DNA and RNA Came from Space
	For some reason or another, all of us like to believe that Earth is special - after all, our planet is the only one able to sustain life that we know of. Indeed, Earth is special in its own way, but life would not have been possible without the significant contribution of material coming form space. In fact, a new study shows that the compounds making up DNA and RNA actually originated in space, not on Earth as previously thought, and were ... [read more >>]
	14 June 2008, 04:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Finding Extrasolar Moons
	Until now, several hundred planets have been found orbiting around nearby stars while the number of moons remained at a constant zero. It’s not that they're not there, it’s just that we can't see them with today's technology. To put it even simpler, the smallest planet ever found was a terrestrial one, at least three times the mass of the Earth, but finding a moon today is more like finding a specific molecule of water insid ... [read more >>]
	09 June 2008, 09:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Driving the Monster Milktruck in Google Earth
	Today is the last day of Google I/O developer meeting, which is held at Moscone West Center in San Francisco. The conference was meant to offer developers using Google products a better perspective on Google's current and future applications. Unlike the previous years, this year's meeting was entitled I/O and participants had to pay an attendance fee of $400, except for students and teachers who only had to pay $50. ... [read more >>]
	29 May 2008, 03:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Other Star Systems in Danger of Being Contaminated with Earth Life
	There are already several tens of spacecrafts wandering through the solar system, each one a possible carrier of microbes originating on Earth. It’s no secret that some life forms on Earth are extremely resilient to space radiation and may possibly reach other planets and their moons to colonize them. In the case of these vehicles there is nothing much that we can do to prevent a future contamination, although researchers believe that the ... [read more >>]
	24 May 2008, 06:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Flashes on the Moon: 100 and Counting
	Only two and a half years ago, if you had claimed to have seen a flash of light on the surface of the Moon, you would have been quickly catalogued as a lunatic. I guess NASA has a lot of lunatics working for it, as it claims that since 2005, it has observed at least 100 flashes of light being produced on the surface of the Moon. "They're explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the Moon. A typical blast is about as p ... [read more >>]
	21 May 2008, 10:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Extends Its Support for the Chinese
	Google is extending its support for the Chinese people, using its products to help those who have fallen victims to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Sichuan. Until now, the death toll of the earthquake disaster has been reported to be 34,073, with another 245,108 injured. News about the disaster has spread all over the world and a number of organizations have made considerable efforts in trying to help the Chinese people. ... [read more >>]
	20 May 2008, 04:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Climate Changes in Google Earth
	The seriousness of global warming has also reached Google's Google Earth application. The downloadable mapping application, which has been designed to offer satellite imagery of Earth, has just received two KLM layers, which can help users better understand how climate change will affect our planet and its people. The two layers, which are dubbed Climate Change in Our World and Climate Change in Our World, Antarctica are av ... [read more >>]
	19 May 2008, 08:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth - Updated Imagery
	Google Earth is most probably one of the best products of the Mountain View-based giant. Since its release (under the name of Google Earth) back in 2005, Google has tried to permanently improve its product. Currently, the free software application has reached its 4.3 version, which has a number of interesting new features, offering its users a better understanding of their native places. From time to time, the developers at Googl ... [read more >>]
	14 May 2008, 06:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Special Earth Versus Dark Energy
	The universe is expanding. Not only that, but this expansion seems to be accelerating and is now blamed by physicists on a strange form of energy called dark energy. The problem with dark energy, as it is with dark matter, is that we can't seem to find any direct evidence of its existence. What if this cosmic acceleration expansion can be explained through some other phenomenon and dark energy is just another product of our imaginatio ... [read more >>]
	13 May 2008, 04:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Learning History with Google Earth
	After last week’s update with satellite imagery from the affected areas in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth has just received a new update. This time, it is something that deals more with the past, but is of equal significance. The new layer has increased the number of available maps in Rumsey Historical Maps to a total of 120. For those among you that are continuously interested in history and historical events, the new layer i ... [read more >>]
	13 May 2008, 04:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth – Updated Images of Myanmar
	By now, most of you have noticed the "Support victims" link featured on the Google home page. As we also informed you, Google and other organizations have put a considerable effort in trying to help the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The devastating cy ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 05:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Scientists Discover Saturnian Atmospheric Oscillation
	The discovery comes in the outcome of 22 years of continuous observations of the temperature variations of the second biggest planet in the solar system, Saturn, which has been the subject of the longest temperature study ever conducted on an extraterrestrial body. Similar atmospheric temperature oscillations have been recorded in our planet's atmosphere (it occurs every two years), in Jupiter's upper atmosphere (every four Earth ... [read more >>]
	08 May 2008, 03:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth Helping the Victims of Cyclone Nargis
	The news about last weekend's devastation Cyclone Nargis brought upon the state of Myanmar has rapidly spread all over the world. As it usually happens in such cases, an important number of charity actions are taking place worldwide in order to come to the aid of the victims of the devastating Nargis. Among them, Google has come out with a way to help us better digest the entire picture of the disaster. With the help of & ... [read more >>]
	07 May 2008, 03:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Earth Formation Theory Discredited by New Findings
	It is widely believed even today that most of the water on our planet along with other 'iron-loving' elements were brought to Earth during the last couple of hundred million years by asteroids, meteorites, comets and other such objects passing through the inner regions of the solar system. FSU's Department of Geological Sciences and National High Magnetic Field Laboratory researcher, Munir Humayun on the other hand thinks ot ... [read more >>]
	05 May 2008, 10:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Earth's Inner Workings More Complicated than Previously Thought
	The previous model regarding Earth's interior put things very simply. The Earth is made up of several distinct layers sitting on top of each other. The first and outermost layer is the crust, spanning over 25 kilometers towards the center of the planet. Next comes the mantle, a thick, dense layer of silicate rock surrounding the molten iron-nickel core. The mantle is divided into two areas, the upper and lower mantle, both stretching ... [read more >>]
	05 May 2008, 09:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Would an Impact with a Large Asteroid Affect Human Civilization
	The last big impact experienced by Earth occurred 65-million-year ago in Chicxulub, the Yucatan peninsula (southeastern Mexico) and doomed the world of the dinosaurs. If a similar asteroid would shock again with our planet, our very existence would be menaced. Smaller asteroids frequently hit Earth. For instance, the Tunguska explosion from 1908 devastated an area bigger than that of Greater London. The effects could vary from major mo ... [read more >>]
	30 April 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Earth-like Exo-planet Search Picks Up Speed
	It may seem strange to some of us but, in fact, it is easier to identify a planet as having the characteristics of our own than actually finding a planet with a size comparable to Earth. For example, there are currently about 270 known exo-planets, of which only a handful have rocky surfaces. By studying light scattered through their atmosphere, or reflected off the surface, researchers can tell whether the planet is habitable, has liquid ... [read more >>]
	26 April 2008, 04:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Astronaut Confirms It: Aliens Do Exist and They May Be Monitoring Us
	Scientists looking for life in space make complicated calculations of where life could exist in the Universe and on which of the many planets, satellites and other space bodies. Then they come up with snore-inducing studies about carbon compositions, water presence, ideal temperatures, and light exposures. But the people found in the first line in all space expeditions seem pretty sure: aliens do exist and that's as certain as anythin ... [read more >>]
	23 April 2008, 05:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Moon's Creation May Have Influenced the Way Earth Spins
	It is widely believed that the Earth and the Moon, the way we know them today, could have been created during an impact between a planet roughly the size of Mars and the 'original' Earth. The collision between the two bodies completely destroyed them both, however gravity eventually pulled the cloud of debris together again and coalesced two rocky spheres, the Earth and the Moon, some 4.6 billion years ago. Compute ... [read more >>]
	21 April 2008, 03:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Dark Matter Particles May Have Been Discovered
	DAMA, or the Dark Matter collaboration, has just finished its four-year second phase of its experiments and claims to have strong evidence of observing dark matter particles. The same Italian and Chinese collaboration claimed to have had clear evidence of dark matter existence ever since 2003, although other physicists believe the results to be only a statistical anomaly. "We are pretty sure now that this signal is not a statistic ... [read more >>]
	17 April 2008, 11:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Earth's Relentless Hum
	Ten years ago, researchers discovered that Earth gives off a constant humming sound, basically imperceptible to the human ear which cannot hear sounds with a frequency below 16 Hertz, and called it the Earth's hum. The sound continues to make itself heard to seismometers even when there is no seismic activity in the Earth's crust, however the source of this sound hasn't been identified even today. Some research ... [read more >>]
	17 April 2008, 08:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Probability of Intelligent Alien Life
	For a long time we have been asking ourselves whether we are alone in the universe. The truth is that we still do not know the answer to this question, however there is a high probability that there are other life forms besides those on Earth. After all, for all we know the universe may be infinite in space-time. Nevertheless, the odds finding alien life in the universe, especially on planets similar to Earth, are relatively low. Profe ... [read more >>]
