Phoenix Spends Sleepless Night
	Mission controllers kept NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in full operational mode during the Martian night on Monday in order to coordinate it with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to make detailed observations in the atmosphere of the Red Planet. The lander monitored changes in the lower atmosphere with the help of its weather station, stereo camera and the thermal and conductivity probe while the MRO observed the atmosphere from orbit. ... [read more >>]
	23 July 2008, 03:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Wrinkle Removal Works Best with Lasers
	Carbon dioxide laser resurfacing is currently by far the best solution when it comes to wrinkle removal techniques, giving overall better results than some of the latest invented procedures. Most of the time the technique is successful in clearing up the skin, and the side-effects are relatively harmless, generally consisting of either a darkening or a lightening of the skin color. "Use of the laser allows precise treatme ... [read more >>]
	22 July 2008, 04:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mars Had Significant Amounts of Liquid Water on the Surface
	Mars had liquid water on the surface in its distant past and quite a lot of it too, according to the high-resolution spectrometry images relayed back to Earth by the CRISM instrument on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. CRISM revealed that there is a great abundance of clay minerals, which usually form in the presence of water, and if Mars did indeed support life the best place to look for evidence would be these clay deposits ... [read more >>]
	17 July 2008, 05:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Global Warming Now Synonymous with Kidney Stones
	As if global warming weren't bad enough as it is, researchers now say that the extra amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere will strike us in one of the most painful ways possible: kidney stones. And this time it's not selective and it's most certain that some of the leaders of the G8 states will feel head on at least one of the effects of global warming. Luckily, they agreed last week to cut even more of the ca ... [read more >>]
	15 July 2008, 06:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water Discovered on the Moon
	Soil samples returned from the Moon during the Apollo missions were for the first time proven to contain trace amounts of water, although they cannot indicate how much water is currently present there nor can they be used to predict a method through which water could be extracted in the near future. The long expected discovery was made during the analysis of volcanic glass beads brought back from the Moon and may have significant importanc ... [read more >>]
	10 July 2008, 03:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mosquitoes Prefer Water Containing Decaying Leaves for Reproduction
	It is generally believed that mosquitoes basically lay their eggs in just about any body of water that they can find. A team of researchers from Tulane University in collaboration with colleagues from several North Carolina State universities however, revealed that yellow fever mosquitoes require precise concentrations of certain chemicals in order to breed in open water containers. This is the first study ever to identify the chemical com ... [read more >>]
	09 July 2008, 05:34GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Greenland Glaciers Are Slowing Down, Not Accelerating
	There is a common belief, largely fueled by multiple studies related to climate change and global warming, that Greenland's glaciers are slipping towards the ocean at even faster rates than previously thought. A newly published paper however shows that for the last 17 years or so, Greenland's ice sheet has been actually slowing down its speeding motion towards the water, by as much as 10 percent. Most of the previous ... [read more >>]
	04 July 2008, 04:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Phoenix Back on Track - Soil Sprinkling Works
	After another couple of days of delay related to the unsuccessful attempt to deliver soil samples to the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, NASA reported that the Phoenix Mars Lander was again back on schedule and pursuing the primary tasks of its mission. In a press conference yesterday, mission controllers said that the shaking technique destined to reduce the clumpiness of the sample worked exactly as expected and as proof they released ... [read more >>]
	11 June 2008, 02:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Martian Lander Mission in Danger of Failing
	The mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander seems to have hit a snag last week after soil samples delivered by the robotic arm of the spacecraft failed to pass through the screen of the test oven of the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer instrument. The TEGA instrument is equipped with seven other such ovens, which could possibly have identical screens. If this is indeed the case and an alternative solution is not found, then the Phoenix mission ... [read more >>]
	10 June 2008, 06:50GMT | (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

Water Acidification Process Revealed by Marine Life
