Home  »  Headline News

On:

Scientists looking at a star 150 light-years away with the Hubble Space Telescope found that a planet there contains sodium in its atmosphere. This demonstrates that it may be possible to search for the chemical signature of life on planets beyond the solar system.

?Suddenly, discussing searches for Earth-like planets seems quite reasonable,? says David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. ?This opens up an exciting new phase of extrasolar planet exploration, where we can begin to compare and contrast the atmospheres of planets around other stars.?
read more

On:

Researchers can now demonstrate that a short-lived change in the earth?s magnetic field really did take place about ten million years ago. Before this, they had evidence that the magnetic fields had reversed, but felt this could have been caused by chemical or physical processes that had altered the magnetic signals in the sediment they were studying.
read more

On:

Did five people have to die because US biological weapon researchers wanted to receive more money for their work? Greenpeace magazine feels this dreadful assumption may be likely, based on statements from members of a U.S. government delegation.

During the UN bioweapons conference taking place at present in Geneva, the participants of the U.S. delegation said that a high-ranking U.S. biology weapons expert is behind the anthrax letters. Independent researchers also share this suspicion, Greenpeace magazine reported on Wednesday.
read more

On:

It?s planting season in eastern Afghanistan, and farmers are busy plowing their fields for next year?s crop of poppies that will eventually be turned into heroin and shipped to the streets of the U.S. and Europe.

A few weeks ago, many farmers were planning to plant wheat. But now that the Taliban have gone, along with their ban on drugs, most of them have changed their mind, since poppies earn them 15 times more money.

?The Taliban told us not to cultivate poppies, so I stopped,? says a gray-bearded father of nine. ?Absolutely we were forced to stop, and we were sorry about this. I don?t especially like growing poppies, but I was worried about getting food for my stomach.?
read more