Nasa has successfully launched two spacecraft to the Moon on missions that will pave the way for a return to the lunar surface by US astronauts.
LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) and a crater observation mission blasted off from Florida on an Atlas V rocket.
Data gathered by LRO will help mission planners select future landing sites and [...]

New software has enabled researchers to recreate a long forgotten musical instrument called the Lituus.
The 2.4m (8ft) long trumpet-like instrument was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago.
Bach’s motet (a choral musical composition) “O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht” was one of the last pieces of music written for [...]

Astronomers have found the most distant evidence of water in the Universe, a major conference has been told.
The vapour is thought to be present in a jet ejected from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy that is billions of light-years away.
The discovery, by a US-European team, was announced at the European [...]

Chimpanzees enter into “deals” whereby they exchange meat for sex, according to researchers.
Male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts.
This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them [...]

Millions of people worldwide are being urged to switch off lights for an hour, in what is described as the biggest climate change protest ever attempted.
The initiative, Earth Hour, was begun in Sydney two years ago by green campaigners keen to cut energy use.
Correspondents say the aim is to create a huge wave of public [...]

Scientists say for the first time they have understood someone’s thoughts by looking at what their brain is doing.
The hippocampus is widely known to be integral to memory, but researchers say they now see just how images are stored and recalled in this part of the brain.
Wellcome Trust scientists trained four participants to recognise several [...]

The Japanese government has earmarked 10 billion US dollars under its Cool Earth Partnership project, to support science and technology research in 32 African countries including Ghana, Mr. Keiichi Katakami, Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, announced on Thursday.
The Ambassador made the announcement when he led a three-member Japanese Science and Technology delegation to pay a courtesy [...]

An asteroid which may be as big as a ten-storey building has passed close by the Earth, astronomers say.
The object, known as 2009 DD45, thought to be 21-47m (68-152ft) across, raced by our planet at 1344 GMT on Monday.
The gap was just 72,000 km (44,750 miles); a fifth of the distance between our planet and [...]

Facebook has responded to criticism over the way it handles user data by handing over control to its users.
Members of the social network will have comment and voting rights over the firm’s future policies regarding how the site is governed.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg said the aim was to “open up Facebook so that users can participate [...]

The migration of wildebeest is one of the most familiar events on the globe.
Each year, over a million wildebeest and many hundreds of thousands of gazelles and zebras gather in one corner of Tanzania’s Serengeti plains.
And for the predators here, with this plentiful food supply, it is a time to feast.

When the grazers are [...]