In the new survey mentioned above, those contacted were asked to select the top three potential catastrophes that worry them the most... [shtfplan]

As the year 2011 comes to a close, some might wonder what is looming sky-wise for 2012? What celestial events might we look forward to seeing? 

I've selected what I consider to be the top 12 "skylights" for this coming year, and list them here in chronological order. Not all these events will be visible from any one locality ... for the eclipses, for instance, you'll probably have to do some traveling ... but many can be observed from the comfort of your backyard. Hopefully your local weather will cooperate on most, if not all, of these dates. Clear skies! [msnbc]

The United Nations health body said it was "deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences" of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissable form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.

The work by the teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the United States, has already prompted an unprecedented censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear that publishing details of the research could give potential attackers the know-how to make a bioterror weapon. [yahoo]

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The idea that the world will end with the coming of the new year, as some claim the ancient Maya predicted , has spawned a series of proposed methods for this planetary disaster - galactic forces , Earth's magnetic poles flipping, the eruption of a  supervolcano.

Though it has been shown that the Mayans did not in fact predict 2012 would bring the end of the world, there have been supervolcano eruptions in Earth's past that have wrought significant destruction. One such eruption may have been the cause of a major ancient mass extinction event.

But is another supervolcano eruption on the way? At the dawn of the new year, researchers say - Don't hold your breath.

Many of us may remember the jaw-dropping images of the May 22, 2011, tornado that tore through Joplin, Mo., killing 158 people and leaving an incredible 14-mile path of destruction. But that system was only one of the record-breaking tornado events this year. Data compiled by meteorologist Jeffrey Masters shows that when deaths, damage and financial losses are considered, 2011 can be called the worst U.S. tornado year on record.

Masters, who runs the Weather Underground, a Web site that provides local forecasts, analyzes severe weather and turns raw storm data from the National Weather Service into captivating maps and data visualizations, has posted a compilation of record and near-record tornado events for 2011. Some notable stats from his post are below. A blow-by-blow description of the year’s major tornadoes, as well as a list of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history, can be found on NOAA’s 2011 tornado review page. [sciam]

The year 2011 has flown by without a hitch … or, at least, without Earth bursting into flames. Radio evangelist Harold Camping's famous pair of prophecies -- his prediction that true Christians would be safely evacuated to heaven on May 21, and that a series of global cataclysms would then climax in a grand, Earth-shattering finale on Oct. 21 -- seem to have flopped. (Imagine my shock)

Yes, it looks as if we'll make it to 2012 after all. But what then?

Camping himself doesn't have much to say on the subject. After the crash-and-burn of his Oct. 21 endtimes prediction , the 90-year-old minister retired from Family Radio Network -- the Christian talk show he co-founded in 1958 -- and stepped away from the limelight. According to Susan Espinoza, a Family Radio spokeswoman, Camping "is not predicting any new dates for the end of the world."

After five years of surprising quiet, the sun roared to life in 2011.

Our star erupted with numerous strong flares and waves of charged particles. Many researchers predict the surge will culminate in a peak in the sun's 11-year activity cycle in 2013.

This year also marked several key advances in scientists' understanding of the dynamics driving our favorite star. Here are some of the solar highlights of 2011... [ls]

In a year when disaster caused unprecedented economic losses around the globe, Australia may have been on the right track when it started passing the hat.

It was in February that the Australian government introduced a flood levy to help pay for the damage that Mother Nature wrought upon Queensland state.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the government needed money to pay for repairs in the wake of "the most expensive season of natural disasters our nation has ever known."

It wouldn't be long before other countries found themselves wrestling with similar challenges, determining how to rebuild in the face of record disaster. [ctv.ca]

• Alien missions to moon likely to have been long ago
• Moon would preserve traces for millions of years
• Easier to find alien debris than radio signals
  
• Nasa's Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter may have captured pictures of 'footprints' of ancient aliens 

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - SETI - project looks for alien life in a one, main specific way - scanning for radio signals deliberately beamed towards earth from distant stars.

But two astronomers suggest that we may be missing evidence much closer to home.

Two scientists at Arizona State University have suggested that alien life may have 'left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features' - and that alien 'footprints' on the moon would last far longer than radio signals.

The Russian Phobos-Ground probe was destined to land on a moon of Mars but problems soon after launch in November meant that it was stuck in an unstable, low-Earth orbit.

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, said yesterday that the lorry-sized probe weighing 13.2 tonnes and laden with 11 tonnes of toxic rocket fuel and 10kg of radioactive cobalt-57 will fall to Earth between 6 and 19 January. [independent]

The crippled nuclear reactors at Japan's Fukushima power plant have finally been stabilised, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has announced.

An earthquake and tsunami in March knocked out vital cooling systems, triggering radiation leaks and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people.

Mr Noda's declaration of a "cold shutdown" condition marked the stabilization of the plant. The government says it will take decades to dismantle it completely. [bbc]

A city in southern Mexico wants to live each moment as if it were the last.

Tourism officials in Tapachula have installed a digital clock to count down the time left before the Dec. 21, 2012, solstice, when some believe the Mayan long-count calendar "runs out."

The clock will be started this Dec. 21, a year before what many see as an apocalyptic event. [msnbc]

As a storm that killed more than 650 in the southern Philippines raged outside the store where she works, Amor Limbago worriedly called home to check on her parents, but their cellphones just kept ringing and later went dead.

Limbago, 21, rushed home as soon as the flash floods receded and confirmed her worst fear: Her parents and seven other relatives were gone, swept away from their hut by the river. They had eagerly planned a small Christmas dinner in that hut just days earlier.

"I returned and saw that our house was completely gone," a weeping Limbago told The Associated Press from Cagayan de Oro city. "There was nothing but mud all over and knee-deep floodwaters." [abc]

Newt Gingrich has been warning the nation of the danger of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) - a burst of radiation created by a high-altitude nuclear explosion. This pulse would take down electrical systems over hundreds or thousands of miles, the argument goes, knocking the U.S. back to the 19th Century.

“In theory, a relatively small device over Omaha would knock out about half the electricity generated in the United States,” he was quoted as saying by the New York Times. In Gingrich’s view, the threat of an EMP attack justifies actions such as pre-emptive strikes on the missile instillations of nations such as Iran and North Korea.

The threat of an EMP attack is real - assuming, of course, that a nation or organization develops not only nuclear weapons but intercontinental ballistic missiles and the will to deploy them. Yet the primary target of an EMP wouldn’t be ground-based power systems. It would be satellites. [sciam]

The spectacular explosion of a star in a distant galaxy  has given astronomers a rare glimpse of how supernovae blast the basic ingredients for life into the cosmos.

Scientists captured images of the colossal detonation in the Pinwheel galaxy 21m light years away within hours of the burst of light from the explosion reaching Earth.

The supernova, called SN2011fe, was the result of a thermonuclear explosion that tore the parent star apart, converting carbon and oxygen into heavier elements, such as nickel, in the process. [guardian]

• "Methane fields on a scale not seen before" - researcher

• More than 100 fountains, but could be 'thousands'

• Could cause rapid climate change 

The Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted a survey of 10,000 square miles of sea off the coast of eastern Siberia. They made a terrifying discovery - huge plumes of methane bubbles rising to the surface from the seabed.

'We found more than 100 fountains, some more than a kilometre across,' said Dr Igor Semiletov, 'These are methane fields on a scale not seen before. The emissions went directly into the atmosphere.' [dm]

Two top U.S. hurricane forecasters, famous across Deep South hurricane country, are quitting the practice of making a seasonal forecast in December because it doesn’t work.

William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say a look back shows their past 20 years of forecasts had no predictive value.

The two scientists from Colorado State University will still discuss different probabilities of hurricane seasons in December. But the shift signals how far humans are, even with supercomputers, from truly knowing what our weather will do in the long run. [link]

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People keen to witness the devastating effects of a natural disaster can now take a virtual tour through Japan's tsunami-hit communities.

Google Street View has digitally archived vast areas of the north-eastern disaster zone.

The massive project to document the damage and rebuilding effort is aimed at providing the world with an accurate picture of the devastation caused by the natural disaster.

The internet giant announced in July that it was trying to map the 44,000km of affected roads following the March 11 magnitude nine earthquake which triggered the tsunami. [dm]