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Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type. The distant world orbits one pair of stars and has a second stellar pair revolving around it.

The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory.
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Forget the diamond as big as the Ritz. This one's bigger than planet Earth.
Orbiting a star that is visible to the naked eye, astronomers have discovered a planet twice the size of our own made largely out of diamond.

The rocky planet, called '55 Cancri e', orbits a sun-like star in the constellation of Cancer and is moving so fast that a year there lasts a mere 18 hours.

Two American doctors whose work over four decades has revealed how the body responds to the smells, sights, flavours and threats of the outside world have won this year's Nobel prize in chemistry.

Robert Lefkowitz at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Brian Kobilka at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, share science's most prestigious award – and 8m Swedish kronor (£744,000) – for their discovery of molecular sensors called G-protein-coupled receptors or GPCRs.

A worm from an ecosystem far, far away has been named after the Star Wars character Yoda. Yoda purpurata is one of three new species of deep-sea acorn worms discovered 1.5 miles beneath the Atlantic.

Scientists coined the genus name because the large lips on either side of the creature's head reminded them of the Jedi master's floppy ears. The creature is a dark reddish-purple – hence the other part of the worm's name, which is Latin for purple.

The Yoda worm, technically known as an enteropneust, is described in the latest issue of the journal Invertebrate Biology.

Stem cells made from skin have become "grandparents" after generations of life were created in experiments by scientists in Japan.

The cells were used to create eggs, which were fertilised to produce baby mice. These later had their own babies. If the technique could be adapted for people, it could help infertile couples have children and even allow women to overcome the menopause.

A group of Japanese scientists announced Wednesday that they have finally synthesized the elusive element 113, which has been called ununtrium.

If confirmed, the feat would mark the first time Japanese researchers have been first to synthesize an element of the periodic table. It would also be the first time an Asian research team has had the honor of naming an element.