It has been called the Sun-eating Dragon. The Spirit of the Dead. The Eye of God. A harbinger of great events, good and evil — terrible famines, bumper harvests, wars, the birth and death of kings. On Wednesday, tens of millions of people will be treated to this spine-tingling celestial sight: a total eclipse of the Sun.
A publicity stunt in which a golf ball will be whacked into orbit from the International Space Station has met a chilly reception from scientists, who say the scheme is risky and adds to the growing problem of space junk. Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov is to take on the role of a celestial Tiger Woods under a deal between a Canadian golf club manufacturer and the cash-strapped Russian Space Agency.
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/ 25 January 2006
Twenty years ago, the loss of the United States shuttle Challenger dealt an enduring blow to confidence in manned space flight yet also helped open up a golden era of exploration by machine. As Nasa this Saturday mourns the 1986 disaster, the contrast in fortunes between human and unmanned missions in space has never seemed more acute.
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/ 13 January 2006
Fed up with the daily grind? Eager for something different? A little glory, perhaps? Well, how about helping a quest to understand the life and death of stars? And how about the reward of making your name immortal? Scientists are looking for people with keen eyesight, lots of patience and spare time on their home computer to help them sift through the results from an extraordinary space mission.
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/ 10 December 2005
A United Nations conference agreed on Saturday to extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and launch a dialogue between Kyoto members and the United States on long-term action for tackling the greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change.
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/ 28 November 2005
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Twenty-five million people have died from HIV/Aids in 24 years, more than three million of whom died this year alone, and at least 40-million people today have HIV, a rise of about five million over the past 12 months. With just a month left to go, the World Health Organisation’s goal of providing anti-retroviral drugs for three million poor people by the end of 2005 is poised to fall dismally short of the mark.
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/ 21 October 2005
For nearly five months, he led his pursuers a merry dance, swimming nearly half a kilometre across open sea to a new home, laughing at the traps and the poisoned baits and the baying hounds bent on killing him. When the annals of rodentology are written — as they surely must — this rat deserves an honoured place.
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/ 28 September 2005
Japanese zoologists have made the first recording of a live giant squid, one of the strangest and most elusive creatures in the world. The size of a bus, with vast eyes and a querulous beak, <i>Architeuthis dux</i> has long nourished myth and literature, and until now, the only evidence of giant squids was extraordinarily rare.
This year is set to be one of the worst on record for hurricanes, scientists say, amid spectacular new evidence about the power of these storms and fears that global warming is intensifying them. Experts are warning that the brooding western Atlantic may serve up as many as 21 severe storms and hurricanes this year.
As Britain reeled with shock following Thursday’s bomb attacks in London, campaigners feared that the Group of Eight’s (G8) lofty ambitions on Africa and Earth’s climate would be pushed aside amid the outpouring of grief. Campaigners fear that their causes now face being dispatched back to the wilderness.