World-famous physicist Stephen Hawking experienced eight rounds of weightlessness on Thursday during a better-than-expected airplane flight that he saw as the first step toward a trip in space. "It was amazing," Hawking told reporters, using his well-known computerized voice. "The zero-G part was wonderful, and the high-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on."Space, here I come," he said. Hawking's host, Zero Gravity Corp. co-founder and chief executive o...

A massive star about 150 times the size of the Sun exploded in what could be a long-sought new type of supernova, Nasa scientists have said. Supernovae occur when huge, mature stars effectively run out of fuel and collapse in on themselves. But scientists believe this one was obliterated in an explosion which blasted all its material into space. And astronomers say a star in our own Milky Way galaxy could be about to perform the same celestial fireworks. The supernovastar, called SN 2006gy, was ...

Chinese scientists have shown off a prototype Moon rover that could lead to the country's first unmanned mission to the lunar surface in 2012. The 1.5m (5ft) high, 200kg (440lbs) rover should transmit video in real time, dig into and analyse soil, and produce 3D images of the lunar surface. Engineers have unveiled a prototype at the Shanghai institute where work on the six-wheeled vehicle is underway. Rival rovers are being developed at institutes in Beijing andelsewhere. It is not clear whe...

You can't ever completely escape it. It influences you every moment of your life from birth to death and without it you wouldn't have evolved. Gravity. After centuries of study, you'd think we would understand it by now. Not so, gravity remains the most mysterious force in the universe today, and this seemingly mundane fact of existance is a surprisingly fruitful breeding ground for the unexplained.Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972 and would become the first human-made spacecraft to pa...

Astronomers have used telescopes on Earth and in space to nail the precise position of a mysterious, dark object at the outer edge of our Galaxy. The work could be an important step in understanding so-called dark matter — mysterious material that makes up about a quarter of our Universe.Most dark matter is believed to be in the form of subatomic particles that don't interact with regular atoms. But as much as 20% could also be in more traditional things that don't emit light, such as bl...

Exactly 30 years ago today, astronomer Jerry Ehman was looking over a printout of radio data from Ohio State University's Big Ear Radio Observatory when he saw a string of code so remarkable that he had to circle it and scribble "Wow!" in the margin. The printout recorded an anomalous signal so strong that it had to come from an extraordinary source.Was it a burst of human-made interference? Or an alien broadcast from the stars? No one knows. The source of the "Wow" s...

Evidence of water has been detected for the first time in a planet outside our solar system, an astronomer said on Tuesday, a tantalizing find for scientists eager to know whether life exists beyond Earth. Travis Barman, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, said water vapor has been found in the atmosphere of a large, Jupiter-like gaseous planet located 150 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. The planet is known as HD 209458b.Other scientists reported in Fe...

Submitted by Marvy: "Galactic Suite," the first hotel planned in space, expects to open for business in 2012 and would allow guests to travel around the world in 80 minutes. Its Barcelona-based architects say the space hotel will be the most expensive in the galaxy, costing $4 million for a three-day stay.During that time guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and use Velcro suits to crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman.Company dire...