EARTH

The European Space Agency is looking to test to see if it's possible divert an asteroid headed for Earth. The mission, called Don Quixote, is already underway at the ESA, and will help the agency learn more about how the Earth can defend itself against any potential asteroid collision threat. The project is slated for 2015.

Oxygen may have been present on Earth 300 million years before it was breathed into the atmosphere, scientists concluded from a new research.Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered evidence that small aerobic organisms could have evolved to survive on extremely low levels of the gas in undersea "oxygen oases," keeping a low profile in the oceans before its debut in the atmosphere.

New data has shown that Arctic sea ice levels plunged to a record low for the month of July in more than three decades of record-keeping.

Researchers from MIT criticized the United Nations' global climate report, saying it seriously underestimated the speed of Arctic sea ice loss.

Researchers from MIT attacked the United Nations' recent global climate report and said that the U.N. underestimated the severity of Arctic sea ice melting. MIT's research team said that the thinning is probably happened four times more quickly than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted.

Using computer modeling studies scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, unexpectedly found that Arctic ice, under existing climate conditions, is as likely to expand as it is to contract for periods of up to about a decade. The study can be read in the Geophysical Research Letters.

Scientists are predicting that the Arctic sea ice may actually expand in the next decade.

Arctic sea ice may be fated to melt away with the continuous warming of the climate, but it could temporarily stabilize - maybe even expand ? over the next few decades, scientists in Boulder, Colo. say. Computer modeling studies done by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, has reinforced previous findings that the level of Arctic sea ice loss seen in recent decades can't be explained only by natural causes, and that the ice will sooner or later disappear durin...

The U.S. will donate an additional $17 million to nations in the Horn of Africa coping with severe drought, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced.

NASA scientists were able to observe for the first time the powerful effects of an earthquake and tsunami combined, which broke off large icebergs a hemisphere away off the coast of Antarctica.

A new solar flare Tuesday is the biggest in several years and is part of a pattern of solar storms scheduled to last until 2020, experts say.

An extremely powerful solar flare, which is the largest in the current solar weather cycle, rocked the Sun on Tuesday, resulting in coronal mass ejection (CME). But as the gigantic bursts of radiation occurred near the western limb of the sun, it is unlikely to wreak any serious havoc on Earth.

The sun was rocked by an extremely powerful solar flare on Tuesday, which, according to scientists, was the largest in four years. However, the bursts of radiation were not likely to cause any serious chaos on Earth since they were not aimed at the planet, they added.

Early Tuesday, the sun unleashed an extremely powerful solar flare, the largest of the current sun weather cycle which began in 2008.

The sun emitted a powerful solar flare on Tuesday, which is the largest in five years, but the bursts of radiation weren't in the direction of Earth and so there will be little impact on satellite and communication systems, scientists say.

The solar eruption was facing away from the Earth, averting potentially major disruptions.

DNA molecules found on meteorites indicate that the building blocks for life on Earth originated in outer space.

The annual Perseid meteor shower, which is caused by debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle and observed for about 2000 years, will be hampered this year by the full moon, which happens when Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon.

A new analysis suggests that DNA building blocks embedded in meteorites found in Antarctica originated in space, adding weight to the theory that the seeds of life on Earth originated in space.

The annual Perseid meteor shower, which is caused by debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle and observed for about 2000 years, will be at peak coming Friday and Saturday. There might be some serious hamper for viewers due to the full moon on Saturday.

Antimatter in Earth's magnetosphere, which was only a theoretical possibility so far, has been proved to be present in the form of a significant flux of antiprotons, generated by nuclear interactions of energetic cosmic rays with the terrestrial atmosphere. The trapped antiproton energy spectrum in the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) region has been measured by the PAMELA experiment for the kinetic energy range 60-750 MeV.