SCIENCE

The breakthrough that the medical community has been waiting appears to have finally happened. U.S. scientists announced on Sunday the cure of a Mississippi child born with AIDS.

Living up to their celestial name, the American rock band 30 Seconds to Mars had the launch of their new single Up in the Air literally in space on Friday. Included in the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket full of scientific equipment is the first copy of their new song.

Astronomers have captured on photograph the birth or formation of a new alien planet. The photo was taken at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

The planned 501-day mission to Mars in 2018 will probably make space history not only because of the ambitious undertaking which would include an elderly male and female couple, but also would probably be the most creepy in history.

Australia has broken its own hottest summer record, according to data released by the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).

Astronomers did not discount the possibility that a new comet, C/2013 A1, discovered early this year by Robert McNaught at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, may hit planet Mars in October 2014.

The 2013 Comet ISON will make its Sun and near-Earth approach on November and December but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have already appealed to comet experts to form and organize an observing campaign for this particular comet.

Astronomers and professional sky surveys often discover new comets yearly and 2013 offers a spectacular comet experience to the sky viewers. Three long-tailed comets are anticipated to brighten up the skies and become visible to the naked eye.

What is a gigantic jet lightning? Scientists always explain a lot of awesome things. But when they collectively fail to come up with an explanation for something so spectacular, they probably feel frustrated if not challenged or inspired. Case in point, a gigantic jet lighting seen in 2010 in China remains a mystery. But experts continue to find answers because that is what they do, and because people like us wait for answers.

In response to concerns over the growing number of asteroids that fly near Earth, Canada has deployed its Near-Earth Object Surveillance satellite with the main task of scouring the galaxy for space junk and strayed asteroids.

The name Vulcan topped the 21 names submitted in an online poll for suggestions on what to call Pluto's fourth moon. Vulcan got more than 174,000 votes out of the over 450,000 votes cast. The poll ended Feb 25.

After NASA’s Deep Impact space probe captured an image of the comet ISON, astronomers and the curious public are now excitedly talking about the upcoming rare space event. It is currently undetermined how bright the 2013 Comet ISON will shine but it is predicted to be visible during broad daylight.

The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) recounts the reports of witnesses that bravely stepped forward to share their UFO sighting experiences. A Kendall resident reported the UFO sighting at Bristol Township on Saturday night while a Kentucky resident expressed family concern after frequent UFO sightings.

Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has tapped the services of Chinese actress Olivia Mann to protest the brutal and inhuman way of killing animals in China for their fur.

Residents of the Urals region in Russia who were hit by the meteor shower have been converting the disaster into cash by collecting fragments of the meteorite and selling them.

Souvenir hunters would probably find the memorabilia that the family of scientist Francis Crick is putting up on sale at Heritage Auction a good bargain despite the opening bid set at $243,000.

NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft will continue to observe and capture images of the comet C/2012 S1 ISON. The comet will make another remarkable near-Earth approach at an approximated distance of not more than 40 million miles on December 26.

Although no astral object larger than a kilometer is expected to threaten Earth for the next several hundred years that could result in a global disaster, members of the UN Office for Outer Space (UNOOSA) are not taking any chance. They proposed over the weekend for an international warning system that could track asteroids and generate the earliest possible red flags of potential collisions.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States released over the weekend a video of the Sun's solar flare that occurred on July 12, 2012 and the spectacular coronal rain display that followed.

"End of the world 2013" became a hot social media topic after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation effective Feb. 28. There were talks about the next pope being the last pope according to St Malachy's prophecies. The last pope will "flee Rome" in December and herald Judgment Day, according to Nostradamus. Now a report from the science community is saying the Higgs boson aka the God particle could be linked to the apocalypse.

After the 2013 Russian meteor blast, two Grants Pass residents revealed they witnessed an unidentified flying object hovering over the Southern Oregon night sky. Heather Scherffius and Gregory Soldner recorded the UFO sighting on camera and claimed what they saw was not an asteroid or a meteor.

Barbecue-related activities and cooking in open stoves in public, densely-populated places in China would soon be prohibited to limit the smog but could be a bane to street food hawkers and vendors.

It seems that more and more earthings are getting tired of the planet and want to venture into outer space, which used to be the domain of NASA scientists, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. Now, the list is getting longer to include Indians, tourists, miners and even a porn star who goes by the name of Coco Brown.

In California, two scientists are proposing a system project called Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation (DE-STAR) that can possibly reduce asteroids and meteor threats to planet Earth. The timing seems perfect after the Asteroid 2012 DA14 near-Earth flyby and Russia meteor blast that both occurred last February 15, 2013.

If scare minerals found on Earth are called rare earth, what about other minerals in other planets or the moon? Would you call it rare moon or rare jupiter or rare mars? What such resources would be called has not yet been settled since miners, space industrialists and academics are still currently exploring the idea of mining in other planets and the moon. They gathered on Wednesday in Sydney to tackle these possibilities and the logistics involved.

Doomsday prophets will again have a field day forecasting an Apocalypse, following the eruption of Mt. Etna in Italy on Tuesday.

A UFO sighting of three strange lights forming a triangle in the night sky was reported in video format to MUFON from Plano City in Texas. The footage was received a day after an old photo of the sky outside a Wisconsin house was submitted for scrutiny. Take a look at the photos and video to check out what the uploaders may or may have not missed.

The smog pollution that hit China's capital in Beijing, so massive that it even crossed borders over to Japan, has been found to contain cancer causing photochemicals.

A new study by scientists from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington found that the bulk of the popular sweetener Splenda, which is used all over the world, is winding up in the Gulf Stream, the "conveyor belt of water transport" that circulates in the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of North American to Europe, Africa and beyond.