Editor's blog

Somedays news is quiet, and on other days there appears to be nothing but stories falling out all over the place. Firslty, Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceship, Enterprise, has made its first solo test flight, in the skies over California.

Various news agencies are reporting that samples returned to Earth by the Hayabusa probe might contain some form of alien life. The reports, however, appear somewhat sketchy and not totally clear.

Science is Vital is a group of concerned scientists, engineers and supporters of science who are campaigning to prevent destructive levels of cuts to science funding in the UK. Visit the website for more details.

Why science?

Investing in research enriches society and helps drive the economy. It led to our preeminent position in the 20th century, and will be vital in meeting the challenges of the 21st – whether they be in energy, medicine, infrastructure, computing, or simply humanity’s primal desire for discovery.

This mosaic of images from the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows surroundings of the rover's location following an 81-metre drive during the 2,363rd Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's mission on Mars (Sept. 16, 2010).

A team of planet hunters from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of a planet with three times the mass of Earth orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's "habitable zone". The planet is about three times the mass of the Earth and orbits a red dwarf star in the system know as Gliese 581