	17 April 2008, 04:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth Infringing Privacy?
	Two days ago, Google launched Google Earth 4.3, one of the most expected editions of the downloadable mapping tool, mostly because it includes multiple important updates such as Street View. As I'm sure you know, Street View was previously integrated into Google Maps, the web-based version of Google Earth which lets users view maps and photos straight from their browser. However, lots of people consider that Street View in G ... [read more >>]
	17 April 2008, 04:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth Now in Romanian! More Details Inside!
	Today, the Mountain View-based company Google has rolled out what seems to be one of the most important releases of Google Earth, namely the 4.3 version. Although it shouldn't be regarded as a major update (Google Earth 5 should, though), this new edition comes with multiple important improvements. As mentioned earlier, one of the most valuable implementations is the Street View integration in Google Earth. As you surely ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2008, 10:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Megaquake Will Hit California Until 2037
	We do not know if Superman will be around to save the situation, but by 2037, a megaquake could strike California. A new three-year analysis made by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), and California Geological Survey shows the existence of a 99.7% chance that a quake with the magnitude of 6.7 or larger will occur in the next three decades, based on newly available information. This ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2008, 05:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth 4.3 Released and Available for Download
	As expected, the Mountain View company has out the new version of Google Earth yesterday, namely the 4.3 edition, which was supposed to come with several new improvements. One of the most important additions is surely Street View, a function that was first impleme ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2008, 03:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

We Are Lighter on Equator
	The centrifugal force generated by the spin of our planet would push us to the space if another force, gravity, would lack. Because the Earth is spherical, the interaction of the both forces varies as we move further away along the terrestrial ax. The centrifugal force is minimal in the polar areas and maximal on the Equator. On the equatorial line, the gravity has an average value of 9.78 m/second squared and on the poles its va ... [read more >>]
	15 April 2008, 10:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Fresh Version of Google Earth Expected Today!
	The Mountain View-based company Google is expected to roll out a new version of Google Earth later today, according to rumors launched by the Google Earth Blog. At this time, there's no download link available and the old download page gets you to the old 4.2.205.5730 version released back in November 2007. However, it seems like Google prepares to update the downloadable mapping technology to version 4.3, a special edition ... [read more >>]
	15 April 2008, 04:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Simulated by a Soap Bubble
	There is a storm on Jupiter that has been raging across its atmosphere for the last three centuries or so. We call it the Great Red Spot, however our understanding of what has powered it for such a long time is limited, although it bears a small resemblance to the hurricanes that occur on our planet from time to time. Now, French researchers say that they have been able to replicate the swirling patterns of the Great Red Spot ins ... [read more >>]
	11 April 2008, 04:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Earth's Mantle-Core Electricity Prolongs the Day
	The length of a day is not affected only by tides and winds. Underground forces are prolonging our days by milliseconds, as revealed by a new research published in the journal "Science." Phenomena from the mineral layer at the core-mantle boundary, 1,615 mi (2,600 km) deep, appear to impact the Earth's spinning speed. " ... [read more >>]
