Astronomer and President of the Royal Society (academy of science) Martin Rees said science had made enormous progress in the search for planets grouped around other distant stars — a discipline he stressed did not exist in the 1990s.

"Now we know that most of the stars, like the sun, are likely to have planetary systems around them and we have every reason to suspect that many of them have planets that are rather like our earth," Rees told Reuters in an interview.

Scientists searching for alien life should get governments and the UN involved lest we unwittingly contact hostile extraterrestrials, a British astronomer has warned.

Mr Marek Kukula, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, said: "Part of me is with the enthusiasts and I would like us to try to make proactive contact with a wiser, more peaceful civilization."

But he warned: "We might like to assume that if there is intelligent life out there it is wise and benevolent, but of course we have no evidence for this.

"Given the consequences of contact may not be what we initially hoped for, then we need governments and the UN to get involved in any discussions," he told The Sunday Times.

Take, for example, the blazing pinwheel that appeared in Norwegian skies in December 2009, shown here. The sight sparked speculation that aliens were sending earthlings a signal. Other researchers speculated – and the Russian military later confirmed – that a missile failed.

NBC space analyst James Oberg says the incident fits into a long tradition of UFO sightings over Russia that are caused by secret military and space activities. Even when there's a prosaic explanation for the sightings, they can provide useful information about covert activities. ( 8 Pages @ MSNBC )

An outpouring of aid that followed the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami has helped replace homes, schools and entire coastal communities decimated by the disaster. But at Saturday's ceremonies, survivors spoke of the enduring wounds.

Thousands in Indonesia's Aceh province, which was hardest hit, held prayer services at mosques and beside the mass graves where tens of thousands were buried. The 167,000 people who died in Indonesia accounted for more than half the total death toll.

The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest.

The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added.

The islands that make up the small circular archipelago of Santorini, roughly 120 miles (200 km) southeast of Greece, are what remain of what once was a single island, before one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human antiquity shattered it in the Bronze Age some time between 1630 B.C. to 1550 B.C.

A UFO appears to streak through the sky in this astonishing video of the Iranians test firing a controversial missile.

The mystery object zooms unseen through Iran's airspace - before splitting a cloud in two as the film focuses in on the soaring rocket.

A UFO expert today described the unknown craft - which appears to be tracking the weapon - as "phenomenal". ( CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO - Watch around the 23-28 second mark, something zips through the clouds )

But UFOlogists come in two flavors: Those who spend money to investigate the possibility, and those who simply aim to make money off the whole concept.

All this was discussed here last month at the 40th Annual International UFO Symposium, staged by the Mutual UFO Network, Inc., or MUFON, based in Fort Collins, Colorado. The symposium subtitle: "Dawn of a new era in UFO research."

A few lecture topics by noted speakers tell the story, from reflections of an old UFO chaser to dramatic changes in trace/landing events, as well as highlights from a 20-year study of Canadian sightings and even a talk on engaging a skeptic about UFOs.

In fact, only one hurricane is thought to have ever struck California, and that was clear back in 1858. Could it happen again? Not impossible, but also extremely unlikely in any given year.

The disparity is a result of the oceanic and atmospheric conditions at play in both basins, which send hurricanes in the Atlantic toward land and hurricanes in the Pacific away from it, generally sparing West Coasters from the rages of these storms.

The hurricanes that swirl over both oceans form through the same mechanism, whereby warm ocean waters fuel the rotating storms. (Typhoons are also the same phenomenon; the name is simply the designation used in the western Pacific and Indian Oceans.)

"Their skin turned a glowing red," said the Staffordshire police inspector's report. "They saw a darkish silver inverted saucer shaped object in a field, which was glowing red beneath. The object was about four houses high in the sky and about 40ft away from them. They then, reluctantly, went on to state that a voice, which came from a lemon-like head, which appeared beneath the machine, said: 'We want you, come with us'."

Neither was drunk or under the influence of illegal substances and the next day both provided the police with detailed written reports of what they had seen, but when the police visited the field a local farmer said he had been crop spraying there but had not seen anything unusual.

What will our world look like in 2050? Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society Martin Rees predicts crises in water and energy supplies as a result of increased population pressure, exacerbated by climate change. Speaking to Alok Jha earlier this month, he also discussed the prospects for mitigating global warming and the UK's role in reducing carbon emissions.

On a lighter note - perhaps - Rees weighed up the chances that we will have discovered alien life by 2050.

 Source :  Guardian (AUDIO FILE/INTERVIEW)

The National Civil Defense Secretariat said deaths have occurred in eight out of the 11 states severely affected by the flooding , including Ceara with 15 deaths, 10 in Maranhao and seven in Bahia in the perennially drought-stricken northeast; and eight deaths in the northern state of Amazonas.

It goes beyond automated vacuums and mildly entertaining dance-bots. Japan and Korea plan to deploy humanoid robots to care for the elderly, while the United States already fields thousands of robot warriors on the modern battlefield. Meanwhile, plenty of people have enhanced their bodies technologically in ways that bring them closer to their robotic brethren.

So it's OK to become a bit of a paranoid android, because many experts say that the robotic future is rapidly approaching, if not already here. Robots probably won't completely take over or annihilate the human race anytime soon, but they may supplant us by other means -- and LiveScience is here to count the reasons why you need not hide your fear of the metal ones.

 

An oddly shaped space boulder appears to show eye sockets and a nose leading to speculation it might be a Martian skull.

At first glance it looks like a rocky desert - but this image of the Mars landscape has got space-gazers talking. An oddly shaped space boulder appears to show eye sockets and a nose leading to speculation it might be a Martian skull.

Internet forums are full of chatter about the picture, taken by a panoramic NASA camera known as Spirit. One alien-spotter speculated: "The skull is 15 cm with binocular eyes 5 cm apart. The cranial capacity is approximately 1400 cc

Were they meteors? A comet? UFOs ?

People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night.

There was no immediate explanation, the National Weather Service office in Wakefield said. The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said. The Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border. People said they saw a streak in the sky and heard an explosion.

“It was orange, like a fireball,” said Steve Wagner, who lives in the Great Bridge area of Chesapeake and said what he saw was too close to be a shooting star. Wagner was outside cooking with family when he saw the streak. He said he went inside when his daughter called, then heard an explosion that sounded like thunder.

The first came last month. The next is in November. Such a rare triple-threat occurs only once every 11 years.

The origin of the link between bad luck and Friday the 13th is murky. The whole thing might date to Biblical times (the 13th guest at the Last Supper betrayed Jesus). By the Middle Ages, both Friday and 13 were considered bearers of bad fortune. In modern times, the superstition permeates society.

For decades, UFO buffs have claimed that conclusive proof of alien life is just around the corner. They believe that the "truth will be revealed" — either by extraterrestrials finally making themselves known (a visit to the White House lawn or Times Square might be on the agenda), or by the world's governments ending their conspiracy of silence and letting the public see the real evidence and alien bodies they've had on ice since 1947.

The dancing lights have appeared above most thunderstorms throughout history, but researchers did not start studying them until one accidentally recorded a sighting on camera in 1989.

"Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said Colin Price, a geophysicist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. "We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft."

Astronomers have detected the strongest radiation blast from deep space ever known, exceeding the power of 9,000 exploding stars.

The gamma ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away, and its light has taken most of the age of the universe to reach us. Scientists believe such bursts occur when stars run out of fuel and collapse to form a black hole.

It has been calculated that the material emitting the gamma rays must have been moving at 99.9999 per cent of the speed of light. The explosion was spotted by a Nasa telescope. - Independent

It shows a perfect rectangle the size of Wales lying on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean nearly 3½ miles down.A host of criss-crossing lines, looking like a map of a vast metropolis, are enclosed by the boundary.

They seem too vast and organised to be caused naturally. And last night the possibility of an extraordinary discovery had oceanographers and geophysicists captivated.

Our planet may harbour forms of "weird life" unrelated to life as we know it, according to Professor Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State University.

This "shadow life" may be hidden in toxic arsenic lakes or in boiling deep sea hydrothermal vents, he says.

Even today many people think the mystical powers of the full moon induce erratic behaviors, psychiatric hospital admissions, suicides, homicides, emergency room calls, traffic accidents, fights at professional hockey games, dog bites and all manner of strange events. One survey revealed that 45 percent of college students believe moonstruck humans are prone to unusual behaviors, and other surveys suggest that mental health professionals may be still more likely than laypeople to hold this conviction. In 2007 several police departments in the U.K. even added officers on full-moon nights in an effort to cope with presumed higher crime rates.

These early proposals - which predate by 150 years the first extraterrestrial message that was sent in 1974 - were based on visual signals, as the invention of radio was still decades away.

In fact, as history shows, ideas for interplanetary communication have largely been driven by whatever the current technology allowed - be it lamps, radios or lasers.

None of the findings shout, "Here be aliens!" but each report has stoked optimism among astrobiologists that they will discover life beyond Earth. Some leading stargazers, in fact, suspect we're now on the verge of learning that we're not alone—and that genesis wasn't a unique event.