The Caloris basin on Mercury (pictured), and other surface features of the planet, are revealed in new detail thanks to images from the MESSENGER craft. The new data suggest the once-overlooked planet has a magnetic field likely generated internally, and possibly has a volcanic history.
Credit: AAAS/Science

Thanks to global warming, within the lifetimes of certain reptiles in the South Pacific, all members of their species could be born male. Click on the image for today's Science & The Public blog.
Credit: L.J. Guillette/ Univ. of Fla.

An illustration of Voyager 2 at the solar system’s edge. The craft recently sent back surprising data as it approached this edge.
Credit: JPL/NASA

A species of potter wasps carries mites on its body (the wasp body is black, the mites are yellow). Scientists have discovered that the mites, once thought to be parasites only, also act as bodyguards that defend developing wasps.
Credit: Kimiko Okabe

This delicate ribbon of hydrogen gas floats eerily in the Milky Way and is part of a remnant of a supernova. NASA released the image July 1. It is a composite of two photos taken in 2006 and 2008 by instruments on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. For more, visit Hubble's site
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Labord’s chameleon, Furcifer labordi, perches on a branch in Ranobe forest in Madagascar. More like an ephemeral butterfly than a lizard, it lives for just one season.
Credit: Christopher Raxworthy

Pictured is the first complete, high-resolution map of the human cerebral cortex. The new view pinpoints a central hub for coordinating activity in the entire brain, and also suggests that the brain's anatomy determines its activity.
Credit: Indiana University

Rows of images show an English speaker (top) and a Turkish speaker (bottom) using gestures to describe a scene in which they saw a captain swinging a pail. The English speaker conveys the captain by making a gesture for his cap; the Turkish speaker does so by pointing at a picture of the captain.
Credit: S. Goldin-Meadow

Strings attached to ragweed seeds mark the trail the seeds took: into an earthworm's lair. The earthworm carried them there one by one. By sequestering seeds, earthworms give ragweed an advantage for growth, one of many ways the lowly worm makes a big impact.
Credit: Kent Harrison

This week, professional poker players will take on the computer Polaris. The players, including Phil Laak (pictured), beat the computer last year, but this year Polaris will try some new moves. Click on the image to read this week's Math Trek.
Credit: University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group.

Like two dancers grabbing hands as they pass, the galaxy NGC 5427 at lower left and its southern twin NGC 5426 at upper right, are beginning a temperate, gravitational tango. In about 100 million years, the two will merge into one large, elliptical galaxy. Astronomers at the Gemini South telescope in Chile recently imaged the galaxy twins, which are 90 million light-years away and sit in the Virgo constellation. The image is perhaps a preview for the Milky Way. In about 3 or 4 billion years, it will merge with its sister spiral, the Andromeda Galaxy, which is currently about 2.6 million light-...
Credit: Gemini Observatory

This microscopic image of Martian soil (red, lower image) collected by the robotic arm (pictured holding the soil) on Mars Phoenix Lander shows small clumps of fine, fluffy, red particles collected from a sample called Rosy Red.
Credit: JPL/NASA, U. of Arizona, Max Planck Institute

Males of the Hawaiian damselfly shine fire-engine red (bottom right). Some females are green, so they can be easily distinguished from the males when the two are seen mating (top right). But other females — because of their environment rather than mimicry — have the male color, meaning an outside observer can’t easily tell them apart (left).
Credit: Cooper

Internal waves sometimes reach the surface and become visible, like these in the Red Sea. Internal waves can form from resonance created by tidal waves, researchers suggest in a new study.
Credit: Zhang

If the Large Hadron Collider does generate black holes, they would be too tiny and short-lived to cause any damage.
Credit: Image from NASA modified by Bob Gray