A new species of fairyfly, Tinkerbella nana, has been described by John T Huber of Natural Resources Canada and John S Noyes of London’s Natural History Museum. They named a new genus for the species after the fairy Tinker Bell from JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, while the specific epithet they chose is derived from the name of the children’s dog, Nana, in the same play.
Photograph: Dr John T Huber
Marie Curie - the first woman to win a Nobel and the first person to win two separate Nobels, Curie (1867-1934) was born in Poland and won her first Nobel in 1903 with husband, Pierre, for discovering radioactivity. However, she was not allowed to participate in the keynote lecture winners give because she was a woman. After Pierre died in a road accident in 1906, she won her second Nobel in 1911 for discovering radium, though an attempt was made to rescind it when news emerged of her affair with married colleague Paul Langevin. After collecting the prize, Curie was pilloried by the French press. Langevin was ignored.
Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Deforestation, fires, flooding and melting ice are among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month
‘Baby picture’ of the universe unveiled
NBC News: The European-led team behind the Planck cosmology probe on Thursday released the mission’s first all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background — a “baby picture” of the universe that could eventually reveal how it inflated in the first moments of its existence, and whether it possesses the extra dimensions that are predicted by some theorists.
“To a cosmologist, this map is a gold mine of information,” University of Cambridge astrophysicist George Efstathiou, a member of the Planck science team, said during a Paris news conference. He joked that not that long ago, cosmologists might have “given up their children” to have such a map in their hands.
Photo: The Planck cosmology probe has produced the most detailed all-sky map to date showing the cosmic background radiation, also known as the afterglow of the big bang. (ESA)
As a commenter on our story on Guardian Science said:
A fantastic achievement. But is it exciting or depressing that 95% of the Universe is made up of stuff we know nothing about?
You can also see a big big version of the picture on our site here.
It’s the stuff of nightmares: last week, the ground opened up and swallowed a Florida man as he lay sleeping in his home. But why do these sinkholes occur and how widespread are they?
Photos: 1. Three buildings collapsed after a huge hole appeared in, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China on 28 Jan 2013. There are no casualties from the incident, which was near a metro tunnel construction site. Imaginechina/Rex Features. 2. Guatemala city, 2007 Photograph: Ulises Rodriguez/EPA/Corbis
This amazing gallery is worth a look (via Spectacular Russian jellyfish of the White Sea – in pictures | Environment | guardian.co.uk)
The trail of a falling object is seen above a residential apartment block in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, where a meteorite flared spectacularly in the sky.
From Meteorite explosion over Russia – in pictures
Photograph: Reuters
The bright star cluster NGC 6520 and its neighbour, the strangely shaped dark cloud Barnard 86 can be seen amongst countless other stars which make up the Milky Way. The image was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the 2.2m telescope at the ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile
A selection of stories, photos, quotes, video and audio from guardian.co.uk, curated by James Walsh, Hannah Waldram, Carmen Fishwick and the Guardian's editorial team. We are also editors of the news tag.
