William Shatner's had quite the colorful post-Star Trek career, a career that now includes not only being a spoken word poet but also naming one of Pluto's moons after Spock's home planet, Vulcan.
Discovered: PBDEs in common household items hinder brain development; 16th century astronomer didn't die from mercury poisoning; brain activity translated into music; belly buttons are swarming with bacteria.
While the folks at Google who made this map of nearby stars caution that "scientific accuracy is not guaranteed" — and much of the data is drawn from Wikipedia — what they do give us is a tool for Google Chrome that is at least a tad bit educational and for the most part makes the user feel like she is about to ride Space Mountain.
Discovered: Super-Earth exoplanet seems habitable; it's alive—this gelatinous lab-bred blob; rethinking the theory that genes cause disease; fairy-wrens identify themselves with code words.
Discovered: Amateur astronomers find fascinating new planet; mapping Antarctica before it melts away; bigger brains correlate with greater cancer risk; shocking pants prevent bedsores.
People are always talking about the lasting impact of investing in science, but how far does the government dollar really stretch? At least 15 years, according to this graph on astronomy grants by University of Washington grad student James R. A. Davenport.
Discovered: Planets that could sustain life; the shiniest fruit; non-alcoholic wine defeats the purpose but bestows health benefits; weed linked to testicular cancer.
Discovered: slugs have violent sex; as men age, they're more likely to conceive autistic children; your boss is more productive than you; a very old, very strange star.
This evening, Venus will slide into alignment with the orbits of the Earth and the Sun. This will not happen again until the year 2117, when we will all be dead.
In a day packed with astronomy news, researchers at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu came out today and declared that earth probably has two moons at any one time.
Facebook just published a list of the most-shared U.S. news stories of 2011 and right behind understandable links to Japan earthquake coverage and parenting advice is the now notorious story about people's zodiac signs changing.
A 22 year-old solves a problem that's stumped physicists for years…on her summer vacation
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has rendered the cosmos in 3-D
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