Antarctica is about to lose an enormous piece of ice. The question is what happens after that. and other top stories.

• Antarctica is about to lose an enormous piece of ice. The question is what happens after that.

  

  The Larsen C rift on Nov. 10. (John Sonntag/NASA) Last week, British scientists announced a disturbing finding — a crack in the Larsen C ice shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula had dramatically accelerated its spread, increasing 11 miles in length in the space of a month. This means the floating ice shelf, which is nearly as big as Scotland and the fourth largest of its kind in Antarctica, is poised to break off a piece nearly 2,000 square miles in size, or over 10 percent of its total area. An..

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• NASA's Newly Announced Mission Could Solve the Mystery of Water on Asteroid Psyche

  

  Discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, Psyche is one of the ten most-massive asteroids in the asteroid belt. Although Psyche is thought to be a world made of metal, scientists have recently found the presence of water on this minor planet. The new findings which baffled researchers, could be confirmed and further studied by a newly announced NASA mission to this small solar system body. Psyche is an irregularly-shaped M-type asteroid with a diameter of about 124 m..

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• Spying on Our Stellar Neighbors: New Strides Made in Alpha Centauri Planet Hunt

  

  GRAPEVINE, Texas — Earth's lonely sun is an outlier: most of the nearest sun-like stars have a stellar buddy or two in orbit with them. And researchers are getting closer to probing those complicated systems to directly image their planets. At last winter's meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Space.com reported on a talk by Ruslan Belikov, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, about how to complete a seemingly impossible task: using a deformable mirror ..

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• For US, 2016 was the second-warmest year on record

  

  January 10, 2017 —After months of broken heat records across the globe, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has declared 2016 the second-hottest year on record in the continental United States.The data, collected by NOAA's National Centers For Environmental Information (NCEI), indicated that the average temperature for the Lower 48 was 54.9 degrees F. (12.7 degrees Celsius) last year. The only other year where that average was higher was in 2012, when the average temperature..

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• Climate cycles drive shellfish toxins

  

  A new study by Oregon State University researchers and others could help predict the spikes in toxic algae that have led to periodic closures of shellfish harvests on the West Coast.The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds a strong connection between warm ocean conditions caused by two major climatic cycles — El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO — and periodic increases in domoic acid in shellfish.Domoic acid is a powerful neurotox..

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• Study suggests Earth once had many moonlets — until they merged to form the moon

  

  This narrow-angle image taken by NASA's Cassini shows the moon in August 1999. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) The moon is the most obvious and familiar object in Earth's night sky — constant, consistent, predictable in its monthly cycles and its daily rising and setting. Astronomers understand the moon's movements so thoroughly that even a break from the routine, like an eclipse, can be anticipated 1,000 years in advance. But we don't know the moon as well as we think. In fact, for years..

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• An asteroid had a semi-close encounter with Earth

  

  A previously undetected asteroid that could rival the size of a mid-sized Boston office building passed by Earth this week in a close shave that brought the object within half the distance of the moon. The space rock — with the catchy name 2017 AG13 — was likely somewhere between 36 feet and 115 feet across, a relatively small size that makes asteroids difficult to detect when they are far away from Earth but could be very dangerous if they broke up or hit the ground near a city. Advertisement..

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• Bumblebee is first bee in continental US to be listed as endangered

  

  The rusty patched bumblebee is in worrisome decline and it is a race to keep it from becoming extinct, the agency said. "Listing the bee as endangered will help us mobilize partners and focus resources on finding ways right now to stop the decline," Wildlife Service Midwest Regional Director Tom Melius said.The population of the rusty patched bumblebee has shrunk by 87% since the late 1990s, the wildlife service said. Bees help pollinate 35% of the world's food, and bumblebees pollinate everyth..

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• 2 veteran astronauts retire from NASA corps

  

  HOUSTON - Two veteran astronauts with 50 years of experience in NASA have retired at the beginning start of 2017.Mike Baker and Mike Fossum hung their NASA space uniforms up Saturday to join a private company.Fossum began his journey in NASA in 1981 as part of the U.S. Air Force detail to support the space shuttle's flight procedures. He returned as a system engineer and astronaut to support the International Space Station and Mission Operations Directorate in 1993.Five years later, Fossum was ..

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