New astronomy software can render astonishing images of earth as what it looked like 240million years ago.

A warm, earthlike planet orbiting a red dwarf star. Mendez's
software lets astronomers enter the data they know about a
planet and then constructs a vision of what it might look like

• First software that 'renders' 3D worlds based on what we know
• Draws worlds based on their size, chemistry and distance from star
• Can render our Earth from historical data 

Astrobiologist Abel Mendez of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo has designed a software package that can draw real-looking worlds based on the scientific data we receive from space telescopes  - and says Nasa gets it wrong.

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It is a comet? Is it a UFO?

Bolt of light: Scientists and individuals alike were initially
baffled as to whether the blaze was space junk or a comet

• A mysterious bar of light shot through the night sky on Christmas Eve leaving many Europeans perplexed.
• Captured on videos throughout Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg the light moved much slower than a normal shooting star, was far brighter and more detailed
• It quickly became a popular topic on Twitter with people baffled as to whether it was a comet, meteor or space junk.

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New telescope will be 'second biggest structure created by mankind' after Great Wall of China

The KM3net telescope planned for the sea bed under the Mediterranean
will be a network of detectors with a volume of several cubic
kilometres, built to detect neutrinos - tiny, fast-moving
particles that pass straight through water and even solid rock

• Detector uses 'towers' taller than Burj Khalifa in Dubai
• 'Watches' for light flashes in 2.2 billion kg of water
• Detects tiny, fast-moving particles which usually pass straight through matter 

Telescopes come in all shapes and sizes - from orbiting space telescopes just a few metres long to the ambitious 'square kilometer array' planned for South Africa or Australia, where a network of linked dishes will stare at the sky together.

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Mysterious Metallic Space Ball Falls to Earth in Africa, Baffling Authorities

Space Ball National Forensic Science Institute via PhysOrg

A large metallic ball has fallen from the heavens and landed in a remote region of Namibia, spurring a lot of speculation about its origins and spurring local authorities to get NASA and the European Space Agency on the horn. No one is sure where the hollow metallic object came from, but it definitely came down hard--it was found 60 feet away from its landing site, a hole more than a foot deep and 12 feet across.

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Earth has always had two moons!

A future view from Earth? Saturn's moons Rhea and Dione
as seen by the Cassini spacecraft

The discovery of mysterious tiny asteroids which constantly circle our planet.

• Asteroids come and go so often we 'always' have a second moon

  • Rather than launching missions to explore asteroids, we can simply wait for them to orbit Earth

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Hubble discovers 'building blocks of life' on Pluto's surface

The new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble space telescope has
discovered the first hints that these chemicals might be present in an
unlikely place - the rocky, icy surface of the distant dwarf planet Pluto

• Hydrocarbon molecules may explain planet's red hue
• Scientists expect 'exciting discoveries' when Nasa's New Horizons probe arrives in 2015

Complex hydrocarbon molecules are thought to have been crucial to the first life on planet earth.

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NASA tests floating robot servant- Powered by an Android phone.

A Nasa astronaut controls one of the Smart Spheres in
testing on the Space Station last month:
The robots can fly, navigate and record information all by themselves

• Smartphone powered 'Sphere' navigates by itself
• Flies around by releasing CO2 through thrusters

Floating robots are everywhere in science fiction. But the difficulty of keeping a heavy object 'floating' on earth has ensured they remain thoroughly ficitonal on our planet.

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