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3Star Star mapping software
3Star allows the user to interactively rotate over 300 stars in real time 3D. It's free, and compatible with Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Other features include detailed information about stars, and the ability to save settings on any screen. Based on the Gliese 3.0 catalogue.

73% of people think GMOs should be banned
BBC Poll

A Dwarf Satellite Galaxy in Sagittarius

A new state of matter
A series of experiments using CERN's lead beam have presented compelling evidence for the existence of a new state of matter 20 times denser than nuclear matter in which quarks, instead of being bound up into more complex particles such as protons and neutrons, are liberated to roam freely. Such a state must have existed just a few microseconds after the Big Bang, before the formation of particles of matter as we know them today. Physicists at CERN have recreated those conditions by smashing lead nuclei into each other, to reach temperatures over 100 000 times as hot as the centre of the sun, and energy densities twenty times that of ordinary nuclear matter.

A planet beyond Pluto
Comets - flying mountains of rock and ice - are thought to come from the cold and dark outer reaches of the Solar System, far beyond the planets in a region called the Oort cloud. They spend millions of years in the Oort cloud, until they are deflected into an orbit that takes them into the inner Solar System where we can see them. By analysing the orbits of 13 of these comets, Dr Murray has detected the tell-tale signs of a single massive object that deflected all of them into their current orbits. "Although I have only analysed 13 comets in detail," he told BBC News Online, "the effect is pretty conclusive. I have calculated that there is only about a one in 1,700 chance that it is due to chance."

A step closer to fusion power
HSX, or the Helically Symmetric Experiment, is a new type of fusion experiment that combines the best attributes of existing technologies. It brings together two existing styles of plasma containment experiments known as tokamaks and stellarators. The HSX Plasma Laboratory is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

A Unified Physics by 2050
Steven Weinberg has not only the brain to win the Nobel Prize in 1979 but the ability to explain his ideas in clear and elegant terms. In this article he looks forward over the possible discoveries in quantum field theory during the next 50 years.

A whale of a bug
German scientists have discovered the largest known bacteria on Earth. They were found in sediments on the sea floor off the coast of Namibia.

AAAS backs History of the Universe
"The concepts and evidence inextricably linked to our understanding of the nature and history of the Universe are fundamental to the basic education of all Americans."

Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

ABC World News

Alternation of Generations
A discussion of how the diploid and haploid generations alternate in plants. This is a fascinating subject and provides insight into the fundamental differences between plants. This discussion is at university level.

American Association for the Advancement of Science deplores the recent decision by the Kansas State Board of Education.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science deplores the recent decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to remove references to evolution and cosmology from its state education standards and assessments, thereby making central principles for the scientific understanding of the universe and its history optional subjects for science education.

Angry Biotech Firms Are Blaming The Industry Leader For Bringing Modified Crops Into Disrepute
from New Scientist

Annelida
Annelid worms seen from a university perspective.

Antiwar
Site against wars.

Art from Joe Tucciarone
Joe Tucciarone is an artist whose subjects range from distant galaxies to the long-vanished dinosaurs. We use some of his art work on this web site, with his kind permission.

Arthropods
Athropods seen from a university point of view.

Ask a Mad scientist a question
Get answers to all those questions which this site could not answer.

Ask a scientist a question
Scientific American's "Ask an Expert" service. Great for asking questions which this web site does not answer!

Asteriod mission NEAR
The Near Earth Asteroid rendezvous (NEAR), will be the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid, answering fundamental questions about the origin and composition of asteroids, comets, and our solar system. Since its 1997 encounter with the asteroid Mathilde, NEAR has begun to reveal the secrets of Eros. Share in these discoveries via the Internet.

Astrobiology Site

Astronomical Society of the Pacific
For over a hundred years, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific has worked to explain the mysteries of the universe to students, teachers, hobbyists, and the general public. As the largest general astronomy society in the world, our membership represents a community joined by its love of the heavens and a desire to share that enjoyment.

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Bacterial Nutrition
University level introduction

Bad Astronomy
The Bad Astronomy web pages are devoted to airing out myths and misconceptions in astronomy and related topics. At the moment, I have no desire to tackle here such thorny topics as astrology, alternate views of the universe that are clearly in contradiction to observations, and the like. I may add something like that eventually, when I have more time (translation: "never").

BBC News Ticker
Put this ticker on your desktop and stay informed. PCs only

BBC summary of prospects of finding life in the solar system

BBC view of future of solar system

BBC World News

Biodidac
A bank of digital resources for teaching biology.

The BIODIDAC project is made possible by the funding from the "Programme de perfectionnement linguistique" from Heritage Canada and the Government of Quebec through RUFHQ.

Body Plan of Animals
A general view of how animal bodies are built, from a university level.

Book of life: Chapter one
An international team of scientists has sequenced an entire human chromosome, one of the 24 distinct bundles of DNA within our cells that contain the genetic information to make a human being.

Bradford Robotic Telescope Observatory
Access a unique unmanned telescope situated high in the Yorkshire Dales. The telescope will photograph objects in the night sky at your request and e-mail the images back at a later date. The layout is basic but guides you clearly through the various stages of registration and submitting your first request. Be prepared to wait though, there's a queuing system and the telescope will only come out when the sky is clear.

Buy molecular modelling software

Camsoft Molecular Drawing Software
Use your PC to create images of molecules. All the molecular images on this web site were created with Chem3D or ChemDraw. Special prices are available for students and home users, including occasional free software offers.

This site is highly recommended if you want to play with molecules on your computer.

Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons
Launched in October 1997, Cassini, a two-story-tall robotic spacecraft is on its way to explore the exciting realm of Saturn, the most distant planet that can easily be seen by the unaided human eye. This site will keep you up to date with how it's getting along.

Catching a comet
Scheduled for launch in January, 2003, Rosetta will be the first space probe to land on a comet. Its quarry is Comet Wirtanen, a ball of rock and ice just 600 metres across.

Using the gravitation of Earth and Mars, Rosetta will speed up until it is travelling at the same velocity as the comet, around 130,000 kilometres per hour. The chase is expected to take eight years.

Chemfinder Molecule Database

China
CIA information

Chordates
Vertebrates belong to a larger group called the chordates, which includes some primitive animals. Chordates are described at the university level on this site.

CIA

Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds. Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

Climate Change report by Hadley Centre 1998
1998 report by UK Hadley Centre

Clues to life's origins at deep sea hydrothermal vents

Cnidaria or Coelenterata
The group to which the jellyfish belong, looked at from a university level.

