, an expert in exobiology at France's National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), said Baumgartner's leap from 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) "has operational potential" for manned flight at extreme heights.

An international team of amateur and professional astronomers on Monday announced the discovery of a planet whose skies are lit up by four suns -- the first reported case of such a phenomenon.

The planet, located about 5,000 light years from Earth, has been dubbed PH1 in honor of Planet Hunters, a program led by Yale University in the United States which enlists volunteers to look for signs of new planets.

China's beloved national symbol — the panda — may have been seen quite differently by ancient humans: as food.

Scientist Wei Guangbiao says prehistoric man ate pandas in an area that is now part of the city of Chongqing in southwest China.

Wildlife researchers say 25 species of monkeys, langurs, lemurs and gorillas are on the brink of extinction and need global action to protect them from increasing deforestation and illegal trafficking.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature said Monday that primates from Asia and Africa are severely threatened. Six of the species live on the island nation of Madagascar.

Eben Alexander's quick trip to heaven started with a headache.

It was November 2008 and a rare bacterial meningitis was fast on its way to shutting down the University of Virginia neurosurgeon's neocortex -- the part of the brain that deals with sensory perception and conscious thought.

Scientists on Sunday said they had found water molecules in samples of lunar soil, and their unusual signature points to the Sun as the indirect source.

Samples returned to Earth by the Apollo missions carry molecules of water and a precursor of water called hydroxyl, according to their study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Word that a giant eyeball washed up on a Florida beach has created a buzz on the Internet and in the marine biology community.

An assistant biology professor at Florida International University in Miami on Friday said the blue eyeball may have come from a deep sea squid or a large swordfish. Heather Bracken-Grissom says she started discussing the eyeball with her colleagues as soon as they saw the pictures on the Internet.

A court has blocked the export of 25 captive dolphins trained in the Philippines to become show animals at a Singapore casino, a Filipino official and animal rights groups said Saturday.

A civil suit filed by the rights groups alleged the traffic in live Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins for sport or entertainment was illegal, cruel and would cause the extinction of the species.