Emperor penguins in Antarctica are far more plentiful than previously thought, according to a study released this week in which researchers used extremely high-resolution imagery snapped by satellites to estimate the numbers. [Read full story]
One of Antarctica's emperor penguins sitting on its tiny chick to keep the little one warm. [See more penguin photos]
Feel free to believe your eyes: According to the National Weather Service of Amarillo, Texas, this picture is the real thing. Between 3 and 4 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, April 11, 2012 a storm dumped massive amounts of pea-sized ice balls about 25 miles north of Amarillo. Wind and subsequent rains carved the hail into drifts four feet high, as seen here with a member of the Potter County Fire Department. [See more amazing science images]
A young star called Formalhaut that is home to at least one alien planet is also ringed by a vast, dusty cloud of comets, like our own solar system. But there's a big difference: There may be as many as 83 trillion comets there, with collisions destroying thousands each day, a new study suggests. [Read full story]
Manatees have sensitive hearing, but that doesn't necessarily keep them safe from passing boat propellers, a new study finds. [Read full story]
The Hubble Space Telescope has found a UFO, but this one is filled with stars instead of little green men.
The iconic space telescope snapped an amazing new photo of the "UFO Galaxy" — a galaxy 35 million light-years from Earth that is officially known as NGC 2683. [Read full story]
A new national park in Russia is an attempt to save the world's rarest cat, the Amur leopard. The park, announced Tuesday (April 10) by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), encompasses 650,000 acres (262,000 hectares) of Amur leopard breeding area in Russia's Far East. Now called the Land of the Leopard National Park, the park covers about 60 percent of the critically endangered cat's habitat.
Shown here, a female Amur leopard named Narva had recently had cubs as indicated by the small tracks in the snow in her range. [Read full story]
New research reported this week reveals why it's good to get naked for some organisms. The study found the molting process, in which crustaceans and insects lose their exoskeleton in order to form a new one may actually protect molting animals from parasites.
Shown here, a water flea (Daphnia magna) undergoes molting. Like all crustaceans, this tiny creature must molt to grow. [Read full story]
SPACE.com reporter Mike Wall tagged along on an aurora expedition in Alaska, where researchers launched dozens of weather balloons high into central Alaska's northern lights displays (which are also known as the aurora borealis).
Shown here, astrophotographer Roger M. Marty snapped the aurora north of Poker Flats, Alaska, Jan. 22, 2012. [Read full story]
A paleontologist-artist has revealed what a meat-eating dinosaur called Unenlagia (whose name means "half-bird") may have looked like when it roamed the Earth some 85 million years ago during the late Cretaceous. [Read full story]
