A newly discovered asteroid the size of a city block will zoom past Earth but poses no risk of a collision, astronomers said on Thursday.

The "unusually large" asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye, but asteroid enthusiasts may watch it pass by during a live online broadcast, said Patrick Paolucci, president of the skywatchers' site Slooh.

Rising temperatures, changing vegetation and the spread of humans all contributed to the extinction of the woolly mammoth, according to a new study that said no single factor was to blame.

The tusked mammal's demise was gradual, not sudden, said the authors, disputing earlier assertions that the giants were wiped out quickly -- either by disease, humans or a catastrophic weather event.

Scientists said Wednesday they have cracked the genetic code of the bonobo and found the ape had some DNA encryption more in common with humans than even its closest relative, the chimpanzee.

The bonobo is the last of the so-called great apes to have its genome sequenced, after those of chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.

The world's science academies on Thursday warned the upcoming Rio Summit that Earth faced a dangerous double whammy posed by voracious consumption and a population explosion.

The warning was issued by 105 academies ahead of the June 20-22 U.N. conference on sustainable development, where leaders will debate the planet's worsening environmental health and its entrenched poverty.

Either Wang Yaping or Liu Yang -- both advanced fighter pilots -- is set to become a heavenly heroine to a billion Chinese when one of them becomes the country's first female "taikonaut".

Wang or Liu is expected to earn a seat in the Shenzhou IX spacecraft, to be placed in orbit by a Long March rocket fired from the Jiuquan space base in the Gobi desert. State media say the launch will happen "around mid-June".

Seven out of 15 scientists recently recognized for their outstanding contributions by The National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS) are faculty members from the American University of Beirut, a press release said Wednesday.

The CNRS recently distributed research excellence awards during a special celebration marking its Golden Jubilee, held at the Grand Serail on June 6, 2012, under the patronage of Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

NASA is poised to launch on Wednesday a sophisticated orbiting telescope that uses high-energy X-ray vision to hunt for black holes in the universe.

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) will first be carried into the skies by a jet which will deploy a rocket that sends the satellite into space, NASA said.

Plans to build a 1.6-billion-euro ($2 billion) particle accelerator in Germany cleared the first main hurdle Tuesday when authorities gave the go-ahead for construction to begin.

The environment minister for the regional state of Hesse, Lucia Puttrich, officially gave the green light for a new giant Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe (FAIR), which is to be built on a 20-hectare site in Darmstadt, not far from Frankfurt.

The Swiss sun-powered plane Solar Impulse is preparing to take off Wednesday from Rabat to southern Morocco's desert region in its first, and potentially dangerous, flight in a hot and arid climate.

The prototype piloted by Swiss Andre Borschberg plans to take off from Rabat's Sale airport at 0700 GMT and fly south to the city of Ouarzazate where it is expected to land sometime after 2300 GMT Wednesday, or past midnight local time, a statement said Tuesday.

A team of Japanese astronomers using telescopes on Hawaii say they've seen the oldest galaxy, a discovery that's competing with other "earliest galaxy" claims.

The Japanese team calculates its galaxy was formed 12.91 billion light-years ago, and their research will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. The scientists with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used the Subaru and Keck telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea.