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lake on mars: Claims that life exists on Mars were boosted when scientists recently declared they saw the remains of a frozen sea on the planet's surface and speculated the ice may hold preserved organisms.

Reboot: moon

Apart from discussing the preliminary results from smart-i -- acronym for the first Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology, a lunar mission recently launched by the European Space Agency (esa) -- the sixth edition of the International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon had China, India and Japan providing more than a peep into their proposed lunar missions.

Cosmic gun

astrophysicists from Kolkata-based S N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences and Centre for Space Physics (affiliated to the University of Calcutta) have finally found an explanation for the unusual behaviour of a star 3,000 parsecs (1 parsec equals 3.26 light years) away. Named ss 433, the star ejects matter every minute like a gun firing bullets -- each as bulky as one ten-thousandth of earth's mass and escaping into space with one fourth the speed of light.

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how planets form: Elongated dust clouds, rather than fluffy blobs of dust, are the seeds of planet formation. This is the finding of experiments conducted by Jrgen Blum of the Technical University of Germany and Maya Krause of the Friedrich Schiller University, also based in Germany. The experiments were performed aboard an unmanned rocket that spent six minutes in microgravity in 1999. The researchers found that planets condense from dusty clouds when electrostatic forces hold sway over gravity.

Bright side of the 'moon'

An image of the resource-rich southern hemisphere of Saturn's planet-sized moon, Titan, picked up by visible and infrared spectrometers aboard the Cassini spacecraft. The circular feature visible in the picture may be a crater. The yellow areas correspond to the hydrocarbon-rich regions, while the green areas are frozen ice. The white colour denotes methane clouds.

Cold, thus red

why is Mars rustier than the Earth? This question has been raised by many experts, as both the planets were formed from the same materials. More importantly, the red planet has more than twice as much iron oxide in its outer layers as the Earth.

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air stinkers: Harmful smog can form inside homes through reactions between air-fresheners and the ozone pollutant, indicates findings of researchers from the US Environmental Protection Agency. The reactions generate formaldehyde, classed as a probable carcinogen, and related compounds that many experts believe are responsible for respiratory problems.

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only mother's son: Japanese and Korean scientists have created a mouse without using a sperm. The feat is akin to the birth of Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal. Bees, ants, aphids, some fish and reptiles reproduce without having sex in a process called parthenogenesis. But creating a living mammal from same sex parents was thought to be impossible. The birth of Kaguya, the daughter of two female mice, proves otherwise.

Radical theory

four billion years ago, the Moon orbited much closer to the Earth than it does now, causing massive tides to flow every few hours. These tides could have led to the evolution of early dna-like molecules. Richard Lathe of the uk-based organisation Pieta Research has recently propounded this hypothesis in the journal Icarus (Vol 168, No 1, March 2004).

10th planet?

astronomers have found a large world of ice and rock circling the Sun beyond the most distant planet Pluto. Preliminary observations suggest it may be up to 1,800 kilometres across, making it the largest body to be discovered orbiting the Sun since Pluto was discovered in 1930.