A spectacular photo from a NASA telescope has revealed a wispy blue nebula with an odd twist: It looks like a giant human head in deep space. [Read full story]
The whimsical appearance of some of the sunflowers in Vincent van Gogh's paintings isn't the result of the painter's alleged mental illness. Researchers have found that overly-bushy sunflowers are actually the result of a genetic mutation in some strains of the flowers. [Read full story]
Stunning new visuals of the brain reveal a deceptively simple pattern of organization in the wiring of this complex organ. [Read full story]
Ocean or Van Gogh painting? This NASA image titled "Perpetual Ocean" shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007. LiveScience published the image this week in our Image of the Day album. [See more amazing science images]
These strange circular clouds are no natural phenomenon. They were created by NASA in order to study the circulation in the atmosphere over North America.
On March 27, NASA successfully launched five suborbital rockets in order to study the upper level jet stream. Each rocket, launched one after another 80 seconds apart, released a chemical tracer to create these milky clouds at the very edge of space, 65 miles (105 km) up. [See more amazing science images]
Fireflies are a diverse lot. Some flash their lights Morse-code style, some glow more languorously, some synchronize with others around them, and some fly in a distinctive pattern while flashing. Fireflies and other glowing organisms strut their stuff in the exhibit "Creatures of Light: Nature's Bioluminescence," which opens at the American Museum of Natural History on Saturday (March 31) and is scheduled to run until Jan. 6, 2013. [Read full story]
New evidence from the first probe to orbit Mercury is building support for the idea that the tiny planet may be harboring water ice in some of its most extreme terrain.
This image of Mercury’s south polar region from NASA’s Messenger probe shows a map colored on the basis of the percentage of time that a given area is sunlit; areas appearing black in the map are regions of permanent shadow. [Read full story]
Jupiter's powerful gravity can help supercharge a meteor shower caused by trailing chunks of the famed Halley's comet, a new study suggests. Shown here, astrophotographer Jeff Berkes snapped this amazing photo of an Orionid meteor streaking above a lake in Elverson, Pa., on Oct. 22, 2011, during the peak of the annual Orionid meteor shower. [Read full story]
Nearly two years after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blowout, researchers have uncovered a hidden casualty of the resulting massive oil spill: a cluster of coral near the well covered in brown goo. [Read full story]
One remotely operated vehicle and two autonomous swimming robots were equipped with sonar, used to make wide-area maps, and advanced 3D camera systems, used to conduct detailed investigations of the shipwreck.
Shown here, two of Titanic’s engines lie exposed in a gaping cross section of the stern. Draped in "rusticles"—orange stalactites created by iron-eating bacteria—these massive structures, four stories tall, once powered the largest moving man-made object on Earth. [Read full story]
