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Explanation: Snowy and cold is weather you might expect at the start of spring for Longyearbyen on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. But that turned out to be good weather for watching the Moon's umbral shadow race across northern planet Earth. The region was plunged into darkness for 3 minutes during the March 20 total solar eclipse while insulated eclipse chasers witnessed the dark Sun in the cold clear sky. In this well-timed snapshot captured near the end of totality, the Moon's shadow sweeps away from the horizon and the solar corona fades as the lunar disk just begins...

The most dramatic effects of the day’s supertide were witnessed at the picturesque island of Mont Saint-Michel, off the coast of Normandy, where a wall of water as high as a four-storey building momentarily cut it off from the mainland. For a few minutes, Mont Saint-Michel was completely encircled by the sea by a ‘supertide’ caused by the Moon’s extra-strong gravitational pull on the sea. The phenomenon is linked to the alignment of the Moon, Sun and Earth following Friday’s solar eclipse. Spotlights illuminated the island’s medieval walled town and gothic abbey during the high tide, with visitors jostling to...

The find includes thousands of stone flakes, an array of bifaces, scrapers, and hammerstones, plus several projectile points, some of which were fashioned in a style that experts describe as “completely new” for this region and period in its history... And in the layer with the artifacts were burned bits of willow, poplar, and pine, which were themselves dated between 10,000 and 12,500 years ago... While other sites in Washington’s lowlands have produced animal remains from the end of the last Ice Age, this is the first discovery of stone tools that date back more than 10,000 years, according to...

Explanation: Today's date marks an Equinox and a New Moon. Remarkably, while the exact timing of both geocentric events occur within a span of only 13 hours, the moon also reaches its new phase only 14 hours after perigee, the closest point in its orbit. That makes the Equinox New Moon the largest New Moon of 2015, though hard to see since that lunar phase presents the Moon's dark, night side to planet Earth. Still, in this well composed image of a young lunar phase from late January you can glimpse both night and day on the lunar surface, the...

The nova that erupted in the Sagittarius Teapot on March 15th has continued to brighten. It's now about magnitude 4.9, in easy binocular view before dawn. Anyone see it naked-eye yet? Update Friday March 20: It's still brightening — to about magnitude 4.9 as of last night! That's a magnitude brighter than at the nova's discovery five days earlier. No telling when it will stop. And, Sagittarius is getting a little higher before dawn every day.

Pupils at a primary school were banned from watching today's once-in-a-generation eclipse because of 'religious and cultural reasons', it has emerged. Parents of children at North Primary School in Southall, London, said they were 'outraged' by the decision and claimed it showed a triumph of 'religious superstition' over scientific education. Phil Belman, whose seven-year-old daughter goes to the school, met with headteacher Ivor Johnstone who said he was unable to elaborate on the decision because of 'confidentiality'. [snip] The headteacher said: 'The school made this decision when we became aware of religious and cultural concerns associated with observing an eclipse...

A 3D printing technology developed by Silicon Valley startup, Carbon3D Inc., enables objects to rise from a liquid media continuously rather than being built layer by layer as they have been for the past 25 years, representing a fundamentally new approach to 3D printing. The technology, to appear as the cover article in the March 20 print issue of Science, allows ready-to-use products to be made 25 to 100 times faster than other methods and creates previously unachievable geometries that open opportunities for innovation not only in health care and medicine, but also in other major industries such as automotive...

LONDON, March 3 A photographer in London captured a rare photo showing a small weasel appearing to ride on a woodpecker, but he said the mammal was actually attacking the bird. Martin Le-May of Essex said he and his wife, Ann, were walking Monday in Hornchurch Country Park when they came across the unusual sight. "I heard a distressed squawking noise and feared the worst," Le-May told the BBC. "I soon realized it was a woodpecker with some kind of small mammal on its back." Le-May said the woodpecker was in a struggle for its life with the unwanted passenger,...

PORTLAND -- The U.S. Geological Survey and the Cascades Volcano Observatory hope to install four volcano monitoring stations on the upper flanks of Mount Hood.

A scholarly paper explaining why predictions made by climate computer models used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tend to exaggerate global warming has ignited a political firestorm. Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, came under attack by environmentalists after co-authoring a peer-reviewed paper explaining “the widening discrepancy between prediction and observation” in climate change models, and members of Congress soon took sides. The scientific paper, entitled “Why Models Run Hot,” concludes that the computer models overstated the impact of CO2 on the climate: “The impact of anthropogenic global...

