The MS Explorer, a small Canadian cruise ship carrying tourists from 14 nations, including Canada, struck a chunk of ice before dawn Friday 11/22. Twenty hours later, it sank in Antarctic waters.

The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) of NASA's Odyssey spacecraft has found evidence of what look like caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano. The spacecraft has sent back images of very dark, nearly circular features that appear to be openings to underground spaces.

6/24/07 The Kiwis won starboard advantage after NZL-92 crossed in front of Alinghi to start but this lead was short-lived as Alinghi pushed out in front after tacking to port halfway up the first leg. SUI-100 extended the lead to over a two boat-lengths before making the first cross of the NZL-92 yacht with a 19s lead around the first marker. Alinghi's lead was down to 13s at the second mark before NZL-92 gained on the left side of the course up the third leg, pushing ahead of Alinghi and around the final marker. They secured the win by reaching the finish line 28s before SUI-100.

6/23/2007 America's Cup defender Alinghi team won the first race of the 32nd America’s Cup Match on Saturday June 23-rd. While the Emirates Team New Zealand had a strong start, Alinghi showed better pace, eventually forcing the Kiwis to tack off, and when the boats came together for a first cross, was ahead. Alinghi was able to convert that small advantage into a 13 second lead at the top mark. By the finish it was Alinghi winning by 35 seconds. The overall winner will be decided in four more matches.

6/14/07 The Altitude Everest Expedition has reached the summit of Mount Everest as part of a mission to resolve the mystery whether George Mallory and Sandy Irvine reached the summit during their 1924 climb. According to dispatches by the members posted on their website, the climbers reached summit on Thursday, June 14, having left the advance base camp on Sunday. The team is making a documentary investigating Mallory and Irvine's last journey in forensic detail and also test the durability of clothing and equipment similar to that used in the 1924 climb to try to reconstruct their final, fateful hours.

A team of British scientists under geophysicist and lead researcher Prof. Roger Searle of Durham University is en route on the inaugural research cruise of the new UK research ship RRS James Cook from the Canary Islands to a location 11,000 ft underwater in the middle of the Atlantic. Here, scientists have previously found a large area hundreds of square miles in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth's crust seems to be missing entirely.

Researchers from Yale and the University of Leicester have identified an ancient solar observatory at Chankillo, Peru, and published the results in an article by Ivan Ghezzi and Clive Ruggles in the March 2 issue of Science.

Once roofed by ice for millennia, a 10,000 square km portion of the Antarctic seabed represents a true frontier, one of Earth’s most pristine marine ecosystems, made suddenly accessible to exploration by the collapse of the Larsen A and B ice shelves, 12 and five years ago respectively. Now it has yielded secrets to some 52 marine explorers who accomplished the seabed’s first comprehensive biological survey during a 10-week expedition aboard the German research vessel Polarstern.

1/3/06 Scientists report definitive evidence of the presence of lakes filled with liquid methane on Saturn's moon Titan in this week's journal Nature cover story. Radar imaging data from a July 22, 2006, flyby provide convincing evidence for large bodies of liquid on Titan. Based on the lake characteristics, Cassini scientists think they are observing liquid-filled lakes on Titan today. Another possibility is that these depressions and channels formed in the past and have now been filled by a low-density deposit that is darker than any observed elsewhere on Titan. However, the absence of wind-blown features in this area makes the low-density hypothesis unlikely.

NASA'a Cassini spacecraft has observed what looks like a very large hurricane above the south pole of Saturn. The Storm on Saturn shows one of the characteristic features of hurricanes, a wall of tall clouds around the center. Interestingly, the mechanism which leads to the formation of these "eye wall clouds" on Eartch involves water: They form where moist air flows inward across the ocean's surface, rising vertically and releasing a heavy rain around an interior circle of descending air that is the eye of the storm itself. Since Saturn is a gas planet, a different mechanism involving strong convection must be involved in the formation of the hurricanle-like storm on Saturn ...

7/14/06 Tom Perkins' "Maltese Falcon" set sail in Italy on July 14 after five years of development and construction. The designers claim is the largest and fastest personal sailboat in the world. The 87.5-meter yacht is equipped with three 57-meter tall masts and each mast has six yards from which hang sails. The masts rotate depending on the wind direction controlled by a fiber-optic sensor system that gathers data on wind speed and force. The systems was developed by English company Insensys. The concept of rotating masts was first conceived in the 1960s by German hydraulics engineer Wilhelm Prolls.

A previously unknown 65 m long geoglyph has been discovered on the Nazca Plateau by Researchers of the Yamagata University. The image appears to be an animal with horns. It is thought to have been drawn as a symbol of hopes for good crops, but there are no similar patterns elsewhere, and the type of the animal remains unclear.

Ajax is known from Homer's Iliad about the Trojan War where he duels with Hector. Now, Greek archaeologists say they have unearthed the remains of a palace from the 13th Century BC linked to the legendary warrior-king. The Mycenaean-era complex found near the village of Kanakia on the small island of Salamis near Athens covers about 750 sq m (8,070 sq ft).

12/13/05: Archaeologists today revealed the final section of the earliest known Maya mural ever found, saying that the find upends everything they thought they knew about the origins of Maya art, writing, and rule.

1/7/06: Renowned Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer - whose life was portrayed in the book and film Seven Years in Tibet - has died at the age of 93.

1/14/06: NASA's Stardust mission return capsule will land Sunday, Jan. 15, at approximately 2:12 a.m. Pacific time (3:12 a.m. Mountain time) on the Utah Test and Training Range.

03/06/06: A team from the University of Memphis discovered for the first time since Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor...