Scientists using NASA's RHESSI spacecraft have measured the roundness of the sun with unprecedented precision, and they find that it is not a perfect sphere.

Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the "blankest year" of the Space Age.

CEO Eric Schmidt cites a failure of leadership for America's energy predicament, and has a proposal to wean the United States off fossil fuels by 2030. Stacey Delo reports. © 2008 The Wall Street Journal

Researchers at the Argelander Institute of Astronomy of the University of Bonn have discovered that brown dwarfs need to be treated as a separate class in addition to stars and planets.

There's an old saying in astronomy: "Galaxies are like people. They're only normal until you get to know them."

Jeroen van Beek, a security researcher at the University of Amsterdam, revealed his software that enables a user the ability to manipulate the data encoded on any RFID chip in any passport.

The New Scientist has a gallery of gorgeous images that visualize science as artwork. The images are the winners of the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge: "The awards are given to the best photographs, illustrations and

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed hundreds of small fractures exposed on the Martian surface that billions of years ago directed flows of water through underground Martian sandstone.

A light-transmitting compound that could one day be used in high-efficiency fiber optics and in sensors to detect biological and chemical weapons at long distance almost went undiscovered by scientists because its structure was too difficult to examine.

1st century AD: A simple explosive substance appears in China. To create a festive effect, containers filled with it are believed to have been thrown onto fires, whereupon they sometimes flew up into the air.