Earth

The meteor that blazed across the East Coast sky Friday night and lit up the Twittersphere was the size of a washing machine and not at all unusual, scientists said. It's just that they generally don't make their appearances over densely populated areas and in front of so many witnesses. People from Florida to Maine — including many in the Washington metro area — reported seeing a streak of light around the size and brightness of a full moon, just before 8 p.m. They said it shot from west to east and then...

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Google is launching Internet-beaming antennas into the stratosphere aboard giant, jellyfish-shaped balloons with the lofty goal of getting the entire planet online. Eighteen months in the works, the top-secret project was announced Saturday in New Zealand, where up to 50 volunteer households are already beginning to receive the Internet briefly on their home computers via translucent helium balloons that sail by on the wind 12 miles above Earth. While...

1 . We're running out of water. We see it in the headlines almost every day: Drought in Texas and China . Nevada's Lake Mead in danger of going dry. The Colorado River and the Rio Grande no longer flowing to the sea. Water seems to be getting more and more scarce. But it's not. The amount of water on Earth isn't changing, and as a planet we're in no danger of running out. One of the most misleading "facts" we learn about water, starting in the second grade or so, is that 97.5 percent of the water on Earth is unusable by humans,...

In his June 10 op-ed column, " It's called utopian for a reason ," E.J. Dionne Jr. made two primary arguments against libertarianism. The first is that it does not exist. Where would we be if that ever stopped us? This argument would seem much more at home in the Times of London, circa 1777: "These Americans seem to have so much faith in this concept of representative democracy. If it is such a noble and just form of government, why are virtually all nations of the earth, great and small, governed by "heriditary"...

The images below were taken by NASA satellites and a joint NASA/U.S. Geological Survey satellite, which orbit about 440 miles above Earth collecting data that are used to study changes in land cover, forest growth, water resources and the atmosphere. The satellites' instruments can take in a much broader range of light than is visible to the human eye; some of the images here were made using infrared, red and blue wavelengths that bring out details in the terrain. Seventy-five of the images — which span the globe and cover a wide...

Like a dog on a leash, a tiny asteroid runs ahead of Earth on the planet's year-long strolls around the sun, scientists report. The discovery of this companion, which measures only about 300 yards across, makes Earth the fourth planet in the solar system that's known to share its orbit with an asteroid. Imagine Earth and the asteroid traveling around a clock face, with the sun in the middle. Generally, the asteroid runs about two numbers ahead. However, the asteroid sometimes ranges so far ahead that it's on the opposite side of the sun from...

We're the nation that put a man on the moon, so we can't be stupid. We're just pretending, right? We're not really taking seriously the "argument" that the big snowstorms that have hit the Northeast in recent weeks constitute evidence -- or even proof -- that climate change is some kind of hoax. That would be unbelievably dumb. Yet there are elected officials in Washington who apparently believe such nonsense. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) had his family build an igloo near the Capitol and label it "Al Gore's New Home.

Water is everywhere on Earth, but nobody has ever been able to determine conclusively how it got here. Scientists know that the early Earth was far too hot to hold water or water vapor, but then, in relatively short geological time, the oceans appeared. In a discovery that researchers say sheds important new light on that age-old question, a European team reported Thursday that it has found a very cold reservoir of water vapor in spacethat could explain where the water came from.

Viewers will help decide which families will die — and which one lucky family will survive the end of the world Dec. 21 — in a new Spike TV reality competition series called "Last Family on Earth. " Over six episodes, families subscribing to the notion that the end of civilization is set for Dec. 21 (as perhaps dictated by the Mayan calendar) will compete for a spot in an underground bunker that the network says has been built to withstand nearly any end-of-days disaster.

I was impressed by Kevin Morison's June 5 letter in which he said that he would travel to Montgomery County to do his food shopping rather than pay the D.C. Council's 5-cent tax on plastic bags. Not everyone is willing to shlep to another jurisdiction to maintain their choice of grocery bag. Unfortunately, Mr. Morison's letter was also an example of how people are unwilling to accept even small inconveniences or restrictions to help preserve the environment. Yet we will most likely have to make much larger sacrifices if our...