CNN World News

Comet Sampling
Stardust is the first space mission that will fly close to a comet and, for the first time ever, bring cometary material back to Earth for analysis. Follow the progress of stardust on this site as it heads for its historic encounter with the comet Wild 2 in 2004.

Communist Manifesto - download full text free
Download full text free from Gutenburg Project

Computer uses cat's brain to see
A team of US scientists have wired a computer to a cat's brain and created videos of what the animal was seeing. In a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Yang Dan, Garret Stanley and Fei Li of the University of California at Berkeley describe reconstructing natural scenes with recognizable moving objects.

The researchers attached electrodes to 177 cells in the so-called thalamus region of the cat's brain and monitored their activity. The thalamus is connected directly to the cat's eyes via the optic nerve. Each of its cells is programmed to respond to certain features in the cat's field of view. Some cells "fire" when they record an edge in the cat's vision, others when they see lines at certain angles, etc. This way the cat's brain acquires the information it needs to reconstruct an image.

They recorded the patterns of firing from the cells in a computer. They then used a technique they describe as a "linear decoding technique" to reconstruct an image. To their amazement they say they saw natural scenes with recognisable objects such as people's faces. They had literally seen the world through cat's eyes.

This as an important step in our understanding of how signals are represented and processed in the brain. It could lead to greatly improved computer vision for robots and theraputic aids for humans with imparied vision.

Corel Draw
Clipart image from Corel Draw

Cretaceous from Yale Peabody

Current Perspective on the Origin of Life

Daily Martian Weather Report

Dark Matter
Joseph Silks view of dark matter from Berkeley at the Center for Particle Astrophysics, an NSF Science and Technology Center.

Deep focus on neutrino mystery
An underground detector designed to "look" into the heart of the Sun is working well say scientists and may soon solve one of the greatest solar mysteries.

The facility, which has only recently begun work, is trying to pick up neutrinos as they stream through the Earth.

Neutrinos are the ghostly particles that are released when the Sun fuses hydrogen to make helium - the basic nuclear process that provides the energy to drive life on Earth.

Previous observations have only detected about a third of the quantity of the particles predicted by current theory. Finding the missing neutrinos is the task of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO).

Defense of Biotechnology sponsored by Monsanto

Did life begin in deep space?
Scientists have duplicated the harsh environment of cold interstellar space and created what they are calling "primitive cells." They say the molecular structures they have synthesised mimic the membranes found in all living things. They could have been important in protecting self-replicating molecules from the outside world allowing their evolution into primitive life. Some of them have strange internal structures These molecules could have been delivered to the young Earth and "kick-started" life on our planet. Using common chemicals, researchers from Nasa's Ames Astrochemistry Laboratory and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have created so-called "proto"-cells. "This process happens all the time in the dense molecular clouds of space," Dr Allamandola said. "The formation of these biologically interesting compounds by irradiating simple interstellar ices shows that some of the organics falling to Earth in meteorites and interplanetary dust might have been born in the coldest regions of interstellar space."

Dinosaur Adventure 3D CD-ROM
Dinosaur Adventure 3D for Macintosh and Windows is now just $17.99 and great for kids aged 4-8. Five-star customer rating! With this product, your visitors will explore the amazing Jurassic Jungle, reassemble dinosaur skeletons, and even find missing dinosaur eggs and set baby dinosaurs free. Including 7 games and activities, over 18 exciting dinosaur movies, a printable activity workbook, and state-of-the-art 3D graphics and animation, this updated version of the award-winning original leaves no prehistoric stone unturned.

Discovery of Extrasolar Planets
Members of San Francisco State University have discovered most of the planets known so far outside the solar system. This technical site lists them and supplies references to other web sites, including newspaper articles on the subject.

DNA vaccine for malaria

Dynamics of the Galaxy
Our Galaxy is a barred spiral. Recent work based on the COBE NIR data implies a small bulge-bar and a disk with a short scale-length. The corotation radius of the bar is in the range 3-4.5 kpc. The stellar density distribution beyond the end of the bar appears to be perturbed strongly by the Galaxy's spiral arms.

Earliest feathers fan controversy
A small, lizard-like creature that lived 220 million years ago has re-ignited the debate about the evolution of birds by seriously questioning whether they evolved from dinosaurs. Researchers studying the fossil remains say the animal, Longisquama insignis, had elongated structures on its back and arms that look very much like the feathers of modern birds. This suggests an evolutionary link between the two.

But Longisquama, the scientists say, was not a dinosaur, and in any case was around when the great reptiles had only just begun to walk the Earth.

Earth Day
Earth day is a day to celebrate the Earth, to get together to think about what we can do to preserve our earth. We resolve to maintain the earth fit for all forms of life. More than 2500 groups from 168 countries will be celebrating the earth day this year. Earth day celebrations create the awareness among students to conserve and preserve the earth.

John McConnell - founder of Earth Day - insists on celebrating Earth Day on the spring equinox, while most other people celebrate it on 22nd April. He writes

"All individuals and institutions have a mutual responsibility to now act as Trustees of Earth, seeking the choices in ecology, economics and ethics that will eliminate pollution, poverty and violence, foster peaceful progress, awaken the wonder of life, and realize the best potential for the future of the human adventure."

As well as the official Earth day site there are other sites cashing in on the idea, such as http://www.earthday.net/

Earth Poetry
Contains useful references on a range of subjects related to the history of the universe

Earth System History
Designed for a new generation of readers, Stanley's Earth System History is a reforging of his Exploring Earth and Life Through Time. Adopting an earth system approach throughout, Earth System History shows students how Earth's ecosystem has developed over time and how events in the past provide a perspective for dealing with present and future change. Clear and concise, this introduction to historical geology is perfect for one-term non-majors courses.

Earth's huge 'snowball event'
Today global warming is one of the world's biggest environmental problems. But scientists in the United States are now proposing that life as we know it owes its existence to a similar greenhouse effect occurring millions of years ago. A research team from Harvard University in Massachusetts has proposed that a fall in the level of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere 750 million years ago caused a drop in global temperatures which came close to wiping out all life on earth.

The entire earth became covered with snow, which reflected the sun's heat and further accelerated the process of freezing - a phenomenon which has been dubbed a "snowball event".

Encarta Online

Encyclopaedia Britannica
The full text of the best encyclopaedia on Earth available free? You got it!

Encyclopedia of the Atmospheric Environment

Europarl Web Site
The web site of the European Parliament. Find out about its history, activities, powers and responsibilities.

European Environment Information and Observation NETwork (EIONET)
Using the World Wide Web, linked databases will include a definitive list of the world's 1.5 million named species. This project is expected to go live January 2001 or later.