	08 April 2008, 05:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth to Get Street View?
	A new rumor brings Google Earth and the long commented Google Maps function, Street View, in the spotlights: the Mountain View company plans to integrate Street View into the downloadable map application which means users will be able to enjoy street-level panoramas straight from their desktop. The speculation was rolled out by Rafe Needleman of Webware, who wrote that "Google Earth app will get the Street View feature, curr ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 08:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Romania Goes High-Res on Google Earth
	Last week, Google announced that a new imagery collection was integrated into Google Earth but, as usual, it didn't provide the name of the updated locations. However, it published a few hints supposed to help Google Earth fans discover the updated areas, but the new pack of photos was actually bigger than anyone expected. Today, Matt Manolides, GIS Specialist, published a blog post in order to mention both new cities availa ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 05:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Twins of Saturn and Jupiter Found in Distant Star System
	During the span of the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting that took place last week in Belfast, astronomers revealed the latest results of their studies. One of the scientists present there, Martin Dominik from the St Andrews University, pointed out that he and his team discovered a distant star system bearing two planets relatively similar to our two largest gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, orbiting around the cen ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 02:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth Faces Another Regional Ban
	Google Earth may receive another regional ban after the Singapore authorities revealed that Google's downloadable mapping application infringes the Singapore Land Authority copyright. The report was published by SinGeo on April 1st so we're not sure if this is only an April Fool's Day prank or real news. "There’s a rumor fly ... [read more >>]
	02 April 2008, 03:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Imagery Update for Google Earth! Download Available!
	Google Earth, the downloadable mapping application provided by the Mountain View company, is now providing even more high-resolution photos as the parent firm updated several locations around the world. Although the news came on April Fool's Day, the reports are not fakes as the new high-quality imagery is now accessible to all the users who downloaded and installed Google Earth. A blog post published on the Lat Long Blog ... [read more >>]
	02 April 2008, 02:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Predict Hurricanes
	If the temperature and the pressure of the air in the Earth's atmosphere would be uniformly distributed on the surface of the planet, there would be no movement of the air. However, the reality is somehow different. The excessive heating of some areas on the surface leads to an uneven distribution of the temperature of the air, which is the main cause for the uneven distribution of atmospheric pressure across the surface of the Earth. ... [read more >>]
	31 March 2008, 07:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Saturn's Relentless Storm
	Back here on Earth, we may experience some dangerous storms from time to time; however, they are nothing compared to the storms taking place on gas giants such as Saturn or Jupiter. These storms apparently never stop and are so big that the whole Earth would fit inside of them. Saturn's storm, for example, has a cyclone-like eye about 4,200 kilometers in diameter, with walls towering up to 70 kilometers above the surroundin ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 04:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth – An Illegal Mapping Service Threatening the National Security
	The Mountain View-based company, Google, is now encountering new problems regarding the imagery provided by Google Earth, as the Chinese authorities seem to be ready to ban lots of mapping services including Google’s. What’s interesting is that the Chinese officials labeled these solutions as ‘illegal’ because they show sensitive information which should be hidden from the public eye. According to an article published in China Daily, th ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 04:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

This is What Happens With Earth's Glaciers
	In small amounts ice is a solid, brittle, crystalline material. But in ticker layers, of 60-100 m (200-330 ft), the part situated underneath behaves like a plastic material, engaged in a slow flow, so that the whole ice mass spreads over an extended area or displace on slopes. That's why a glacier behaves like a slow flowing ice river. Glaciers form in the high peak of the mountains, in the debris-filled valleys. The snowfall fro ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2008, 17:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Kisses, Hugs and a Lot of Love. All of Them Live on Google Earth!
