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Antimatter atoms have been trapped for the first time, scientists say. Researchers at Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have held 38 antihydrogen atoms in place, each for a fraction of a second. Antihydrogen has been produced before but it was instantly destroyed when it encountered normal matter. The team, reporting in Nature, says the ability to study such antimatter atoms will allow previously impossible tests of fundamental tenets of physics. The current "standard model" of physics holds that each particle - protons, electrons, neutrons and a zoo of more exotic particles - has its mirror image antiparticle. The...

The American Geophysical Union plans to announce Monday that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue. The effort is a pushback against congressional conservatives who have vowed to kill regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. "This group feels strongly that science and politics can't be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists," said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.

Ten years ago, NASA researchers discovered that the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft had fallen slightly behind course during their 35-year journeys to the outer reaches of the solar system. In what has become known as the Pioneer anomaly, which was the subject of one of the talks this weekend at the American Physical Society here in St. Louis, nobody knows for sure why it happened. It probably stemmed from leaking gas or heat. But there's also the possibility, however remote, that gravity doesn't behave the way we expect. Until recently, researchers haven't had the data to distinguish the different...

Scientists have discovered a gene which makes mice more intelligent when it is not working. Nicknamed the ‘Homer Simpson gene’, after the hapless cartoon character, it operates in a part of the brain which regulates how animals learn and form new memories. The researchers from the Emory University School of Medicine say that deleting the gene in mice made them more skilled at navigating mazes and remembering objects. (Snip) John Hepler, PhD, professor of pharmacology at Emory University School of Medicine, said: "A big question this research raises is why would we, or mice, have a gene that makes us

Two asteroids swooping past Earth Wednesday may have caught the attention of the public, but events like these are not actually rare, NASA scientists say. "This is the first time we've seen [two] combined within a 24-hour period, but that's probably because we don't know everything that is out there," said Lindley Johnson, program executive of the Near-Earth Object program at NASA headquarters in Washington. Single asteroids have been known to make such close passes, but they usually slip by unnoticed, .. In fact, with a rough estimate of 50 million unknown asteroids, a 33-foot-wide (10-meter) near-Earth object could pass...

A retired research assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia died of multiple stab wounds before firefighters found in his body in the trunk of a burning car Friday. Boone County Medical Examiner Valerie Rao said after an autopsy that Jeong H. Im, 72, of Columbia was stabbed several times, but she declined to elaborate. MU police yesterday named Im as the victim. His body was found in the trunk of his burning white, 1995 Honda inside the Maryland Avenue parking garage, MU police Capt. Brian Weimer said. The case was under investigation by the Mid-Missouri Major Case Squad. No...

Earth could be hit by a wave of violent space weather as early as Tuesday after a massive explosion of the sun, scientists have warned. Sunspot 1092 may combine with a large filament of cool gas stretching across the sun's northern hemisphere to produce interference with communication systems on Earth The solar fireworks at the weekend were recorded by several satellites, including Nasa’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory which watched its shock wave rippling outwards. Astronomers from all over the world witnessed the huge flare above a giant sunspot the size of the Earth, which they linked to even larger eruption...

It is the fact that the letters “Ph.D.” follow my name. It is my degrees in chemistry and a decade of work in environmental remediation that draw people’s dreamy adoration. I am held to a higher standard not just because I’m a pastor but mostly because I am a scientist. Folks assume that I know the answer to any question they might think up. With our increased demand and consumption of oil, with our increased demand for money and the greed that pervades our culture, and with the expectation of instant results born of the very technology that scientists and...

Mr Amiri, 32, said he was seized and spirited from the country after being offered a lift while walking towards a mosque. He gave his account before flying home to Iran on Wednesday after taking refuge at the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington earlier this week. The US state department has insisted he was in the US of his own free will but Mr Amiri said he was kidnapped by secret agents in Medina, Islam's second holiest city, in May last year. "A white van stopped in front of me... They told me in Farsi that...

NEW YORK (AFP) – This could give a whole new meaning to the phrase power dressing. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a cloth that can hear and emit noise. The team, led by MIT professor Yoel Fink, has reached "a new milestone on the path to functional fibers: fibers that can detect and produce sound," MIT said in a statement. The development, described in the August issue of Nature Materials, transforms the usual passive nature of textiles into a virtually all-singing, all-dancing version. According to MIT, "applications could include clothes that are themselves sensitive microphones, for...

NEW ORLEANS – Scientists provided a new estimate for the size of the Gulf oil spill on Tuesday that indicates it could be worse than previously thought. A government panel of scientists said that the ruptured well is leaking between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons a day of oil. That is an increase over previous estimates that put the maximum size of the spill at 2.1 million gallons per day. "This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on...

SYDNEY (AFP) – A capsule that scientists hope will contain a little slice of outer space after a seven-year journey across the solar system was sitting in the Australian Outback on Monday waiting to be recovered. The pod, which was ejected from a Japanese space probe as it burned up in a spectacular meteor-like display over Australia, could hold the first piece of asteroid ever brought to Earth. The heat-resistant pod parachuted into the Woomera military zone after being ejected from Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft as it flamed back into the planet's atmosphere late Sunday. Australian National University scientist Trevor Ireland,...

Research scientists announced on Monday they had identified the missing piece of a major puzzle involving the make-up of the universe by observing a neutrino particle change from one type to another. Science The CERN physics research center near Geneva, relaying the announcement from the Gran Sasso laboratory in central Italy, said the breakthrough was a major boost for its own LHC particle collider programme to unveil key secrets of the cosmos. According to physicists at Gran Sasso, after three years of monitoring multiple billions of muon neutrinos beamed to them through the earth from CERN 730 kms (456 miles)...

A gene silencing approach can save monkeys from high doses of the most lethal strain of Ebola virus in what researchers call the most viable route yet to treating the deadly and frightening infection. They used small interfering RNAs or siRNAs, a new technology being developed by a number of companies, to hold the virus at bay for a week until the immune system could take over. Tests in four rhesus monkeys showed that seven daily injections cured 100 per cent of them. U.S. government researchers and a small Canadian biotech company, Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, worked together to develop the new...

The University of Virginia filed a court challenge today seeking to block Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's investigation of climate scientist Michael Mann. The university filed a petition in Albemarle County Circuit Court as the first step in a legal process to set aside Cuccinelli's civil subpoena seeking documents relating to global-warming research by Mann, who left U.Va. in 2005 and now works at Pennsylvania State University. President John T. Casteen III said the university intends to protect academic freedom. The issuance of Civil Investigative Demands, or CIDs, "has sent a chill through the commonwealth's colleges and universities -- a...

WASHINGTON – Ditching its past cautious tone, the nation's top scientists urged the government Wednesday to take drastic action to raise the cost of using coal and oil to slow global warming. The National Academy of Sciences specifically called for a carbon tax on fossil fuels or a cap-and-trade system for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, calling global warming an urgent threat. The academy, which advises the government on scientific matters, said the nation needs to cut the pollution that causes global warming by about 57 percent to 83 percent by 2050. That's close to President Barack Obama's goal. "We really...

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chemical extracts from cigarette butts -- so toxic they kill fish -- can be used to protect steel pipes from rusting, a study in China has found. In a paper published in the American Chemical Society's bi-weekly journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the scientists in China said they identified nine chemicals after immersing cigarette butts in water. They applied the extracts to N80, a type of steel used in oil pipes, and found that they protected the steel from rusting. "The metal surface can be protected and the iron atom's further dissolution can be prevented,"...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 250 U.S. scientists on Thursday defended climate change research against "political assaults" and warned that any delay in tackling global warming heightens the risk of a planet-wide catastrophe. The scientists, all members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, targeted critics who have urged postponing any action against climate change because of alleged problems with research shown in a series of hacked e-mails that are collectively known as "climate-gate." "When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing renewed criticism this week with scientists charging that the government arm inaccurately labeled ethanol a “renewable fuel” last February. According to reports, at the same time that it revised its renewable fuel standards, the EPA also re-ran numbers relating to corn-based ethanol’s lifecycle emissions, and determined that ethanol was responsible for substantially less greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline, thus allowing it to be redesignated as “renewable.” But, scientists argue, the underlying data remained the same, and demonstrated that ethanol was not a “green” energy source. Nonetheless, they charge, the EPA presented the data in...

PARIS (AFP) – Big volcanic eruptions have had a cooling effect on Earth's climate, but the Icelandic event is too small to provide any such respite from manmade global warming, scientists said on Friday. The benchmark cooling event of the past 20 years was in 1991, when Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. It cooled Earth's surface by 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next year, enough to offset the impact of greenhouse gases from 1991 to 1993. A smaller cooling episode occurred in 1980, when Mount St. Helens in the US state of Washington blew its top,...