AN ASTEROID bigger than an aircraft carrier will dart between the Earth and moon today — the closest encounter by such a huge rock in 35 years.

CANCER surgery can be made easier and more effective by “lighting up” tumour cells with glowing molecules, research has shown.

THE three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished.

Three scientists have won the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a chemical method allowing researchers to make potential cancer drugs and other medicines as well as slimmed-down computer screens.

The devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti in January was unleashed by a previously undetected fault line – not the well-known one initially blamed, according to an analysis of new data.

BRITISH oil corporation BP plans to use a floating platform and device called an EverGreen Burner to burn off oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from an undersea oil well.

A BP executive said today the company expected to be capturing virtually all the oil leaking from the Gulf of Mexico sea bed by early next week.

HAITI can expect more aftershocks in coming weeks, and while the usual pattern suggests they will become weaker and less frequent, another one as strong as yesterday’s jolt is certainly possible, scientists say.

SCIENTISTS who detected worrisome signs of growing stresses in the fault that unleashed this week’s devastating earthquake in Haiti said they warned officials there two years ago that their country was ripe for a major earthquake.

Democrat Barack Obama is an “impressive fellow” whose success as the first black US presidential candidate for a major party should make every American proud, his Republican rival John McCain said today.

A computer simulation of the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks supports a federal agency’s findings that the initial impact from the hijacked aeroplanes stripped away crucial fireproofing material and that the weakened towers collapsed under their own weight.

COMPANIES using ineffective spam filters are playing Russian Roulette with their profits, according to Irish-based email security company Mail Distiller.

EUROTOQUE Ireland has joined the long list of organisations which support the campaign for a GM-free Ireland.

Scientists are trying to genetically engineer happier pigs.