Science Glance
Scientists have detected the largest molecules ever seen in space, in a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star. The football-shaped carbon molecules are known as buckyballs, and were only discovered on Earth 25 years ago when they were made in a laboratory.
These molecules are the "third type of carbon" - with the first two types being graphite and diamond.
Stars reveal carbon 'spaceballs'
Universe's biggest known star discovered by British astronomers
The heaviest known star – with a mass 320 times greater than the Sun's – has been discovered at the edge of our galaxy by British astronomers. Scientists at the University of Sheffield found the stellar giant – named R136a1 – using the European southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The star is located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small "satellite" galaxy which orbits the Milky Way. Previously, the heaviest known stars were around 150 times the mass of the Sun, and this was believed to be close to the cosmic size limit.
Hubble Space Telescope captures birth of a new star
The pictures of the Carina constellation were taken by the Hubble and were described by experts as looking like a "July 4 fireworks display". It shows a new star being born from within an existing star cluster.
The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust - called a nebula. This makes up the raw material needed to make a new star. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains a central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603.
British gorilla expert murdered in Cameroon
Primatologist Ymke Warren, 40, had her throat slit after she was bound and gagged when she confronted an intruder at the home she shared with her boyfriend Aaron Nicholas in the coastal town of Limbe.
Dr, Warren escaped the genocide in Rwanda in the early 90s, and then ran the Dian Fossey project studying Cross River gorillas, one of west Africa's most threatened primate populations.
Are Australian honeybees behind U.S. hive collapse?
Disease-carrying honeybees imported from Australia may be responsible for a mysterious disorder that's decimated bee hives around the country, and federal regulators say they'd consider import restrictions if necessary.
By some estimates, beekeepers in the past several years have lost from a third to half their hives to what's called colony collapse disorder. Each hive, or colony, can contain as many as 100,000 bees. The bees are disappearing from the hives never to be seen again.
Human race 'will be extinct within 100 years', claims leading scientist
As the scientist who helped eradicate smallpox he certainly know a thing or two about extinction.
And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.
He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and 'unbridled consumption.’
Electronic Armageddon: the EMP Bomb
An electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, bomb is a bomb that’s designed to go above the atmosphere and release huge amounts of energy. In less than a billionth of a second, the electrical intensity on Earth’s surface would become so hot that microchips would fry, power lines would overload and the electric grid would collapse.
Everything with microelectronics in it would stop: your car, your computer, the subway. There would be no electricity.
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