	Water surfaces, oceans and seas in particular, are natural sinkholes for carbon dioxide gas. And it just so happens that man made sure that Earth's atmosphere has plenty of carbon dioxide, which is absorbed into water, thus making it more acidic in the respective areas. This in turn affects the marine life such as snails and their shells that are being dissolved by acidified water. Jason Hall-Spencer of the University of Plymouth says ... [read more >>]
	09 June 2008, 04:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Phoenix Relays Back Images of Martian Dust Particles
	This is the highest resolution image ever sent back to Earth by the Phoenix Mars Lander featuring dust and sand particles. The image was captured by the camera of the optical microscope instrument on board the spacecraft and shows particles of dust as small as one-tenth of the diameter of the human hair. The mission of the Phoenix Mars Lander is to study whether or not the Red Planet as we know it was ever habitable for life. [ADMARK=1 ... [read more >>]
	06 June 2008, 03:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Phoenix's Digging Mission Postponed
	The mission controllers of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander decided to delay the beginning of the digging operations for a day in order to better learn how to scoop samples of soil from the Martian surface. The lander was scheduled to start gathering soil sample for analysis today, but they decided that Phoenix must first carry out a test in which a scoop full of dust is delivered to the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer. The sp ... [read more >>]
	04 June 2008, 07:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water May Not be Enough for Life on Mars
	As soon as it arrived on the surface of the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity investigating the south equatorial regions discovered evidence of the past existence of liquid water, fueling even further the idea that Mars was once able to support life. However, a new assessment of the conditions required for the appearance of life on a particular planet shows that liquid water alone is not enough to support life. ... [read more >>]
	30 May 2008, 07:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Your Hair's Best Friends
	At one point or another in our lives we've all been worried about hair loss – whether it happened while we were brushing and styling our hair in the morning, after we had a shower or simply while we were touching up our makeup in a restaurant's bathroom. Experts say that as part of the natural hair growth cycle, it's normal for women to lose up to 100 hairs a day. Now that may sound much, but it's actually not ... [read more >>]
	29 May 2008, 03:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

SubMerged Puzzle Game Brings Wet Mobile Adventures
	SubMerged is the title of a new game announced by Namco Networks, a game that wants to be both challenging and fun, coming as a puzzle adventure set in an underwater scenery. From the screenshots available we could say the game resembles the good old Tetris, only that the piec ... [read more >>]
	14 May 2008, 08:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New ISS Water Recovery System Leaves for Kennedy Space Center
	The permanent crew on board the International Space Station is now formed of only three astronauts, but it will soon be able to support a complement of six, meaning that it will require a new water reclamation system to recycle the water used on board. The newly built water recovery systems, which will be set to fit the space station, have left NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center yesterday and will arrive at the Kennedy Space Center w ... [read more >>]
	13 May 2008, 09:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Black Holes Are Not Black
	Theory says that black holes are objects of extreme mass and density, having powerful gravitational fields able to warp space and time, and surrounded by a boundary called the event horizon, beyond which matter and energy cannot escape the gravitational pull and will ultimately fall in the singularity. In addition to this, in the 1970s, Stephen Hawking stated that black holes were not entirely black, meaning that they did emit some form of ... [read more >>]
	13 May 2008, 02:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Hydrogen-Bond Exchange Seen in Real Time
	Hydrogen bond exchange has been observed for the first time by a team of chemists from Kyoto University with the help of a scanning tunneling microscope while monitoring a single water dimer – two molecules of water bonded together. The hydrogen bond exchange takes place between two molecules with a frequency of a few tens of cycles per second, and the new observations may lead to a better understanding of the quantum tunneling and molecul ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 05:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sahara Took 3,000 Years to Form
	Today, Sahara is a huge desert area, with erratic dunes (ergs) and plains covered by rugged rocks (hamada), punctuated by mountains with heights of up to 3,400 m (11,000 ft), covering 8.8 million square kilometers (3.3 million square miles), a surface bigger than that of Australia. At great distances one from another, one can find modest bursts of life, the oases. This desert is supposed to be at least 2.5 million years old. During the las ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 05:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

