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In case you missed the news, a team of physicists reported in September that the tiny subatomic particles known as neutrinos could violate the cosmic speed limit set by Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The researchers, working on an experiment called OPERA, beamed neutrinos through the earth’s crust, from CERN, the laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, to Gran Sasso National Laboratory in L’Aquila, Italy, an underground physics lab. According to the scientists’ estimates, the neutrinos arrived at their destination around 60 nanoseconds quicker than the speed of light

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In the first university-based planetary science experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), researchers have gradually compressed a diamond sample to a record pressure of 50 megabars (50 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure). By replicating the conditions believed to exist in the cores of several recently discovered "super-Earths" -- extra-solar planets three to 20 times more massive than Earth -- the experiments could provide clues to the formation and structure of these and other giant planets, as well as the exotic behavior of materials at ultrahigh densities.

By peering into the distance with the biggest and best telescopes in the world, astronomers have managed to glimpse exploding stars, galaxies and other glowing cosmic beacons as they appeared just hundreds of millions of years after the big bang.

Scientists will soon be exploring matter at temperatures and pressures so extreme it can only be produced for microseconds using powerful pulsed lasers. Matter in such states is present in the Earth's liquid iron core, 2500 kilometres beneath the surface, and also in elusive "warm dense matter" inside large planets like Jupiter

The lethal fault cuts through the middle of a Tennessee bean field and then ducks beneath the Mississippi River, making a beeline for New Madrid , Missouri. Named the Reelfoot fault, this geological crack combined with neighbouring faults two centuries ago to unleash a series of devastating earthquakes that have been called the biggest to strike the contiguous United States in recorded history.

After being isolated from the rest of the world for nearly a year and a half, sealed away in a mock spacecraft, six volunteer astronauts "returned" to Earth today (Nov. 4) to end a simulated mission to Mars and back. [More]

On November 8th, Earth will have a close encounter with a sizable asteroid. But not too close, thankfully

At current growth rates, forecasters expect to see a total of 9.1 billion humans on Earth by 2050, although small shifts in the birth rate might add or subtract one billion people. The rise could be slowed without taking any direct measures to control population. The most effective way to reduce fertility rates is to educate women: worldwide, each additional year of female education lowers the average birth rate further

At current growth rates, forecasters expect to see a total of 9.1 billion humans on Earth by 2050, although small shifts in the birth rate might add or subtract one billion people. The rise could be slowed without taking any direct measures to control population. The most effective way to reduce fertility rates is to educate women: worldwide, each additional year of female education lowers the average birth rate further

Most humans think of the placenta as something that gets tossed out after childbirth. In fact, its appearance millions of years ago was a significant evolutionary development that gave rise to the vast majority of mammals alive today, from bats to whales to humans. Until now, scientists believed that placental mammals first appeared some 125 million years ago.

Most humans think of the placenta as something that gets tossed out after childbirth. In fact, its appearance millions of years ago was a significant evolutionary development that gave rise to the vast majority of mammals alive today, from bats to whales to humans

Imagine K12 is a new Palo Alto incubator birthing only education startups.

On October 31, 2011, a particularly special person will be born--the seven billionth human alive, according to United Nations demographers. He or she could be delivered by a starving mother in the growing wastelands of Somalia, a failed-state gripped by famine and war. The best odds are that the child will be born in India, which has the highest rate of births per minute in the world.

With the Earth's population at 7 billion, National Geographic wanted to create a composite of the most typical individual in the world. CBS News' Mark Strassmann found a man who resembles it