Australia was first settled by between 1,000 and 3,000 humans around 50,000 years ago, but the population crashed during the Ice Age before recovering to a peak of some 1.2 million people around five centuries ago, a study said on Wednesday.

Estimating the early population of Australia is a source of debate in anthropology, partly because it touches on how European colonization affected the country's indigenous people.

The U.N.'s climate chief says talks in 2015 to secure a global warming pact will not fail as they did at the 2009 Copenhagen summit where world leaders, including President Barrack Obama, could not reach an agreement.

Speaking ahead of a climate meeting in Bonn next week, Christiana Figueres told reporters in a teleconference that much had changed, giving her optimism that a global climate pact can be reached in Paris in 2015. Figueres says climate change is worsening and governments have already committed to reaching a deal.

The University of Nevada's world-renowned earthquake laboratory has launched a nearly $4 million research project aimed at making nonstructural parts of buildings more earthquake proof.

Engineers at the school's Large-Scale Structures Lab cranked up three 50-ton capacity shake tables on the Reno campus Monday to simulate a quake as part of the groundbreaking project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Enigmatic traces of water in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter came from a comet that crashed into the giant planet in 1994, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday.

Astronomers have been debating the water for 15 years after telltale molecules were spotted by an infrared telescope.

Are you crazy enough to sign up for a one-way trip to Mars? Applications are now being accepted by the makers of a Dutch reality show that says it will deliver the first humans to the Red Planet in 10 years.

The main requirements are strong health, good people and survival skills, being 18 or older, and having a reasonable grasp of the English language.

Earth was cooling until the end of the 19th century and a hundred years later, the planet's surface was on average warmer than at any time in the previous 1,400 years, according to climate records presented on Sunday.

In a study spanning two millennia published in Nature Geoscience, scientists said a "long-term cooling trend" around the world swung into reverse in the late 19th century.

French biologist Francois Jacob, who won the 1965 Nobel prize for medicine for his research into enzymes, has died at the age of 92, a relative told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

Jacob, a member of the prestigious "Ordre de la Liberation" awarded to those who performed heroic deeds during the liberation of France in World War II, died on Friday, the relative said.

Woolly mammoths stomp through the Siberian tundra as the giant moa strides the forest floor of New Zealand and Tasmania's dog-like "tigers" stalk their prey under the cover of night.

This is not a snapshot of times past, nor next year's sequel to Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park."

U.S. manufacturer Orbital Sciences launched its first Antares rocket Sunday, paving the way for a demonstration flight to the International Space Station within months.

The two-stage launch vehicle blasted off at 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) from the Wallops Flight Facility on an island off the coast of the eastern U.S. state of Virginia.

The Indonesian government has said it aims to approve within a month a plan that would free up vast swathes of protected virgin rainforest on Sumatra island for commercial exploitation.

Rights groups reacted with outrage at the news that the plan, which also needs to be passed by the Aceh provincial parliament, was making progress, saying it would only benefit huge foreign companies and not the area's people.