Science

St Louis, July 21: Forty years after the Apollo 11 astronauts made their historic lunar landing, the rocks they collected are still helping researchers learn more about the moon, the solar system, even about how life on Earth began.

But if not for a St Louis scientist and a few of his colleagues, Nasa may never have collected moon rocks in the first place.

It was 40 years ago on Monday that Neil Armstrong first set foot on the dusty lunar surface, announcing it was a small step for a man but “a giant leap for mankind”.

Miami, July 21: This October, Kelly Hildebrandt will vow to share her life with a man who already shares her name.

Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, 20, and Kelly Carl Hildebrandt, 24, expect just over 100 guests to attend a ceremony at the Lighthouse Point Yacht & Racquet Club in South Florida, where they will become husband and wife.

“He is just everything that I’ve ever looked for,” she said in an interview. “There’s always been certain qualities that a guy has to have. And he has all the ones I could think of – and more.”

Washington, July 21: Planetary scientists have discovered evidence that our solar system may have been given life by a dying star six times bigger than the sun.

An international team has found that radioactive nuclei found in the earliest meteorites, dating back billions of years, could have been delivered by a nearby dying giant star of six times the mass of the sun.

New Delhi, July 21: The United States struck deals here Monday to pave the way for billions of dollars in exports of civilian nuclear reactors and military hardware to India, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

At a news conference with her Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna, Clinton also pledged to deepen US efforts with India to fight global climate change, check the cross-border spread of nuclear weapons and boost international trade.

San Francisco, July 21: Forty years after man first set foot on the moon, web pioneer Google launched what could be the ultimate guide to the earth’s natural satellite. Google on Monday updated its popular mapping software Google Earth with a complete map of the moon that allows you to explore craters, historic sites and human artifacts. The program even allows you to fly over the surface like a would-be astronaut.

Washington, July 21: NASA avoided a rather messy situation in space after giving astronauts aboard the International Space Station the green light to use a toilet after crew members worked for a day to repair it.

“The US Destiny lab toilet has been repaired and checked out. The crew has been given a ‘go’ to use it. All three toilets are working,” NASA said in a post to the micro-blogging website Twitter.

Bhopal (Jabalpur), July 21: HOAX? or truth? There is a prediction that there will be another tsunami or earthquake hitting on 22 July 2009.

It is also when there will be sun eclipse. Predicted that it is going to be really bad and countries like Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak), Singapore, Maldives, Australia, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Philippines.

Bangalore, July 21: The celestial event of the century on Wednesday will be special for Indian astronomers as it will spur the making of a new satellite that will help study the sun and try to figure out its impact on Earth’s weather.

The satellite Aditya (meaning sun in Sanskrit) will take shape on the basis of scientific data gathered during the solar eclipse on July 22. The studies will focus on the sun’s corona — the turbulent and blazing outer shell — which impacts weather on Earth. It will also help understand the impact of solar flares on the atmosphere.

Hamburg, July 20:The most intense X-ray beam of its type in the world has been generated inside a 2,300-metre circular tunnel under the German city of Hamburg, the Desy research institute said Monday.

The machine, which cost 225 million euros ($297 million), was switched on in April, but unlike a light bulb it takes weeks to tune up.

The X-ray light came Saturday. More months will now be spent adjusting measuring devices. Next year, scientists can begin actually using the machine to peer at atomic structures in proteins, cancer cells and the like.

Taipei, July 20: A Taiwan park is seeking 30 volunteers to help escort land crabs on their journey to the sea during the breeding season, a newspaper said on Saturday.

Land crabs in the Kenting National Park, at the southern tip of Taiwan, live away from shore for most of the year. But during the breeding season, female crabs carry their fertilised eggs and migrate to the sea to release them.

The park administration is inviting volunteers to help the crabs safely cross roads and to remove any discarded fishing nets blocking the crabs ‘access to the sea, the Taipei Times reported.

Cape Canaveral, July 20: The astronauts aboard the shuttle-station complex will celebrate the 40th anniversary of man’s first moon landing with their own spacewalk.

David Wolf and Thomas Marshburn will venture out to hook spare parts to the international space station. It will be the second spacewalk in three days, and take place 40 years to the day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

The space station crew, meanwhile, will spend Monday working on a broken toilet. One of the station’s two commodes malfunctioned on Sunday.

Beijing, July 20: When it comes to high-tech, China has it all. But in the country with the most internet users in the world, some are choosing to stay in touch through an older device: the radio.

Armed with antennas, transmitters and receivers, a growing number of Chinese amateur radio operators, or radio hams, send out encoded messages and simple broadcasts in the hope of getting a response.

New York, July 20: Scientists in New York City and elsewhere are working to get a detailed picture of how much of the heat-trapping gas a city, neighbourhood or building puts in the atmosphere – and how much the urban environment can suck out.

Some researchers hope the data might eventually help shape efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions and measure whether such efforts are effective. Carbon dioxide is one of the main contributors to climate change.

Mumbai, July 20: Indian astrologers are predicting violence and turmoil across the world as a result of this week’s total solar eclipse, which the superstitious and religious view as a sign of potential doom.