European Initiative for Biotechnology Education
Some ideas and resources for teaching biotechnology courses. Includes a model of DNA and of a bacteriophage (a virus which infects bacteria).

Evolution and the Fossil Record - Web links
Links from web site for Earth System History

Evolution of Mercury

Exploratorium
Want to get an accurate sense of space? That's the purpose behind the dynamic distance calculators at this site. Enter a size for the Sun - one that you can easily imagine - say an inch or maybe a metre, and the site will generate the resulting relative distances to the planets.

Exploring Mars pages at NASA's Lunar and Planetary Institute

Extrasolar planet detected
Astronomers have observed the shadow caused by a planet passing in front of a distant star. It is the first visual proof that planets exist outside our Solar System. No image of the planet was formed -- the star is too far away for that -- but the dimming of the star at the exact time predicted by other observations of the planet confirmed its existence.

Extremophiles = Archaea
These microbes thrive under conditions that would kill other creatures. The molecules that enable extremophiles to prosper are becoming useful to industry

Face on Mars: pictures of the Face and the Pyramids of Mars

Ferns
Ferns discussed at university level

Find any chemical at Camsoft

First cloned human embryo revealed
Details of the first human embryo to be cloned have been released. It was achieved using the nucleus from a human cell inserted into a cow's egg.

First farmers discovered
The first farmers grew wheat and rye 13,000 years ago in Syria and were forced into cultivating crops by a terrible drought, according to UK archaeologists. Professor Gordon Hillman, at University College London, has spent over 20 years investigating the remains of ancient food plants at a unique site at Abu Hureyra, in the middle Euphrates. Professor Hillman and his team found that, as they looked through the archaeological record, the wild seed varieties gathered as food gradually vanished, before the cultivated varieties appeared. Those wild seeds most dependent on water were the first to die out, followed one by one by the more hardy ones. This was a clue to why the hunter-gatherer people turned to cultivating some of the foods they had previously collected from the wild, and prompted Professor Hillman to look at independent climate records for the period. What he found was evidence for a terrible drought: "It was very sharp and would certainly have been felt within a human lifetime, perhaps even in the space of 10 or so years." Geologist call this period the Younger Dryas, a 1000-year spell of cold and dry weather with interrupted the planet's gradual warming from the last ice age.

Free Astronomy Software
Library run by ZD Net

Friends of the Earth

Galactic Collision Simulation
This program simulates the events that occur when two galaxies cross paths. In the seventies, through computer simulations, it was possible to prove that galactic structures (i.e. spiral arms, bridges of matter, etc.) result from the mutual gravitational attraction. This program is the Java version of that simulator.

Galaxies

Galaxy Invading Milky Way; Apparently Contains Much Unseen Matter

Galileo mission to Jupiter and its moons
Launched in 1989, Galileo is a spacecraft studying Jupiter's atmosphere, moons, and magnetic environment. Over 1900 pages of information help you find out what was learned during the mission and discover what lies in store for Galileo as it continues on its journey through space.

Geological Time Machine
A guide to the periods of geologic time

Giant Planets Orbiting Faraway Stars
Early Scientific American article (1998) discussing how planets round other stars are discovered and their implications.

Giant storm on Mars
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken pictures of a giant storm in the northern polar region of Mars. The images were taken during the Red Planet's recent close approach to Earth.

Global warming - is the Sun to blame?
Global warming may not be caused by humanity's fossil fuel emissions, but could be due to changes in the Sun.

Research suggests that the magnetic flux from the Sun more than doubled this century. As solar magnetism is closely linked with sunspot activity and the strength of sunlight reaching Earth, the increase could have produced warming in the global climate.

Global warming disease warning
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says global warming could lead to a major increase in insect-borne diseases in Britain and Europe. It has called for urgent government action to prepare for the spread of diseases like malaria and encephalitis. Global warming could lead to an increase in disease-carrying pests such as ticks, mosquitoes and rats, which live in warmer climates and whose breeding-grounds are often in damp areas.

Global Warming Summit

GM mosquitoes to fight malaria
It could soon be possible to "redesign" the mosquito so that it cannot carry malaria, say European researchers. Scientists have developed a technology that allows them to modify the insects' genetic make-up.

They proved the technique by introducing a fragment of DNA that makes the mosquitoes glow green under ultraviolet light.

But the team, who report their work in the journal Nature, say it should also be possible to introduce more useful changes that prevent mosquitoes from spreading malaria.

GMOs - a discussion site

Gravity and planetary orbit game
Your chance to change the solar system. This Java game lets you play with the position of planets, make the sun twice as large or add a comet or two. You'll find there's something quite exhilarating about smashing a comet into the Sun!

Greenpeace
Greenpeace has 2.9 million supporters in 158 countries; 29 national and three multinational offices worldwide. We are based everywhere from Buenos Aires to Moscow, from Tunis to Tokyo. The International office is based in Amsterdam, from where Greenpeace's campaigns are co-ordinated and the fleet of campaign vessels are managed.

Gutenburg Project
Full text of historical works for free download

Haitian Mythology
A Folk Tale of Haitian Mythology

Half of Dark Matter in universe is White Dwarf Stars
Astronomers have identified swarms of dead stars they think could form part of the mysterious and unseen component of the Universe referred to as dark matter. Only a few percent of the mass of the cosmos can be directly observed. The rest - the "missing mass" - is detectable only because of its gravitational influence on the objects we can see. Now, a detailed analysis of images of a selected region of the southern sky has revealed 38 previously unseen white-dwarf stars, believed to be part of an extensive halo of old stellar objects enveloping our Milky Way galaxy. These cosmic cinders, although hot, are little bigger than the Earth and are therefore not easy to detect. But if, as now seems likely, these objects are spread evenly throughout the halo, they could account for 3-35% of the missing mass The researchers scoured 30-year-old photographic plates of regions of the southern sky that had recently been computerised at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, UK. Searching through about 10% of the data, the team found 92 suspicious objects. Follow-up observations from the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile revealed that 38 of these targets were previously unseen white-dwarf stars within 450 light-years of Earth. According to the scientists, what they have found may be just the tip of an astronomical iceberg. More than 99% of stars, including our Sun, end their lives as white dwarfs - they are hot, dark spheres that have exhausted their nuclear fuel. And it is estimated that the stars detected in this new survey are ancient, at least 10 billion years old. There must be many, many more out there. Co-researcher Ben Oppenheimer, from the University of California at Berkeley, US, said: "We've found a previously undetected population of stars in the galactic halo that represents a fraction of the baryonic dark matter in the galaxy. "This raises a lot of questions about our understanding of the star formation history of the galaxy and the basic processes of star formation." And Didier Saumon, of Vanderbilt University, US, added: "These cool, white dwarfs are the fossils of the early population of halo stars. There is much to learn about how galaxies form, and about how stars form in the process, from studying these white dwarfs."