5 Things About Pelicans
	Pelicans look like birds hailing from prehistoric times. Truth is, they are precisely that. These birds are believed to have appeared 100 Ma ago, during the dinosaur era, and it is said they reached their peak of diversity 65-57 Ma ago, when about 57 species roamed the Earth. Today, only 8 species of pelicans can be found around the world. 30 Ma ago, giant pelicans, larger than the modern ones, existed. 1. For long, pelicans were belie ... [read more >>]
	07 May 2008, 11:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

MARSIS-like Radar Could Peer Through Earth's Ice Sheets
	The MARSIS instrument, or the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument, on board Europe's Mars Express probe was originally designed to look for water beneath the Red Planet's surface but could also easily penetrate the ice sheet covering Jupiter's moon Europa or the surface of Saturn's Titan as well as that of Earth. "I was having discussions with scientists from MARSIS, and I saw that ... [read more >>]
	07 May 2008, 09:08GMT | (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

Huge Waterfalls and Giant Trees: Yosemite
	Located in the central California, Yosemite National Park protects giant redwoods (Sequoia) and wild forests from the High Sierra Nevada area. The park has a surface of 304,380 ha and a remarkable landscape. With the millions of years that have passed, erosion removed the layers representing a former sea bed. Slowly but surely, currents, rivers and glaciers carved the granites found under the sediments, resulting in the modern sp ... [read more >>]
	24 April 2008, 10:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Platinum Nanocube to Enhance Fuel Cell Efficiency
	Some time has passed since fuel cells first appeared, however they are still facing serious problems related to hydrogen to electricity conversion efficiency and the cost of materials used in their construction. Brown professor of chemistry, Shouheng Sun, believes that he has found a solution to boosting the efficiency of fuel cells in shaping platinum into a cubical form. Platinum is routinely used in fuel cell designs as cataly ... [read more >>]
	22 April 2008, 08:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water Critical for Energy Generation
	You just have to throw a brief look over all the types of energy sources to understand that water is basically indispensable in energy generation whether it is electric energy, natural gas, hydroelectric or nuclear. A research recently initiated by Virginia Tech scientists catalogued energy sources and power generation methods according to their water efficiency. "Our unit is gallons of water per British Thermal Unit. We ... [read more >>]
	22 April 2008, 03:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water Crisis: The Stress of the Planet
	Water appeared on Earth 3.5 billion years ago and it is perhaps the most valuable resource of the planet. H2O means life to anything, from bacterium to elephants and humans. There is no biochemical or physiological reaction in the absence of the water. We must consume on average 2.5 liters of water from food and beverages to remain healthy. Water is also necessary for livestock and farming, the means for producing our food. The vit ... [read more >>]
	21 April 2008, 08:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Menaces to Danube Delta
	Danube Delta represents the largest wetland inside European Union. It is the nesting, stop or wintering place for over 300 species of birds, whose areal stretch from Africa and Asia, beyond the Polar Circle. This place harbors Europe's largest pelican colonies. Despite the fact that the place represents a Biosphere Reserve, it has been experiencing many aggressions. During the communist times of Romania (until 1989), large areas o ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2008, 09:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

First Elephants Lived in the Water
	Today we associate elephants with forests and savannas. But a new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that an elephant ancestor called Moeritherium made its home in rivers and swamps. In fact, the closest relatives of the elephants are the ... [read more >>]
	15 April 2008, 03:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Wonder of Sahara: Mzab
	At the beginning of the 17th century, a Berber tribe took refuge in a totally arid area in the heart of Sahara, 400 mi (640 km) south of Alger. The oued (temporary desert river) called Mzab, which irrigates the plateau and the dry valleys once a year, gave its name to the region and the people established here[A ... [read more >>]
	11 April 2008, 09:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Passion for Aquarium Fish
	Which are the most common pets? Dogs, cats... No! Fish. In France, for example, there are about 22 million pet fish, but only 7.7 million pet dogs, 8.8 million pet cats and 5.4 million pet birds. In France, the aquarium lovers are organized in 50 clubs and 6 large associations that organize congresses, competitions and diverse pet fish markets annually. They even have magazines, edited in numbers from 35,000 to 65,000. In fact, s ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 16:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

El Niño and Human Life
	It is global warming at a smaller scale. When El Niño begins, the deserts of the Peruvian coasts are turned to lakes, but great floods, violent cyclones, severe droughts and harsh winters occur worldwide, triggering hunger, epidemics, huge wildfires, and damages on crops, goods and environment. The most affected zones are California, Canada, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, parts of Africa, Peru, Bolivia. El Niño is the warm oceanic current ... [read more >>]
	07 April 2008, 09:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Looking for Water on the Moon
	The surface of the Moon is covered with thousands of craters, some of which deeper than most of the mountains here on Earth and large enough to accommodate a few Grand Canyons. Nonetheless, NASA wants to send a manned mission back to the Moon by the end of 2020, but they hope the next trip to the Moon wouldn't be just a simple visit. Establishing a lunar base is amongst the priorities of the US space agency, however in order to do tha ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 07:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Largest Lake of Acid on Earth
	Indonesia is famous for hosting some of the world's most powerful volcanoes. Krakatoa, located on an island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia, is well known because of its 1883 eruption, which generated the loudest sound historically reported: it was distinctly heard even in the Australian city of Perth (approx. 1930 miles or 3100km), or the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius (approx. 3000 miles or 4800 km). 36 ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 09:50GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Salt Deposits Found on Red Planet
	Images relayed back to Earth in 2001 by the Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS for short, on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, seem to have recently fallen back into the scientists' attention. Hundreds of small depressions on the surface of Mars reveal salt deposits similar to those found on Earth when water evaporates. The study was conducted at the University of Hawaii by researcher Mikki Osterloo ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 04:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Titan May Hide a Water Ocean
	The moon Titan is the largest of all about 60 natural satellites orbiting around Saturn. In fact, it is larger than the smallest planet in the solar system, Mercury. Also, Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a thick atmosphere around it, filled with organic molecules, precursors to the appearance and evolution of life. Its surface is covered with lakes of natural gas in quantities so large that a single lake of this ty ... [read more >>]
	21 March 2008, 04:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Roman Aqueducts
	They had central heating, baths with all the commodities and bridges and roads that are still functional even after two millennia. The Colosseum could have resisted in perfect state if it had not been plundered. All was made of stone, timber and concrete. From Iraq to Portugal and from Sahara to Romania, Germany and UK, the Romans still impress us with their buildings of cement, stone and bricks. The Romans' greatest discove ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 17:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Electrical Soliton Wave in Space, a First
	This is the first time when an electrical soliton wave was found in space and measured by the Cluster mission. The so-called soliton waves are a special type of wave which travel great distances without changing shape. The term soliton wave was first coined by John Scott Russell in 1834, while observing that at the bow of a boat which travels through water, a strange wave takes shape and continues to travel on, even when the boat stops, wi ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 11:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water Detected in Two Planet Forming Systems
	As you have probably noticed in the last few days, planetary formation and new solar system study is getting a lot of attention lately. Especially when talking about organic molecules, water and habitable zones, all of these being considered important factors in the apparition of life. Researchers announce that water vapors have been found in the accretion disk of matter spinning around not one, but two young stars. Both have great chances ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Soda Might Have Powered Geysers on Mars
	On Earth, there are two distinct ways through which water may erupt from beneath the surface into columns stretching as high as 45 meters or more. The first is by pushing water up into the air with steam coming from the deep underground. The second uses the force provided by carbon dioxide gas making its way to the surface. Scientists say that Mars could have had such geysers back in its past, however they must have been much more spectacu ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 11:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Namib Desert: The Tallest Dunes