This week we take a break from our usual programming to focus on two of the big technology trends shaking up businesses of all shapes and sizes — big data and cloud computing. It doesn't seem all that long ago that the concepts felt like novelties. I remember loading a screen saver on my desktop that linked my tiny machine to countless others in an effort to scan the heavens in a search for extraterrestrial life. We never found anything. At least as far as I know. Now, big data and...

In the aftermath of the weak $27.5-million opening last weekend for Sony Pictures Entertainment's "After Earth," all eyes are turning to the studio's upcoming slate of movies, which could help soften the blow of the film's disappointing bow. Sony had expected the sci-fi thriller — which features Will Smith and stars the actor's son Jaden — to open in the range of $35 million to $40 million. But it finished No. 3 on the weekend, behind blockbuster "Fast & Furious 6" and "Now You See Me. " While a Sony...

Much like the Washington Nationals lineup right now, planets leave, arrive, hit a cosmic hot streak and grab our fleeting attention. The magnificent planetary triangle (Jupiter, Venus and Mercury ) — in the western sky in late May — has dissipated. Jupiter, like a veteran ballplayer rehabbing on a farm team, falls out of view, veiled by the sun's glare. Venus and Mercury are left to frolic together in early June. Mercury hangs out in the northwestern sky at dusk. On Sunday night, it will be low as the...

Will Smith fans who have been eagerly awaiting their hero's next rock 'em, sock 'em action ad­ven­ture will have to wait a little bit longer. Sequels to " Hancock ," " Bad Boys " and " I, Robot " will take up much of the actor's time for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, Smith's character in " After Earth " spends most of the new sci-fi flick flat on his back, with two broken legs. It's an odd choice, considering that many people who buy tickets to a Will Smith movie do so under the...

The Kepler Space Telescope, the celebrated discoverer of worlds around distant stars, may have found its last planet. NASA announced Wednesday that the telescope, which to date has cost $600 million to build and operate, has lost the ability to point accurately. It's not dead, but by going wobbly it can't do the precision observations necessary for spotting signs of "exoplanets. " Kepler is 40 million miles from Earth, too far away to be fixed even if NASA still had a space shuttle and...

PG- 13 Mud. Eccentric characters, a mysterious stranger, a wide river, a boat stuck in a tree and two unsupervised teenage boys — that's a recipe for thrills in this mature-themed but teen-worthy Mark Twain-esque adventure. Ellis and Neckbone are best pals. The boys take a motorboat to a supposedly uninhabited island to scope out a boat caught in a tree. Then they find a drifter named Mud who has been living in it. The boys learn that he's hiding...

The documentary " No Place on Earth " doesn't seem like it should work quite as well as it does. A History Channel production, the tale of Ukrainian Jews who survived in underground caves for 511 days while hiding from the Nazis during World War II is structured around lengthy, foreign-language reenactments of the events featuring costumed performers. Why not just commit to the undeniably thrilling theatricality of the story and make a fictionalized dramatic feature? Instead, Emmy-winning documentarian Janet Tobias ("Life 360")

EVERYTHING MATTERS! By Ron Currie Jr. Viking. 305 pp. $25.95 Astronomers at Caltech say the Earth will last 1 billion years longer than previous estimates, which makes me wish I'd chosen the bedroom wallpaper more carefully. But Ron Currie's strange new novel raises the opposite prospect: "Everything Matters!" begins with an announcement that a comet will destroy our planet on June 15, 2010. That fast-approaching deadline raises "a question which men and women, great and not-so, of every color, creed, and...

NEW YORK — How far can one go in retelling a Bible story, adding things that are not in the original? In "The Testament of Mary," Colm Toibin goes a long way. His 2012 book is now a Broadway play presenting a view of the mother of Jesus so different from pious tradition that it angers some Christians, creating a "new," intellectually and spiritually challenging Virgin Mary. Yet in the end, Toibin's searingly human Mary may be ultimately more accessible than the Mary of porcelain perfection set...