History of Mathematics
History of Mathematics

'Hole' in space spotted
Astronomers have spotted a "hole" in space. The region of the Milky Way they examined contains a myriad of stars, yet none can be seen over a large, black area.

Home Planet Screen Saver
A screen saver which displays the the Earth map with day and night regions and the current position and phase of the Moon.

How Did Structure Form in the Universe?
Nasa Site

How life survived the big freeze
Scientists have put forward a theory that could explain how life survived a time when the Earth nearly became a snowball. There is growing geological evidence that our planet went into a big freeze at least twice during the late Proterozoic era, 600-800 million years ago, with the polar icecaps a kilometre deep extending to the equator.

What has puzzled researchers is how such a cold and desolate environment could have prepared lifeforms for the evolutionary explosion that can be seen about 50 million years later in the fossil record.

But a computer model now suggests there may have been gaps just big enough in the ice coverage to provide a refuge for developing life to flourish.

How Stuff Works

Hubble homes in on black hole
Astronomers have obtained their first glimpse of the mysterious region near a black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy.

From the black hole a powerful stream of subatomic particles travel outward at nearly the speed of light. They form a jet that is nearly straight for thousands of light-years.

The astronomers used also radio telescopes in Europe and the United States to make the most detailed images ever of the centre of the galaxy M87, some 50 million light-years away.

Hubble Image of Jupiter

Hubble observes Venus

Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope Image Library

Hurricane Mitch

Huygens mission to Titan
Huygens is heading for Titan, Saturn's largest moon, aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Titan's atmosphere is thought to resemble that of a young Earth, so it could hold the secret to the origins of life. Keep watching while Huygens penetrates the moon's atmosphere and, during a brief descent, analyses the physical and chemical environment.

Ice

Images of Jupiter's Atmosphere

Images of Mercury

Imagine the Universe
This site is dedicated to a discussion about our Universe... what we know about it, how it is evolving, and the kinds of objects and phenomena it contains. Just as importantly, we also discuss how scientists know what they know, what mysteries remain, and how they might one day find the answers to these questions.

This site is intended primarily for ages 14 and up.

IMF

India

Inquirer's Guide to the Universe
The universe is expanding. Maybe. Our understanding of the universe is expanding. Definitely.

Practically every month, new theories about the origin and age of the universe are being announced. In just the past year, scientists have identified three new planets.

Inhabitants of planet Earth have begun to wonder if the newly discovered planets may have their own inhabitants. Might the new planets support life? For the time being, we can only imagine.

Institute for Futures Studies
The foundation and Institute for Futures Studies were formed in 1988 replacing the Secretariat for futures studies. The government appoints the foundation board, comprising nine members. Research at the institute is financed by state grants and by cooperation agreements with companies, as well as public and private institutions.

International Global Atmospheric Chemistry

Internet Public Library

Intimate Strangers - Unseen life on Earth
American Public Broadcasting Organisation's view of bacteria

Introduction to Cosmology
Nasa Site

Introduction to the Works of Euclid
An introduction to the works of Euclid with an emphasis on the Elements

Jupiter - the largest planet of the solar system, has a lot of satellites

Jupiter and Its Satellites In Real-Time
This applet displays Jupiter and the four main satellites (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) in realtime as seen from Earth. The distances of the satellites from Jupiter are in proportion to that of the real Jovian system. Very quick to load

Jupiter Comet Collision Gallery: sampling of images presented by Wyoming and Rochester Universities

Jupiter Fact Sheet at NSSDC

Jupiter in StarDate Guide

Jupiter in the Nine Planets Page

Jupiter's Ring System

Jurassic Period 140 Million Years Ago

Jurassic Period 180 Million Years Ago

Kansas rejects Theory of Evolution
The board of education in the American state of Kansas has voted to downgrade the teaching of the Theory of Evolution in schools.

It's seen as a victory for religious conservatives who believe the world came into being more or less as described in the Bible and who refuse to accept Charles Darwin's teaching as scientific fact .

As a result of the decision, new standards will be adopted for science curricula changing the teaching of evolution as an underlying principle of biology and other sciences into an option.

Several universities in Kansas had already warned that the decision could set the state back a century and it was being closely watched by educational bodies across the country.

Keplers Laws
This Java applet shows the motion of a planet under graviational forces and allows you choose its starting position and starting velocity.

Leaky Sun threatens disruption
Space weather forecasters have warned that gusts of solar wind could disrupt satellite operations and power grids until the end of February.

The high-speed particles are streaming out of a hole in the Sun's corona. Coronal holes are easy to spot by looking at the Sun through an x-ray telescope. They appear as very dark areas that contrast with bright spots overlying sunspot groups.

Lessons on Plate Tectonics

Life and Theories of Albert Einstein
Welcome to the companion Web site to the NOVA program "Einstein Revealed," scheduled for re-broadcast on September 21, 1999. This two-hour special presents a penetrating profile of Albert Einstein, who contributed more than any other scientist to our modern vision of physical reality.

Life Before Man
This is an introduction to the panorama of life on Earth, from its earliest beginnings more than 3000 million years ago to the arrival of Homo sapiens and the introduction of settled farming, 5000 years ago. The text is accompanied by a sequence of over 160 specially commissioned illustrations, showing the conditions on Earth in its early days and the strange animal life that once roamed its surface or moved in its seas.

Burian is an excellent illustrator of prehistoric life. This is a catalog of many of his paintings.

Life in the Universe Web Site
The contents of this site accompany the Stephen Hawking's "Life in the Universe" CD-ROM. Here you will find links to scientific websites as well as information relating to the listed subjects below. New items, such as chats and threaded discussions will be added periodically so visit often to catch the latest devlopments. This CD-ROM and website were co-developed with MetaCreations, the multimedia lab at UCSB, Navigo Multimedia (Germany) and Stephen Hawking .For more information click here. If you have any comments, suggestions or ideas for links to related websites please mail the Webmaster.

Life lost in space
Planets that could harbour life may be roaming the voids of interstellar space, according to a report in Nature magazine. Planetary scientist David Stevenson thinks it is possible that rocky masses the size of the Earth are ejected from solar systems as they form - kicked out by the gravitational effects of much larger planets.

However, even without the energy supplied by sunlight, he believes these nomadic worlds could still maintain the conditions necessary for life.

