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MSNBC.com: Technology & Science

Crippled Mars rover fails to phone home

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 7:57pm MDT

NASA says its aging Mars rover Spirit missed a communications session and may have gone into a power-saving hibernation to survive the Red Planet's winter.
Mega-flood triggered cooling 13,000 years ago

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 6:41pm MDT

Scientists say they have found the trigger of a sharp cooling 13,000 years ago that plunged Europe into a mini ice age.
Deep ocean waves break on sea floor

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 6:15pm MDT

For the first time, 100-foot tidal waves roaring at 70 miles-per-hour have been caught breaking and creating long trains of billowing turbulence more than 1,800 feet down along the ocean floor.
Russians report snag in space safety system

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 5:10pm MDT

When astronauts blast off to the International Space Station in a Soyuz spacecraft on Friday, they'll be relying on a safety system that failed in a still-unexplained manner less than a year ago, a top Russian space official said on Tuesday.
Sight unseen, fans hear 'iPad' and think 'iWant'

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 3:44pm MDT

People who lined up to buy the first iPhone knew what they were paying hundreds of dollars for: a new cell phone that promised to be better. Apple's newest gadget, the iPad tablet computer, falls into a category that's foreign to most people.
Cosmic Log: Monster bug? It's no joke!

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 3:41pm MDT

Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: It may look like a creepy-crawly April Fool's joke - but an expert on deep-sea species says the bizarre pictures of a giant bug being circulated on the Internet are the real deal.
YouTube video playback pages get a new look

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 3:12pm MDT

YouTube is revamping the pages on which visitors watch clips. It's an effort to de-clutter the popular site and drive people to watch more videos.
To scientists, laughter is no joke — it's serious

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 2:59pm MDT

Only 10 to 15 percent of laughter is the result of someone making a joke, says a neuroscientist who has studied laughter for decades. Laughter is mostly about social responses rather than reaction to a joke.
Cisco dropping Linksys brand from new routers

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 2:30pm MDT

Cisco Systems Inc. is trying to remove the techspeak from home Wi-Fi routers and make the equipment easier to install and set up.
15 techie wristwatches worth wearing

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 2:15pm MDT

Sure, these 15 concept wristwatches might not be as convenient as a Timex or as classy as a Rolex, but they would catch anyone's eye--if they actually existed.
Fabled monopole magnet could be revealed

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 2:02pm MDT

Scientists hope to use the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful atom smasher, to create a bizarre magnetic particle completely different from any magnets ever seen.
Two-face nebula Is half light, half dark

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 1:36pm MDT

Astronomers have captured a new photo of a two-faced nebula that appears dark on one side and bright on the other.
Songbird genome may shed light on speech disorders

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 1:15pm MDT

Scientists have cracked the genetic code of a songbird for the first time, identifying more than 800 genes linked to song learning in a finding that may shed light on human speech disorders.
Google's censorship balancing act beyond China

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 11:43am MDT

Google Inc. didn't stop wrangling with censorship when the company moved its search engine out of mainland China to shed its restraints on what can be shown on the Internet.
Clear-winged woolly bat sings like no other

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 11:25am MDT

This bat has the highest pitched call of any animal ever documented, putting even the best human sopranos to shame.
‘Rock art’ reveals language of ancient Scotland

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 11:08am MDT

Once thought to be rock art, carved depictions of soldiers, horses and other figures are in fact part of a written language dating back to the Iron Age.
Nemo lives amongst poisonous tentacles

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 9:40am MDT

Clownfish live within sea anemone's poisonous tentacles, which keep would-be predators at bay, including morays, scorpionfishes and snappers.
Scientists push closer towards birth of universe

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 9:32am MDT

Physicists at CERN, buoyed by their ground-breaking success in creating mini-Big Bangs giving them a glimpse of the dawn of time, began on Wednesday to push closer towards the very birth of the universe.
Google: Online attacks aimed at Vietnam critics

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 8:54am MDT

Google Inc. says it has found another case of cyberattacks being used to suppress political dissent, this time to silence opponents of a Vietnamese mining project that involves a state-run Chinese company.
Rocket prepared for Soyuz space launch

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 7:47am MDT

Technicians at the Russian-leased space center in Kazakhstan hoisted a rocket onto its launch pad ahead of Friday's blastoff of a NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station.
Top reasons to not buy (or buy) the iPad

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 6:42am MDT

There are several good reasons to not buy an iPad right away, as well as to get one.