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A European spacecraft will begin its quest this week to make the most detailed global map of the Earth's gravity field.

"This simulation shows a simple pendulum operating under gravity. For small oscillations the pendulum is linear, but it is non-linear for larger oscillations. You can change parameters in the simulation such as mass, gravity, and friction (damping). You can drag the pendulum with your mouse to change the starting position."

"Harps employs an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky. "Our new observations with Harps mean that about 40% of all red dwarf stars have a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the surface of the planet," said team leader Xavier Bonfils from the Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Grenoble, France. "Because red dwarfs are so common - there are about 160 billion of them in the Milky Way - this leads us to the astonishing result that there are tens of billions of these planets in our galaxy alone.""

Bill Nye and the Discovery Channel give you the greatest discoveries in science. In this episode, Nye covers Einstein's theory of general relativity, demonstrates how Hubble determined that the universe is expanding, and discusses the 20th-century advancements that help us understand gamma ray bursts, black holes, pulsars, and quasars. Highlights include Edmond Halley, whose discovery of comets orbiting the sun proved that gravity works in space, and Alexander and Caroline Herschel, whose map of the sky brought new understanding of the universe.

"Their heads move some 6m per second, at each peck enduring a deceleration more than 1,000 times the force of gravity. But researchers reporting in Plos One say that unequal upper and lower beak lengths and spongy, plate-like bone structure protect the birds' brains. The findings could help design more effective head protection for humans."

"Astronomers have spied a star's swan song as it is shredded by a black hole. Researchers suspect that the star wandered too close to the black hole and got sucked in by the huge gravitational forces. The star's final moments sent a flash of radiation hurtling towards Earth. "