A lawsuit is expected to be filed in California today over the amount of arsenic in some of the best-selling wines in the country. CBS News reports laboratory testing by Denver's BeverageGrades found some wines have as much as time times the maximum level of arsenic the Environmental Protection Agency allows for drinking water. The EPA doesn't regulate wine as it does water, and there are no federal labeling requirements to disclose what's in wine.

The Romans, Vikings and Normans may have ruled or invaded the British for hundreds of years, but they left barely a trace on our DNA, the first detailed study of the genetics of British people has revealed. The analysis shows that the Anglo-Saxons were the only conquering force, around 400-500 AD, to substantially alter the country’s genetic makeup, with most white British people now owing almost 30% of their DNA to the ancestors of modern-day Germans.

<p>CARSON CITY, Nev. — Pets might soon be able to use pot under a bill introduced Tuesday in the Nevada Legislature.</p>

Explanation: On the night of March 17/18 this umbrella of northern lights unfolded over backyards in Vallentuna, Sweden about 30 kilometers north of Stockholm. A result of the strongest geomagnetic storm of this solar cycle, auroral displays were captured on that night from back and front yards at even lower latitudes, including sightings in the midwestern United States. A boon for aurora hunting skywatchers, the space storm began building when a coronal mass ejection, launched by solar activity some two days earlier, struck planet Earth's magnetosphere. So what's the name of the backyard observatory on the right of the wide...

The Scientist Who Wanted To Bring A Death Row Inmate Back From The Dead Dr. Robert E. Cornish is probably best known for his 1930s revivification experiments with dogs, in which he claimed to bring dogs back from clinical death. He wanted to try a similar procedure on humans — and when a death row inmate volunteered, Cornish petitioned the state of California to let him play re-animator. Cornish's dog experiments would make most dog lovers cringe. Cornish would suffocate the dogs until they were clinically dead, and then he would place the bodies on a teeter board, rocking the...

A translucent orange gem engraved with an image of a goddess of hunting has been found near a mausoleum built by Herod the Great, the king of Judea who ruled not long before the time of Jesus. The carnelian gem shows the goddess Diana (or her Greek equivalent, Artemis) with a sumptuously detailed hairstyle and wearing a sleeveless dress, with a quiver behind her left shoulder and the end of a bow protruding from her right shoulder. Both Diana and Artemis were goddesses of hunting and childbirth. An iron ring that may have held the gem was found nearby. Researchers...

THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER 1816, IN MAINE By Lee-Lee Schlegel MONTHS THAT SHOULD BE SUMMER’S PRIME SLEET AND SNOW AND FROST AND RIME AIR SO COLD YOU SEE YOUR BREATH EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FROZE TO DEATH (An old rhyme) -------------------------------------------------------------1771 REUBEN WHITTEN 1847 SON OF A REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER, A PIONEER OF THIS TOWN, COLD SEASON OF 1816 RAISED 40 BUSHELS OF WHEAT ON THIS LAND WHITCH KEPT HIS FAMILY AND NEIGHBOURS FROM STARVATION ( Tombstone in an Ashland, N.H. cemetery) Imagine! It’s June. Or July. Or perhaps August in Down East Maine. In Milbridge. That’s easy enough to do,...

Explanation: What does the Earth look like during a total solar eclipse? It appears dark in the region where people see the eclipse, because that's where the shadow of the Moon falls. The shadow spot actually shoots across the Earth at nearly 2,000 kilometers per hour, darkening locations in its path for only a few minutes before moving on. The featured image shows the Earth during the total solar eclipse of 2006 March, as seen from the International Space Station. On Friday the Moon will move in front of the Sun once again, casting another distorted circular shadow that, this...

In 2014, American households saw the largest electricity price increases in 6 years, according to government data, as utilities are forced to use more green energy and invest in energy efficiency and grid improvements. Energy Information Administration data shows that U.S. residential electricity prices “experienced large increases in retail electricity prices during 2014, with the average U.S. residential price increasing 3.1% over the previous year.” Last year’s price increase was the highest of any year since 2008 when prices rose 5.7 percent. “Residential electricity rate increases during 2014 ranged from 1.3% in the Pacific Coast states to 9.9% in New...

Pick any ranking of publicly traded companies, and year after year you’ll find Apple AAPL +1.73% in the top three worldwide. To say that its famous logo is ubiquitous is an understatement. It’s everywhere and then some. There’s a decent chance you’re holding it in your hand as you read this article. This is all true – but right now, without any help, do you think you could draw the Apple logo from memory? If you’re like participants in a recent study on memory, you probably feel confident you could pull it off without peeking. But you may find, as...