A giant asteroid will make a flyby of Earth over the next few days, and armchair astronomers can watch the action live on their computers. The near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which is about 3 miles (5 kilometers) wide, will zoom within 4.3 million miles (7 million kilometers) of Earth during its closest approach early Wednesday morning [...]

A newly discovered comet could offer a ‘once-in-a-civilization’ viewing opportunity that is unlikely to come again in our lifetime. Currently a faint speck in the night sky, Comet ISON (C/2012 S1) was only recently discovered. But as it emerges from the haze of the distant Oort Cloud and makes a close pass around our sun [...]

The circular-looking object in this enlarged image of the surface of Mars is on the horizon of the landscape where NASA’s Curiosity rover sits, waiting for its first drive to explore the red planet. Is this an unidentified object or simply a very large rock?   NASA’s Curiosity rover had hardly touched down on the surface of [...]

The mayor of a picturesque French village has threatened to call in the army to seal it off from a tide of New Age fanatics and UFO watchers, who are convinced it is the only place on Earth to be spared Armageddon in 2012. The mayor of Bugarach, Jean-Pierre Delord stands on the outskirts of [...]

In Maya mythology, Ixchel or Ix Chel was an earth and moon goddess, patroness of weavers and pregnant women. One myth states that the sun was her “lover,” but that her grandfather was very upset with this and he threw lightning at her out of jealousy which in turn killed Ix Chel. In the story [...]

THE ancient Mayans, a fervently religious people who believed that their destiny was predetermined by the heavens, may have been doomed by a 200-year cycle in the brightness of the Sun. Scientists have found a link between a long-term solar pattern and a series of devastating droughts that buffeted Mayan cities and farms and led [...]

PHOENIX (AP) — A large, fleeting flash of light that appeared in the darkened skies over the northwestern edge of metropolitan Phoenix last week is no longer a mystery. Arizona Public Service said Monday that a breaker on an electrical line opened, causing a big flash and a brief power outage. APS officials say an employee came forward last weekend and [...]

This year will be a doozy for doomsayers. Depending on the prophecy, the world is predestined to expire by means of a solar storm, asteroid strike, rogue-planet collision, plague, falling stars, earthquake, debt crisis, or some combination thereof. Of course, nobody seems to be preparing for any of these impending 2012 apocalypses, with the exception [...]

When you hear the word “Nazi” don’t think jack-booted thugs, mass murder of civilians and Jewish extermination camps, think breakdown of the rule of law, destruction of individual rights, and silent obedience to authority because they came before the final endgame. These same trends that led Germany and Europe to the abyss in World War [...]

The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind a riddle: an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script carved on stone monuments and painted on pottery and bark books. Because the invading Spanish suppressed nearly all knowledge of how the script worked, unlocking its meaning posed one of archaeology’s fiercest challenges. Until now.