But astronomers, scientists and secularists are trying to play down claims of evil portent in connection with Wednesday’s natural spectacle, when the moon will come between the Earth and the sun, completely obscuring the sun.

Dallas, July 20: The current struggles between religion and science in areas such as evolution and “intelligent design” are thrown into sharp relief in a new book about the Italian astronomer Galileo and his trial by the Roman Inquisition.

Author Dan Hofstadter described the Galileo affair as “the great religion-science clash of 1633 that in some form has persisted into our time”.

The focus of the trial was the scientist’s embrace of the Copernican view that the Earth revolves around the sun – a view informed by the observations Galileo made with his famous telescope.

Washington, July 20: Microsoft’s recent launch of its search engine Bing prompted many to stray from Google for the first time in a while.

What they found was a search engine with a few nifty tricks up its sleeve.

But Bing isn’t the only alternative search engine that has managed to introduce features that search kings Google and Yahoo don’t have.

Plenty of newcomers are innovating in ways that can add up to significant productivity gains for you as you search for information on the internet. Here are a few.

Social networking search

Chicago, July 20: Fish have lost half their average body mass and smaller species are making up a larger proportion of European fish stocks as a result of global warming, a study published on Monday has found.

“It’s huge,” said study author Martin Daufresne of the Cemagref Public Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute in Lyon, France.

“Size is a fundamental characteristic that is linked to a number of biological functions, such as fecundity – the capacity to reproduce.”

Washington, July 20: Former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin says Nasa should set its sights on a bigger target in the future – Mars.

Aldrin made the comments on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his landing on the moon on the Apollo 11 mission. He says the space agency was right to stop sending men to the moon back in 1972.

Aldrin says Mars is “much more suitable to earthlings, much more habitable. It’s possibly the source of life.”

He also recalled taking his first steps on the moon, a place that was “so desolate, so totally lifeless”.

Stockholm, July 20: One of the world’s largest filesharing websites, The Pirate Bay, is going legal through a series of give-and-take payment models that in some cases may even earn its users a bundle of cash, the new owners said on Saturday.

“The more you give, the more you get,” said Hans Pandeya, chief executive of Swedish software firm Global Gaming Factory X, which announced last month it was buying the site and would start paying both content providers and copyright holders.

Sydney, July 20: The first battered bodies were found on a small Australian beach, the white sand around them stained crimson with their blood.

A few days later, the killer struck again – this time on the nearby cliffs overlooking Sydney Harbour. The cluster of victims was covered in bite marks, their tiny tummies slashed open.

Through blood-spatter evidence and DNA testing, a profile of the killer began to emerge: Stealthy. Fast. Furry. What is killing the little penguins in Sydney’s beachside suburb of Manly? A fox? A dog? Both?

Washington, July 20: Mozilla In its first minor point update of the 3.5 series on early Friday, Mozilla released Firefox the 3.5.1, in an attempt to address a security vulnerability in the new ‘hybrid’ TraceMonkey JavaScript engine of the browser.

However, even with Mozilla’s efforts to address the mentioned vulnerability in its Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, there are fresh reports already of another vulnerability affecting Firefox 3.5.1 – which, according to security experts, might make other Firefox versions vulnerable as well.

Beijing, July 20: As astronomers and amateur stargazers stare heavenward at the total solar eclipse in eastern China on Wednesday, at least one group of visitors, keepers and zoologists will be peering horizontally through the brief blackout at captive animals.

The city zoo in Changzhou, one of the best locations for seeing the total eclipse, will assemble elephants, monkeys and other animals deemed easy to control, to record the animals’ reaction to the disturbing changes of light and temperature during the eclipse.

Washington: The United States on Monday marks the 40th anniversary of the historic first moon walk, with President Barack Obama kicking off events by meeting at the White House Monday with the crew of the Apollo 11 mission.

The crew became the first to accomplish the dream of ages and walk on the surface of the moon – an endeavour now remembered at a time when future US dominance in space has become far less certain.

Washington, July 19: Two astronauts from the US shuttle Endeavour have successfully completed the first of five scheduled spacewalks aimed at completing a Japanese laboratory at the International Space Station, Nasa said.

Tim Kopra, who made his first space walk, and Dave Wolf, an old hand with four walks under his belt, returned to the ISS’s decompression chamber and closed the airlock at 21:51 GMT on Saturday, 37 minutes ahead of schedule, Nasa reported.

The duo’s spacewalk lasted five hours and 32 minutes, US space agency officials said.

Madison, July 19: A massive tortoise that left the circus and took his show on the road for six days has been found and is expected to be back with his circus family soon.

The 52kg male tortoise named Berta didn’t make it very far. He had travelled just 3.2km when he was spotted on a golf course less than a week after his July 7 escape during a show in Madison, Wisconsin.

Alain Zerbini, owner and producer of Florida-based Zerbini Family Circus, says he expects to have Berta back in a few days. A friend of Zerbini picked up Berta from the Humane Society in Madison on Friday.