Scientists on Thursday launched a mission to the seabed off Japan where a massive quake triggered last year's devastating tsunami, to get their first proper look at the buckled ocean floor.

Researchers from Germany and Japan are sending high-tech vehicles to probe the seabed up to 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) below the surface where the massive seismic shock hit last March.

A solar storm shook the Earth's magnetic field early Friday, but scientists said they had no reports of any problems with electrical systems.

After reports Thursday of the storm fizzling out, a surge of activity prompted space weather forecasters to issue alerts about changes in the magnetic field.

Some bees love a good adventure while others prefer to hang out at the hive, and a new analysis of bee brains suggests some of the same chemicals that affect human personality could explain why.

Honey bees are known to have a structured society in which different bees serve different tasks -- some work as nurses while others forage for food, for example.

U.S. and Chinese researchers have found the oldest evidence of iridescent black feathers in Microraptor, a dinosaur the size of a small crow that perched in forest tree branches 130 million years ago.

Scientists think the glossy plumes may have helped the small, meat-eating dinosaur signal its good health and suitability as a mate to others, much the way fancy colors serve birds of our era.

The biggest space weather storm in five years is hurtling toward Earth, threatening to disrupt power grids, GPS systems, satellites and airline flights, experts say.

The brunt of the storm is expected to strike early Thursday and last through Friday, possibly garbling some of Earthlings' most prized gadgets but also giving viewers in parts of Central Asia a prime look at the aurora borealis, or northern lights, when darkness falls on Thursday.

The last West African giraffes, now living in the wild only in southwestern Niger, are making a comeback with numbers standing at 310 last year, the environment ministry said here Wednesday.

Only 50 of them, their lowest number, was recorded in 1996.

Scientists on Wednesday said they had recorded the first real-time images of atoms moving in a molecule, a feat that captured movement lasting less than one millionth of a billionth of a second.

The exploit entailed directing an ultra-fast laser onto molecules of nitrogen and of oxygen. Its pulse of light knocked a single electron out of its orbit around one of the atoms.

Our ancestors made the evolutionary split with gorillas around 10 million years ago, but we still share a remarkable number of genes with the great ape, according to a groundbreaking study published on Wednesday.

A worldwide consortium of scientists sequenced the genome of thewestern lowland gorilla and compared more than 11,000 of its key genes with those of modern humans, Homo sapiens, and chimpanzees.

Flying in formation around the moon, a pair of NASA probes began mapping the lunar gravity field in hopes of figuring out why Earth's only natural satellite is shaped the way it is.

The probes kicked off their science campaign late Tuesday two months after arriving back-to-back at the moon over the New Year's weekend.

U.S.-based physicists said Wednesday that their experiments confirm those from a major European atom-smasher's that have narrowed the range where the elusive Higgs boson particle could be hiding.

The results come from the now-defunct Tevatron collider, which closed down in September after nearly a quarter century, though physicists continue to analyze its data in the hunt for the so-called "God particle."