World's smallest optical transistor brings optical computers a step closer

The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-O, soared into space today after a successful launch from Space Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

In 1988, wildfires raced through Yellowstone National Park, consuming hundreds of thousands of acres. This series of Landsat images tracks the landscape’s slow recovery through 2008.

True-color images of the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado show a dramatic difference in snow appearance between 2008 and 2009. In 2009, dust has colored the snow dull brown and accelerated snowmelt.

This true-color image from July 1, 2009, shows a series of giant dust plumes west of Mauritania. The smallest and most concentrated plume appears east of Cape Verde.

See the tracks of 2008 storms from Arthur to Paloma from birth to death.

American Geophysical Union) Featured in this release are research papers on the following topics: "Ancient supervolcano's eruption caused decade of severe winters"; "Understanding fault movement during Wenchuan earthquake"; "First direct measurement of lunar backscatter from solar wind"; "Reducing uncertainty in

A new study has found that hydrocarbon lakes on Titan could be good hosts for a certain type of chemistry that could lead to life.

A bacterium recovered from beneath three kilometers of glacial ice in Greenland may hold clues as to how life could exist on other planets. Astrobiologists are now studying the unique organism, which

Researchers have created new materials that assemble and disassemble in a way similar to DNA. The materials are constructed from molecules that would be expected to exist on the primordial Earth, and

The Evogrid is a proposed computerized version of the primordial soup. Digitally simulating virtual particles could help answer the question of how life originated on Earth, and perhaps even spread li

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is the data archive center for NASA s Kepler mission, and has now received the first raw science data from Kepler. Now, the data can be analyzed and used

A new discovery at Enceladus could have implications for the potential for life on the Saturnian moon. Researchers have found that the large plume of water spurting from the moon is likely fed by a sa

Scientists have determined that nickel could be used to identify the presence of methane-producing microbes on the early Earth. During the process of methanogenesis, microbes cause changes in the isot

The change in Earth s climate may help scientists better understand planetary habitability in general. Scientists are now learning how small shifts in climate can have dramatic consequences for the pl

NASA s Mars rover Spirit is having traction trouble in the martian soil. Although stuck, the rover is taking advantage of the situation by learning more about Mars environmental history.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has transmitted its first images since reaching lunar orbit June 23.

El astronauta de NASA Jos? Hern?ndez, quien volar? a bordo del Transbordador Espacial Discovery en Agosto, nos permitir? ver los detalles de su entrenamiento por medio de un "Twitter" en Ingles y en Espa?ol

With NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, astronomers now are getting their best look at those whirling stellar cinders known as pulsars.