	Google Earth captures a lot of interesting moments, no matter if we’re talking about meteorite craters or sensitive information which should be hidden from our eyes. JosieNorden, member of the Google Earth Community forums, has created quite a remarkable collection of pictures showing couples and lovers appearing on Google’s downloadable map application. As you can see in the pictures adjacent to the article, most photos actually ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2008, 04:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

UK's Biggest Meteorite Impact Discovered
	According to researchers from the Oxford and Aberdeen universities, about 1.2 billion years ago, a relatively large object entered Earth's atmosphere and fell towards the regions of north-west Scotland, to create the biggest meteorite impact on the territories of the United Kingdom. The exact location of the crater created by the meteorite is thought to lie somewhere near the town of Ullapool, as scientists found evidence of ... [read more >>]
	26 March 2008, 07:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Rocky Planets: Same Shape, Different Materials
	The model of planet formation in our solar system is currently very simple and easy to understand. All planets formed from the same materials inside the matter disk spinning around the Sun, thus spawning four most inner rocky planets and four gas giants. The raw material for the four inner planets is believed to have been mostly similar to that found inside chondrite meteorites and asteroids orbiting within the asteroid belt between Mars a ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 04:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Clean Up Space
	There is an enormous number of objects remnant from previous missions currently orbiting Earth, most of which have the potential of seriously damaging spacecrafts intersecting their trajectories. Only last year, the destruction of China's Fengyun-1C satellite left behind about 150,000 individual objects less than a half of an inch in size, and the accumulation of debris will not stop very soon, says NASA's Orbital Debris Program. ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 11:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Planet X: Earth-sized Planet May Lie Beyond Neptune
	There is definitely something out there, orbiting in the outer edge of the solar system. Maybe a planet with a size comparable to that of Earth, locked in a highly elliptical eccentric orbit, hidden away from our keen eyes. But what if we're looking in the wrong place? According to professor Tadashi Mukai from Kobe University, there are more than 1,100 currently classified objects beyond the orbit of Neptune, most of them having large ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 05:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How We Address ET
	Third degree contact. Three words which can probably make a lot of people laugh. But this is no laughing matter; just look around you, we're not living in an isolated area, we're living in a universe, billions of light years across, with billions of galaxies and stars and most likely intelligent life as well. Wake up, ET is as real as you and me! There is a good chance that at the time of contact, if such event will ever take pla ... [read more >>]
	14 March 2008, 05:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Paleozoic: Ancient Life
	The geological strata of the world are assigned to four ages: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quaternary. The Earth is believed to be 4.5 billion years old, but the oldest rocks with visible fossils are just 590 million years old, from the beginning of the Cambrian. Cambrian fossils are made of a large array of life forms, like worms and mollusks, obviously evolved from more primitive forms. A. Precambrian is the oldest eon, stretch ... [read more >>]
	12 March 2008, 18:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Black Holes Spell Death for Earth!
	They are out there, we know what kind of destruction their capable of, however we have also been lucky enough not have such an object forming in the vicinity of our solar system. Or haven't we? Our biggest threat right now, however, doesn't come from black holes, death rays of any kind or other impending disaster. It comes from asteroids, rogue pieces of rock traveling through our solar system. And as that wasn't h ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 07:02GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Earth's Magnetic Field Similar to That of Jupiter
	Jupiter and Earth, two extremely different planets. One has a solid surface, the other has no surface at all; one is a rocky planet, the other, a massive gas giant, and so on. However, this doesn't mean that the two are totally different from one another. It looks like Jupiter and the Earth share one key feature: they have similar magnetic fields. Just as radio waves accelerate electrons inside Jupiter's magnetic field, ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 05:30GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Stellar Ray of Death Pointing Towards Earth
	It would certainly appear so, and considering that our galaxy is filled with at least 200 billion stars, it would be no surprise if one of these rays of death would decide to hit our planet some day. However, the subject of discussion here is a star dubbed WR104, located about 8,000 light years from Earth in the Sagittarius constellation. It was discovered eight years ago by an Australian astronomer at Sydney University, namely P ... [read more >>]
	06 March 2008, 03:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

NASA to Improve Space Weather Forecast
	Following the steps of their fellow colleagues form the European Space Agency, NASA also has in plan to implement a program to predict the space weather determined by the activity of the closest star to Earth - the Sun. Lying just over 150 million kilometer from Earth, the Sun, with a diameter about 100 times that of our planet, provides us with one of the most important ingredients to the appearance and evolution of life: light. ... [read more >>]
	04 March 2008, 07:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia