The bitterly fought Pluto wars of a few years back showed that even the experts disagree on what is and what isn't a planet. One thing there's no quarrel about, of course: a planet is, by definition, something that orbits a star. Except, it turns out, when it isn't. Writing in the latest issue of Nature, a team of astronomers is reporting the discovery of ten objects roughly the size of Jupiter that seem to be on the ...

You can think of NASA's Discovery program as a sort of outer-space American Idol: every few years the agency invites scientists to propose unmanned planetary missions. The projects have to address some sort of fundamental science question, and they have to be relatively cheap to pull off — say, half a billion dollars or so. Then the proposals go through a grueling competition before judges who aren't as nasty as Simon Cowell but who are every ...

New York -- U.S. law enforcement officials have found a manual on the operation of cropdusting equipment while searching suspected terrorist hideouts, government sources tell TIME magazine in an issue out on Monday, Sept. 24th. The discovery has added to concerns among government counterterrorism experts that the bin Laden conspirators may have been planning — or may still be planning —to disperse biological or chemical agents from a cropdusting plane normally used for agricultural purposes. Among the belongings ...

Stung by the embarrassment of the discovery and death of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on Monday, Pakistan's powerful military establishment is under pressure to make changes in its relationship with key allies, and in its fight against terrorism. After three days of sedulous silence on the matter, the military and intelligence leadership on Thursday shared its perspective on the Abbottabad debacle with a select group of senior Pakistani journalists — no foreign news ...

One day in 1941, Vasile Enache was tending his cows in the forest of Vulturi, near the city of Iasi, 260 miles northeast of Bucharest, when he heard people sobbing. He went to investigate and saw hundreds of civilians being marched through the forest by Romanian army soldiers. Enache didn't know it at the time, but he was witnessing part of Romania's "Iasi pogrom," which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 14,000 Jews. For almost ...

The esoteric world of theoretical physics went into spasms of enthusiasm last week when Brookhaven National Laboratory announced the identification of a new elementary particle. It is not the biggest particle known or the smallest, and it lives only one ten-billionth of a second. But physicists all over the world were stirred up because it has almost precisely the mass that was predicted for it by long-range theory. It was rather as if Columbus, sailing across the Atlantic, had really found ...

It's the year 2031--one generation removed from Sept. 11, 2001--and Americans are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. How well did America respond to that day, when viewed with the benefit of hindsight? How has history judged our leaders' actions? Here, a historian looks back on that distant event and explains how 9/11 would change America, and the world, in ways that few could have imagined. Nineteen terrorists. Four hijacked aircraft. Nearly ...

What does a female midlife crisis look like, anyway? A big face-lift, a little red car, an overdose, an affair, an escape to the Galpagos Islands? Or none of the above? It is both a stable truth and an unsettling one that our lives loop and twist from age to age. The baby toddles into childhood, the child erupts into a teen, then a woman, who by the time she has passed 40 is long overdue to shed her skin ...

Scientists say a very rare find of some 20 fossilized pterodactyls has produced the first clear evidence of a controversial theory of evolution. The fossils were found in north-east China earlier this year, embedded in rock dating back 160 million years, and have been called "Darwinopterus" after the renowned naturalist Charles Darwin. The creature's discovery has astounded scientists because their age puts them within two recognized groups of pterodactyls -- primitive long-tailed forms and advanced short-tail forms -- and they ...

Stonehenge, an enigma to visitors and scientists alike for many years, may be less of a mystery after an "incredible" discovery announced to the world this week. Archaeologists have unearthed a new stone circle near Stonehenge that lends credence to the theory that the famous prehistoric monument in Britain was part of a funeral complex. Researchers have named the discovery, Bluestonehenge, after the color of the 25 Welsh stones of which it was once made up. Bluestonehenge sits along the ...