A planet orbiting a distant star is darker than coal, reflecting less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, according to a paper published on Thursday.

The strange world, TrES-2b, is a gas giant the size of Jupiter, rather than a solid, rocky body like Earth or Mars, astronomers said.

Researchers in Peru said Tuesday they have discovered the remains of ancient insects and sunflower seeds trapped inside amber dating from the Miocene epoch, some 23 million years ago.

The rare find was made in the remote mountainous jungle region near Peru's northern border with Ecuador, paleontologist Klaus Honninger told Agence France Presse.

The sun unleashed a powerful solar flare early Tuesday, the largest in nearly five years.

Scientists say the eruption took place on the side of the sun that was not facing Earth, so there'll be little impact to satellites and communication systems.

Scientists have identified an orange-colored gunk that appeared along the shore of a remote Alaska village as millions of microscopic eggs filled with fatty droplets.

But the mystery is not quite solved. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday they don't know for sure what species the eggs are, although they believe they are some kind of crustacean eggs or embryos. They also don't know if the eggs are toxic, and that worries many of the 374 residents of Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo community located at the tip of an 8-mile barrier reef on Alaska's northwest coast.

Lebanon will take part on Wednesday in a scientific research that will enable scientists to trigger an early tsunami alert before it occurs.

“Lebanon will participate in a new scientific research that includes several countries in the region in an attempt to issue an early tsunami alert,” chairman of the National Research Council Moein Hamza told Voice of Lebanon radio on Wednesday.

Scientists who hunt for "intelligence genes" used to think there were fewer than half a dozen of them.

In recent years, they determined there may be at least 1,000 — each with just a tiny effect on the differences in people's IQ. A study released Tuesday found new evidence that many genes play a role in intelligence, but scientists still couldn't pinpoint the specific genes involved.

A new analysis of carbon meteorites suggests that they likely carried some of the building blocks needed for DNA to the Earth, according to a NASA-funded study published on Monday.

The research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences adds weight to the long-debated theory that at least some of the materials needed to make early life forms came to our planet via meteorites.

The U.S. space agency announced funding for 30 new space projects Monday, including ways to protect astronauts from deep-space radiation, eliminate space debris and improve spacesuit technology.

Each of the proposals will get $100,000 in funding for a one-year period as part of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), the agency said in a statement.

An exploding meteor was believed to be responsible for a huge bang that reverberated around the Pacific island nation of Niue last week, police said Monday.

Niue police chief Mark Chenery said the loud bang on Wednesday night woke the island's 1,200 residents and he initially thought a boat had exploded in the harbor.

In a spectacle that might have beguiled poets, lovers and songwriters if only they had been around to see it, Earth once had two moons, astronomers now think. But the smaller one smashed into the other in what is being called the "big splat."

The result: Our planet was left with a single bulked-up and ever-so-slightly lopsided moon.