Banging you head against the wall is not to be recommended because it sort of hurts. Yet the woodpecker does it every day and seems content and happy. Woodpeckers are able to peck at a tree trunk at a high speed (6-7 meters per second), resulting in intense deceleration forces upon impact, without sustaining any…

Using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time cold water vapor enveloping a dusty disk around a young star. The findings suggest that this disk, which is poised to develop into a solar system, contains great quantities of water, suggesting that water-covered planets like Earth may be common in…

One of the supposedly best understood and least interesting landscapes on Mars is hiding something that could rewrite the planet’s history. Or not. In fact, about all that is certain is that decades of assumptions regarding the wide, flat Hesperia Planum are not holding up very well under renewed scrutiny with higher-resolution, more recent spacecraft…

The hypothesis that Earth was completely covered in ice (Snowball Earth) 635 million years may not be so. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide during that period was much lower than previously thought, according to a team of French researchers from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (CNRS/IPGP/Université Paris Diderot), working in collaboration…

Imagine a sun shining more bright than our sun does. 10 times brighter and warmer? A thousand times? How about 50 billion times? An international team of scientists has detected the highest energy gamma rays ever observed from a pulsar, a highly magnetized and rapidly spinning neutron star. The VERITAS experiment measured gamma rays coming…

Those who fly or are planning to fly to Europe nowadays will find that there is a heavy tax to pay loosely called environmental fees. European rules forcing all airlines to pay for carbon emissions are within the law, an adviser to Europe’s highest court said on Thursday (October 6), in the latest stage of…

Carbon Dioxide emissions are not just from industry but may be caused by construction especially when there is a lot of new construction. Constructing buildings, power-plants and roads has driven a substantial increase in China’s CO2 emission growth, according to a new study involving the University of East Anglia. Fast growing capital investments in infrastructure…

Adding another incentive to exercise, scientists at Duke University Medical Center have found that physical activity improves arthritis symptoms – even among obese mice that continue to eat a high-fat diet. The insight suggests that excess weight alone isn’t what causes the aches and pains of osteoarthritis, despite the long-held notion that carrying extra pounds…

As the world , much less the climate, changes, species must change and move too. A species ability to overcome adversity goes beyond Darwin’s survival of the fittest. In a new study based on simulations examining species and their projected range, researchers at Brown University argue that whether an animal can make it to a…

Mineral deposits can create jobs, industry, wealth and potentially pollution. It could help stabilize a war torn country such as Afghanistan. Working with the Department of Defense Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO), members of the USGS Minerals Project assessed fuel- and non-fuel mineral resources of Afghanistan from October 2009 to September 2011…