Israel stunned by Hawking snub

It is an event "of cosmic proportions", said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description of Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated by the Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor, on May 8. Hawking is a world-renowned cosmologist and physicist. His scientific work had ...

Wireless signals can stunt plant growth

A Danish science experiment by a group of 9th-graders has gained worldwide interest, after they showed that wireless signals can stunt plant growth. Five girls from Hjallerup Skole, a primary education school in Denmark, began the experiment after noticing that when they slept with their cellphones near their heads overnight, they had trouble focusing the next day, according to Danish News site ...

Spanish art gets privileged space in New York museum

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has reopened its European paintings galleries after a two-year renovation, giving a privileged space to Spanish masters Velazquez, El Greco and Goya. Prior to the overhaul, the Met's large collection of works by Velazquez, Goya, Ribera, Murillo and El Greco had been distributed in different galleries organized either by artistic movement or ...

Russia plans four spacecraft launches in 2014

Russia's Energia Rocket and Space Corporation will make four launches next year from the Pacific Ocean-based Odyssey platform under the Sea Launch programme, an official said. Corporation president Vitaly Lopota said that after 2014, Energia will be able to make five or more launches a year. Next year's launches will be the first since one of Sea Launch's Zenit vehicles carrying an Intelsat-27 ...

Watch 3 planets form triangle in sky

If skies are clear, you'll be able to see Venus, Jupiter and Mercury appear to group together just above the western horizon shortly after sunset on Sunday, May 26th. It is an optical illusion; the planets won't be close. But the grouping -- which will resemble a triangle -- will be distinct, and there won't be anything quite like it again until January 2021. The best time to look ...