Mr Stevenson, of the California Institute of Technology, says the ejected planets would possibly carry with them an atmosphere of hydrogen. This could act to trap any internal heat. It may even exert enough pressure to maintain oceans of liquid water on the planet's surface.

With ammonia and methane gases in the atmosphere, and volcanoes bubbling heat and molten rock to the surface, these lonely planets would look remarkably similar to the Earth when life began here some four billion years ago.

Light detected from distant planet
Tau Bootes was already known to have a world in orbit around it. In 1996, a team of American astronomers discovered a planet orbiting it every 3.3 days.

Measurements indicated that this planet had a mass of almost four times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System. Spurred on by this discovery, the St Andrews team decided to look in detail at the spectrum of the star.

Hidden in the light from the star, they argued, must be a small amount of reflected light actually from the planet. Their problem was how to extract the planet's light from the starlight that was estimated to be tens of thousands of times brighter.

The clue was in knowing the orbit of the planet. With this knowledge, the astronomers were able to look at the spectrum of the star and extract that portion of the star's light that varied over the timescale of 3.3 days. This, they argued, must be the light from the planet.

Link Exchange

'Little Bang' re-creates cosmic soup
Scientists at CERN have produced a "quark-gluon" soup or plasma. By studying its properties, and the laws it obeys, scientists will learn more about how the Universe developed during one of its formative phases.

Live A Life Page
Artificial Life is a field of scientific study that attempts to model living biological systems through complex algorithms. Scientists use these models to test and experiment with a multitude of factors on the behavior of the systems.

The artists at TPR/fusebox see these algorithms as a starting point for a new artistic exploration where the interactivity is not only between the user and the computer program but within the computer system itself. We are just beginning to explore.

Looking for the 'relics' of the Big Bang
In June1999 scientists plan to use a new tool to search the "fossil record" of the Big Bang to uncover clues about the evolution of the universe. NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) spacecraft will observe nearby planets as well as the farthest reaches of the universe. For more information on FUSE, click here.

FUSE's main mission will be the study of hydrogen and deuterium (a hydrogen atom containing a neutron in its nucleus), that were created shortly after the Big Bang some 12 billion years ago. By looking back to these earliest times astronomers hope to better understand the processes that led to the formation and evolution of stars.

Lost Continent Found
Scientists have discovered the remains of a "lost continent" beneath the waves of the Indian Ocean.

Lunar and Planetary Institute
a NASA-funded institute in Houston, Texas, devoted to studying the solar system and sharing the excitement of space exploration with the public.

Lunar Prospector
Keep abreast of the latest exploits in NASA's first mission to the moon in 25 years. The mission, to explore the lunar environment, has been so successful that it's been extended to July 1999. This site contains all the latest results and images, so if you ever look up at night and wonder what the moon is really like, here's your chance to find out.

Mad Scientist Network
Welcome to the laboratory that never sleeps! The MAD Scientist Network is a collective cranium of scientists providing answers to your questions. For good measure we provide a variety of oddities and other ends as well.. .

Magellan mission to Venus
This site is a guide to the entire 1994 Magellan NASA mission to Venus.

Magellan Venus explorer's guide.

Mammoth comes in from the cold
An international scientific team is examining the remains of an adult woolly mammoth, which has been preserved for 23,000 years in the frozen wastes of Siberia.

Mars - the view from NASA

Mars Fact Sheet at NSSDC

Mars in StarDate Guide

Mars Meteorites: list of meteorites originated from the planet Mars

Matter or antimatter, that is the question
A new experiment is designed to answer the most fundamental question about our Universe - why it is made of matter and not antimatter.

Matt's Script Archive, Inc.

Membranes

Mercury Fact Sheet

Microbe World
Organised by the American Society for Microbiology

Milky Way Galaxy Map
Nasa Image

MIT Biology HyperTextbook

Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids

Monsanto
Monsanto's UK Home site

Monsanto versus Greenpeace
The big biotech firm Monsanto has come face-to-face with one of its main critics - Greenpeace. The two organisations have polarised views on the potential benefits and dangers of genetically-modified (GM) crops, which they laid out before a public audience in London.

Read what the Monsanto chairman Bob Shapiro and the Greenpeace UK executive director Peter Melchett had to say and then e-mail us with your opinions

Moon's tail spotted
The tail of sodium gas that streams out for great distances behind the Moon has been observed better than ever before. The new observations were made on the nights following the Leonid meteor shower of November 1998.

Mosses
Features of mosses discussed at university level.

Most distant galaxy found
Astrophysicist Wil van Breugel of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the US has discovered the most distant galaxy yet found. It was detected because it gives off radio waves. Hidden in the galaxy is thought to be the most-distant black hole discovered so far.

Name a star and give to charity
Experts tell us cancer has been with us for over 350 million years. Stars in the heavens shine brightly for billions of years, and now The Cancer Research Campaign has launched Stars for a Cure, an exclusive partnership with the International Star Registry, inviting you to name a star in honour of a loved one who has battled with cancer.

The International Star Registry was founded following the extensive researches of Canadian farmer Ivor Downie into the possibility of naming of a star after his young daughter, but finding that his wish could not be accommodated, the only possibility appeared to be the founding of a star naming service himself. Ivor Downie launched his wonderful idea, the International Star Registry, in 1979 at the Toronto Festival of Festivals. Since then, ISR has named nearly 750,000 stars for celebrities, dignitaries and loved ones worldwide.

NanoTechnology Journal
All aspects of nanometre scale science and technology are covered in this journal. The Supramolecular Science and Technology section covers molecular materials and self-assembly processes.

Nasa
Nasa's main web site

NASA Astrobiology Institute
The NASA Astrobiology Institute represents a partnership between NASA and a number of academic or other research organizations to promote, conduct, and lead integrated multidisciplinary astrobiology research and train young researchers. The Institute will showcase modern communications and information technology to bind together institutions and research teams in geographically separated locales to enable an unprecedented degree of remote interaction in pursuit of astrobiology research. Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe. This cross-disciplinary field addresses many fundamental questions concerning the origin, distribution, and future of life in the universe. As we approach the new millennium, we find that many of these questions are within our reach, and important new insights are likely to result as space-age technology is applied to biological research. The Astrobiology Institute represents one of several NASA initiatives in astrobiology, with a special charter to develop new institutional relationships that will nurture and promote astrobiology research and training into the future.

NASA Funds New Origin Of Life Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Nasa gives basic information about planets

NASA Space Link
An Aeronautics and Space Resource for Educators

Nasa's view of Earth

NASA's view of Mercury

Nasa's view of Universe

Nasa's view of Venus

National Human Genome Research Institute

Nature's Genome Gateway
Up-to-date, comprehensive and AUTHORITATIVE coverage of genomics provided by Nature magazine. Access to the Genome Gateway is free, allowing you to stay abreast of science that will, according to President Bill Clinton "have a real impact on all our lives".

Nature's Genome Gateway
Nature's Genome Gateway is a comprehensive web resource devoted to genomics. Access is free and the Gateway provides:

A library of original research papers, including all genome-related papers from Nature and Nature Genetics plus links to other major publications. Relevant News and Views articles are also provided.

A news service from Nature and Nature Genetics, providing up-to-the-minute coverage of research progress, policy issues, funding and ethical implications of genome sequencing.

A post-genomics section, covering the myriad applications of sequencing research and the technologies.

A set of links to the most useful and informative genomics sites on the web.

NCBI taxonomy browser
This is the top level of the taxonomy database maintained by NCBI/GenBank. You can explore any of the taxa listed by clicking it.

Neanderthals 'mated with modern humans'
A hybrid skeleton showing features of both Neanderthal and early modern humans has been discovered, challenging the theory that our ancestors drove Neanderthals to extinction. The BBC's Pallab Ghosh talks to Neanderthal experts The skeleton of a young boy was found in Portugal. Scientists say it shows for the first time that Neanderthals, who became extinct tens of thousands of years ago, mated with early members of our own species.

Neanderthals were cannibals
Gory evidence uncovered in France reveals that the early humans in the region ate one another. Cheek muscles from children were filleted out, tendons were sliced and skulls were cracked to remove brains.

Nearest Stars

Nematoda
The nematodes (roundworms) looked at from a university level.

NetAid
NetAid is the beginning of a new, long-term effort to utilize the unique networking capabilities of the Internet to promote development and alleviate extreme poverty across the world. The NetAid Foundation will serve as a global exchange point to link people to successful agents and agencies of change. NetAid's mission is to use the powers of the Internet to help the millions of men, women, and children who don't live on the cutting edge, but who live on the edge of survival.

New Scientist
A weekly journal of science and technology.

New superheavy elements created
Two new "superheavy" elements have been made by bombarding lead atoms with energy-packed krypton atoms at the rate of two trillion per second. After 11 days, the scientists working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US, had produced just three atoms of element 118. These contained 118 protons and 175 neutrons each in their nucleii.

NGC 2000.0
NGC 2000.0 is a modern compilation of the New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (NGC), the Index Catalogue (IC), and the Second Index Catalogue compiled by J. L. E. Dreyer (1888, 1895, 1908). The new compilation of these classical catalogs is intended to meet the needs of present-day observers by reporting positions at equinox 2000.0 and by incorporating the corrections reported by Dreyer himself and by a host of other astronomers who have worked with the data and compiled lists of errata. The object types given are those known to modern astronomy.

It is available in machine readable form at the web site linked here. It is copyright 1989 Sky Publishing Corporation, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. All rights reserved. This copy for scientific research only. These machine-readable data may not be used for any other purpose without specific authorization from Sky Publishing Corporation.

NSSDC guide to Earth

On the Origin of Species
Full text for free download from Gutenburg Project

One World Week

Origin of Earth

Origin of Life

Origin of life on Earth

Origins Programme
Nasas view of the origin and development of the Universe. Interesting to compare it to this site. We know which we prefer!

Other Solar Systems?
This site gives details of the latest discoveries of new planets and solar systems, and tells you where they are, and what they're like.

Oxfam

ParticleAdventure.org
The Particle Data Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory presents ParticleAdventure.org,a tour of the inner workings of the atom and the tools for discovery

The Particle Adventure is an award-winning site that introduces the theory of fundamental particles and forces, called the Standard Model. It also explores the experimental evidence and the reasons physicists want to go beyond this theory. Click on the graphic to start the adventure in English, or choose another language version.

PEAS WITH IN-BUILT WEEVIL RESISTANCE

Periodic Table of the Elements
List of all the different types of atoms, with some basic information.

Permian at American Museum of Natural History

Photo Gallery of Venus

Physics and Engineering online education and reference site
Their mission: To provide comprehensive research and education tools to physicists, engineers, educators, students and all other curious minds. To promote the rich history of physics, and to bring the stories of it's successes and trials to the attention of our youth. To be a respected authority in physics education and reference. To be a dynamic advocate for the advancement of physics and science in general, and an interpreter and inspirer for those who are not professional scientists but valued members of our society. To enhance, enchant, enrich and entertain.

Picture of Sagittarius Dwarf entering Milky Way

Pictures of Jupiter from the NSSDC photo gallery

Pictures of Mars from the NSSDC photo gallery

Pictures of Saturn from the NSSDC photo gallery

Pictures of Sun

Planetary Society, USA
Your connection to the exploration of the solar system and the search for life in the universe

Planetary system found round Upsilon Andromedae
A nearby star, Upsilon Andromedae, quite like our Sun, has 3 three huge, Jupiter-like planets.

Planetary Tour
Scientific American Article

Planets - BBC Site
A web site based on a BBC series, with useful links and information.

Platyhelminthes
Flatworms seen from a university level.

Pleistocene Mammals in the Russian Paleontological Institute
Because Russia is so far north, most of its territory was covered by glaciers during the Pleistocene ice ages. As a result there are many geological deposits from this time period that contain fossil mammals. Many of the most famous Pleistocene mammals remains are from Russia, including frozen mammoths that still contain stomach contents, hair, DNA, and muscle. The Paleontological Institute has a large collection of Pleistocene mammals from Russia, the former Soviet Union, and Europe, many of which are on display.

Popular Science Magazine

Population Genetics
A university level introduction to genetics.

Primer on Molecular Genetics (Department of Energy)

Probability of collisions with Earth

Saturn

Saturn and its Satellites events: eclipses, transits and ring plane crossings

Saturn Fact Sheet at NSSDC

Saturn in StarDate Guide

Saturn in the Nine Planets Page

Saturn's Ring System: animations and images

Science & Art
Brian's Science and Art Notebook is an attempt to help bridge the gap between science and art. In here, you will find shortish articles on a variety of scientific and related subjects. I also believe that science, literature and art are not really as far apart as most people seem to think. The same intellectual processes underlie both scientific and artistic endeavours. I therefore include sections with some short stories (including some of my own; no vanity publisher like the internet!) and an art page.

Science Jokes
Not just jokes but poems and other entertainments

Science Net
ScienceNet is a free science information service, staffed by scientists who are expert in explaining complex topics in everyday language. You can search our online database of previously answered questions, and if you can't find an answer then send your question to us.

Science News

Science Now Magazine
Provided by AAAS. Unfortunately it costs to view the information.

ScienceNet - science questions answered
ScienceNet is a free science information service, staffed by scientists who are expert in explaining complex topics in everyday language. You can search our online database of previously answered questions, and if you can't find an answer then send your question to us.

Scientists find clues that the path leading to the origin of life begins in deep space
Duplicating the harsh conditions of cold interstellar space in the laboratory, scientists from The Astrochemistry Laboratory at NASA's Ames Research Center and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of California Santa Cruz have created chemical compounds that may have been important for life's origin.

Scientists make molecular motor
It has just 78 atoms, took four years to build and it has a spindle that takes hours to rotate but it could be the forerunner of a revolution.

Attempts by scientists to produce molecule-sized machines have produced a toolbox of parts, gears, rotors, switches, turnstiles but no one has produced a molecular motor, until now.

Two molecular motors are reported in the journal Nature.

Scientists poised to create life
Scientists in America say they could soon have the ability to create a completely synthetic life form.

Searching for Life in Our Solar System
Scientific American Article

Second Solar System Found
Astronomers have discovered the first solar system other than our own. It has three planets orbiting a star that is 44 light years away.

Seed Plants
This discussion is at university level.

Seti@Home
SETI@home is a scientific experiment that will harness the power of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. There's a small but captivating possibility that your computer will detect the faint murmur of a civilization beyond Earth.

Six diseases threaten world
A handful of infectious diseases - which account for 50% of deaths among children or young adults - pose a threat to the world's future prosperity, says the World Health Organisation (WHO). A report says Aids, tuberculosis (TB), measles, malaria, diarrhoeal diseases such as dysentery and cholera, and acute respiratory infections such as pneumonia were responsible for 90% of all deaths due to infectious diseases in 1998. And the WHO warned that the world has dangerously overestimated its ability to control dangerous bacteria and viruses such as these.

Sky and Telescope Magazine

Sky and Telescope Magazine Web Site

Sky at Night
Web site of BBC programme with same name

Sky Screen Saver
The Sky Screen Saver shows the sky above any location on Earth, including stars (from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue of more than 9000 stars to the 7th magnitude), the Moon in its correct phase and position in the sky, and the position of the Sun and all the planets in the sky.

Smithsonian Institution Human Evolution
A virtual tour of the gallery. Come face-to-face with the skulls of half a dozen of our human ancestors and examine some of their remarkable handiwork, much of it found in Africa, the birthplace of humankind. Here are stone tools used between two million and 25,000 years ago, prehistoric works of art, and the re-creation of a Neanderthal burial site. These treasures, however, tell only a fragment of the story of our human origins--a story which grows richer and more complex with every discovery. Museum curators are working on a new exhibit hall that will reflect the latest insights into our beginnings.

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
The web site of SOHO, designed to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind. As well as the latest news on the project, the site also contains plenty of background information on our Sun.

Solar Flares

Solar system interactive tour
Real time astronomical data is used to let you see where all the planets are in relations to each other. You can spin the image round to get the best viewpoint and zoom in and out as far as you like. Not as good as Red Shift, but useful.

Solar System Simulation
This Java applet represents the solar system, including the four major moons of Jupiter and our own, and a couple of comets. Other heavenly bodies will be added on request.

Solar Umbra

Sound waves in the embryonic Universe
Sound waves in the embryonic Universe are revealed for the first time in this image captured by the BOOMERANG balloon-borne telescope during its maiden voyage around the Antarctic. The patterns visible in the image are consistent with those that would result from sound waves racing through the early universe, creating the structures that by now have evolved into giant clusters and super-clusters of galaxies. The image records the intense heat that filled the universe just after the Big Bang, which is still present today as a faint glow of microwave radiation that fills the sky. The first evidence of structure in this Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) was found in 1991 by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which mapped the entire sky with high sensitivity but coarse angular resolution (upper left). The BOOMERANG image covers approximately 2.5% of the sky with angular resolution 35 times that of COBE, revealing hundreds of complex structures that are visible as tiny variations -- typically only 100 millionths of a degree (0.0001 C) -- in the temperature of the CMB. Detailed analysis of this image will determine the geometry of the universe to high precision, and will shed light on the nature of the matter and energy that fill the Universe.

Star Trek 'warp drive' possible
In Star Trek, the USS Enterprise is powered by what is called a "warp drive" and at the moment only Paramount Pictures know its secrets. But new, highly mathematical research may have brought us one step closer to being able to explore the Universe in a starship capable of travelling faster than the speed of light.

StarChild - A Learning Centre for Young Astronomers
The StarChild site is a service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Nicholas E. White (Director), within the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics (LHEA) at NASA/ GSFC.

StarDate guide to Earth

StarDate Guide to Mercury

StarDate Guide to Venus

Starry Bulges Yield Secrets to Galaxy Growth
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is uncovering important new clues to a galaxy's birth and growth by peering into its heart -- a bulge of millions of stars that resemble a bulbous center yolk in the middle of a disk of egg white.

Hubble astronomers are trying to solve the mystery of which came first: the stellar disk or the central bulge?

Steven Hawking's home site
Prof Hawking at the Whitehouse and elsewhere.

Sun as seen by NinePlanets

Superbug could be conquered
A vaccine to protect people from one of the most problematic microbes in modern medicine is now a step closer.

Terrestrial Vertebrates
Vertebrates as seen from the tree of life at Arizona University

The Bible, Both Testaments, King James Version
Full text for free download from Gutenburg Project

The Face of Venus home page.

The Globe Programme
Inaugurated by US Vice President Al Gore in 1994, the Globe Programme links thousands of schools by encouraging practical measurement of the environment and sharing the data over the internet.

THE MAGNIFICENT COSMOS
Scientific American Special Issue

The Most Important Nova of the Century
Explanation of novae and white dwarfs.

The Phylogeny of Life

The Salopian Web
A site about astronomy, space, computing, amateur radio and satellites. Filled with lots of useful data, huge links; Monthly sky notes for Astronomers; places to download software. Need a software driver or orbital elements for satellites? - then look no further. The Glossary and Brightest Stars pages have been revised, and a new page on the Nearest Stars has been added.

The Story of Plate Tectonics
Electronic on-line book explaining the origins and meaning of the theory.

The Tree of Life
Arizona University's view of the evolution of life.

The Voyage of the Beagle
Full text for free download from Gutenburg Project

Time Machine
Relativistic simulator of consequences of Relativity Theory about space, time and mass by Domenico De Riso and Francesco Tramontano. This applet helps to visually demonstrate the effects of relativity on space, time, and mass. It shows how two objects traveling at different velocities will arrive at different points in time.

Total eclipse. Total coverage
BBC Coverage

Total Solar Eclipse of 1999 August 11
Path Description

Trachoma Campaign

Traunkirchen, Austria
A romantic place for a holiday, and peaceful too provided your hotel room doesn't overlook the main road.

UK Charity's concern over GM foods
A charity for victims of the Thalidomide drug has joined the calls for a ban on genetically modified foods.

Ulysses Solar probe
The official web site of Ulysses, launched in 1990 to discover the properties of the solar corona, the solar wind, the heliospheric magnetic field, solar energetic particles, galactic cosmic rays, solar radio bursts and plasma waves. Rather technical site.

UMass Researchers Announce Birth of Genetically Modified Cloned Calves

Understanding Earth
Press and Siever's bestseller has been fully revised and updated to include new research findings and recent geologically significant events--and to take advantage of the latest in interactive multimedia educational technology. The renowned author team remain vitally interested in engaging the intellect and imagination of today's student. Guided by authoritative voices, your students will experience geology in all its plate-sliding, volcano-erupting, mountain-forming grandeur.

UNESCO
The main objective of UNESCO is to contribute to peace and security in the world by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science, culture and communication in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion, by the Charter of the United Nations.

United Nations

Universe is 12 billion years old
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) astronomers have come up with the best estimate yet for the age of the Universe - 12 billion years.

Universe proven flat
A high-flying balloon which soared over Antarctica has answered one of cosmology's greatest questions by revealing that the universe is "flat".

To astronomers, flat means that the usual rules of geometry are observed - light travels in straight lines, not curves. But since Albert Einstein proposed that the universe was "curved", the debate has been open.

Scientific opinion has moved towards a flat universe and the latest data confirm this with greater certainty than ever before.

Another result of the study is the prediction that the universe will eventually stop expanding from the Big Bang, but will not collapse into a "Big Crunch".

"It's a tremendously exciting result - and one that will mean rewriting the text books on the history of the universe," said one of the research team, Professor Peter Ade at Queen Mary College, University of London.

Vegetarian Society symbol to exclude genetically modified food

Venus Crater Database at LPI

Venus Fact Sheet at NSSDC

Vertebrates at Berkeley
Vertebrates at Berkeley campus

Vertebrates at the University of Arizona
Part of the Tree of Life

View of Earth from Space

Virtual Microscope Lab 1
An introduction to biology at the University level created by Kent Simmons, Instructor of Biology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. This site also shows slides of specimens from one of Kent's courses. This is laboratory 1 of this site.

Virtual Microscope Lab 2
An introduction to biology at the University level created by Kent Simmons, Instructor of Biology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. This site also shows slides of specimens from one of Kent's courses. This is laboratory 2 of this site.

Virtual Solar System
National Geographic’s Virtual Solar System is your chance to discover the wonders of our solar system in a spectacular 3-D environment. Take a fly-by tour of the sun and each planet in its orbit, observe close-up views of the planets, extraterrestrial weather patterns, and more. Unfortunately, to fully experience this site you will need Viscape SVR - approximate download time on a 33.6 K modem: 17 minutes.

Volcanoes on Venus

Voyager 1 and 2
Extending the exploration of the solar system beyond the neighbourhood of the outer planets, and possibly beyond, the Voyager probes are currently the furthest man made objects from earth. Take a visit here to find out where they are and what they're doing.

Water may flow on Mars
Images of steep-sided gullies, sinuous channels, and deltas of debris have been captured by Mars Global Surveyor, the satellite currently in orbit around the Red Planet.

These suggest that liquid water may be lurking just below the Martian surface, say researchers Dr Michael Malin and Dr Kenneth Edgett in a paper published in the journal Science.

WDM
The UK's leading campaigning organisation winning justice for the world's poorest people

Wellcome Trust Topics in International Health
A unique series of educational materials for medical and life sciences students, their teachers and other healthcare professionals. Aspects of international and tropical health are presented on a range of CD-ROMs, each focusing on a disease (or group of diseases) of global significance including trachoma and schistosomiasis

What have we done to the weather?
Human activity is changing the world's climate. That, scientists concluded in 1995, was what the balance of evidence suggests. The global mean temperature has increased by around half a degree since the beginning of the century, sea level has risen by perhaps as much as an inch, and recent years have been among the warmest since records began.

Whats wrong with genetic engineering? - Friends of the Earth

When a star swallows a planet
Following the recent discoveries of Jupiter-sized planets orbiting nearby stars, astronomers estimate that as many as 100 million of the sun-like stars in our galaxy may have close-orbiting gas planets.

They add that many of them are doomed to be gobbled up by their parent stars.

Hubble Space Telescope astronomer Mario Livio detected evidence that some giant stars once possessed giant planets that have been swallowed up. The devouring stars radiate excessive amounts of infra-red light, spin rapidly, and contain a higher than expected amount of the element lithium.

About 8% of the stars in our galaxy display these characteristics, according to Dr Livio. This is consistent with estimates of close-orbiting giant planets.

An ageing solar-type star will expand to a red giant and in the process will engulf any close-orbiting planets. If the planets are like Jupiter they will have a profound effect on the red giant's evolution.

When Did the First Cosmic Structures Form?

WITS
Welcome to the Web Interface for Telescience (WITS) rover simulation system for the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover, running at the Sun Microsystems, Inc. sponsored site. WITS has been developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to enable scientists to participate in planetary lander and rover missions from anywhere in the world using the Internet. WITS will be used in the 1998 lander and 2001 rover missions to Mars for command generation, and is used in this Pathfinder mission as a public outreach tool to enable you too to be a planetary scientist.

World Bank

World Development Movement
WDM campaigns to improve the lives of the world's poorest people by trying to influence government, corporate and public opinion.

World Energy - BP Amaco statistical review

World's deepest rocks recovered
The deepest rocks ever seen have been recovered by Australian and American researchers. They were found at the Earth's surface on the island of Malaita, east of Papua New Guinea. But they originate from deep within the planet, between 400km and 670km down. This is about twice as deep as anything studied before.

These depths are an important region of the planet's interior, where sudden changes in the densities of rocks occur.

The discovery should reveal new information about the chemistry and large-scale movement of material passing through this transition zone between what is known as the upper and lower mantle.

X-ray image of Jupiter

Yahoo Daily News

zallinger's mural

Zdenek Burian
Czechoslovakian illustrator 1905 - 1980. This page is a tribute to his work.

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