	In the local Nama language, "Namib" means vast. Vastness, besides its age (20 million years), and the amount of precipitations (50 ml per year) define the Namib Desert (southwestern Africa). It stretches on a land stripe about 1,930 km (1,200 mi) long and 100-160 km (60-100 mi) wide, representing the coastal plain of Namibia and being one of the most arid and barren deserts on Earth. Several years can pass without a single rain d ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 09:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mars' Promethei Planum Probed by MARSIS
	The Promethei Planum was previously a subject of study for ESA's Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera, which probed it back in September 2005, while being in a high orbit around the Red Planet. Now, new observations conducted with the Mars Advanced Radar for Ionoshpere and Subsurface Sounding, or MARSIS for short, reveals that south pole is covered with a layer of ice exceeding 3,500 meters in thickness. The images ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 06:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Mystic River: Nile
	This river is the maker of the oldest civilization recorded by the historical sources: 5,000 years ago, the Egyptian state emerged on its banks. It is best known as the longest river on the planet. Nile is consensually considered so as it has 6,695 km in length, even if some say that Amazon is longer (6,800 km). The problem is that nobody could tell where Amazon ends, due to its huge mouth. Anyway, while Amazon is the mightiest riv ... [read more >>]
	15 March 2008, 09:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Saturn's Tethys Had an Ocean
	What is now a massive ball of ice around Saturn, the moon Tethys had an ocean at some point in its past, say researchers at the University of California present at a major science conference in Houston. Tethys is only one of the 60 or so natural satellites orbiting around Saturn, has a medium size and an average density close to that of pure water ice in normal atmospheric conditions. The theory that it might have had an ocea ... [read more >>]
	15 March 2008, 08:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mars' Volcanic Past Exposed
	Although Mars doesn't look much like a planet ravaged by volcanic activity in the past, it is clear that it had to go through such a stage in its history. Now, new observations conducted with ESA's Mars Express spacecraft reveal the actions of lava flows and water on the surface, and how these molded the Martian landscape as we see it today. The High Resolution Stereo Camera, HiRISE, on-board Mars Express, shows that Mars suffere ... [read more >>]
	14 March 2008, 11:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Cassini Takes a Plunge Over Enceladus
	In the outcome of previous observations showing that Saturn's moon Enceladus ejects matter out of the geysers on its surface, the Cassini spacecraft executed, on Wednesday, a fly-by through the water ice plume hovering above it. During the swing, Cassini took numerous pictures of the surface of the moon and made several measurements related to it characteristics, such as composition, density, speed, size and others. Alth ... [read more >>]
	14 March 2008, 05:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meteorite Fragments May Be Dwarf Planet Remnants
	The Earth is continuously bombarded by space rocks and small cosmic bodies, probably swallowing up to a few tens of tons of matter each day. Most of these rocks go unnoticed because they burn high up in the atmosphere before reaching the surface of the planet, albeit from time to time larger meteorites and asteroids penetrate all the way to the ground level. Such examples can be found throughout the history; the last known event took place ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 04:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Environmentally Friendly Electric Vehicles Go Bad
	If I hadn't known any better, I could have sworn this was a conspiration to discredit hybrid and electrical vehicles, in the benefit of petrol cars. Since the end of the last month, hybrid cars have gone down the drain, as scientists proved that they actually produce more carbon dioxide than petrol vehicles. Instead of reducing the emissions, it's now time for electric cars to take a serious blow from yet another study, regarding ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 11:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Killer Weed
	Over 50 tropical and subtropical areas (20, only in Africa) are infested today by the beautiful water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes), originating in the Amazon basin. The conquered areas go from Africa (except Sahara and Namib deserts and southern tip of South Africa) to India, Indochina, eastern China, Japonia, New Guinea, Indonesia, northern Australia, Central America and southern US. In Africa, Eichornia first emerged in 1 ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 11:22GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water Cats
	You may love or hate cats, but they gained their right of citizenship in most urban and rural human settlements. Along the millennia, cats accompanied people mostly through their will. Some civilizations adored and worshiped cats (in Egypt, there was even a cat goddess, Bastet), but in other cases cats were useful auxiliaries in the battle with the rodents. Venice, for example, is a town of canals, gondolas and ...cats. Even if the sym ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 10:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia