Hubble has snapped a spectacular view of the largest "player" in the Leo Triplet, a galaxy with an unusual anatomy: it displays asymmetric spiral arms and an apparently displaced core. The peculiar anatomy is most likely caused by the gravitational pull of the other two members of the trio.

The unusual spiral galaxy, Messier 66, is located at a distance of about 35 million light-years in the constellation of Leo. Together with Messier 65 and NGC 3628, Messier 66 is one third of the Leo Triplet, a trio of interacting spiral galaxies, part of the larger Messier 66 group. Messier 66 wins out in size over its fellow triplets - it is about 100 000 light-years across.

A cache of cuneiform tablets unearthed by a team led by a University of Toronto archaeologist has been found to contain a largely intact Assyrian treaty from the early 7th century BCE.

"The tablet is quite spectacular. It records a treaty -- or covenant -- between Esarhaddon, King of the Assyrian Empire and a secondary ruler who acknowledged Assyrian power. The treaty was confirmed in 672 BCE at elaborate ceremonies held in the Assyrian royal city of Nimrud (ancient Kalhu). In the text, the ruler vows to recognize the authority of Esarhaddon's successor, his son Ashurbanipal," said Timothy Harrison, professor of near eastern archaeology in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and director of U of T's Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP).

Big planet or companion brown dwarf? Using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have discovered an unusual object orbiting a brown dwarf, and its discovery could fuel additional debate about what exactly constitutes a planet. The object circles a nearby brown dwarf in the Taurus star-forming region with an orbit approximately 3.6 billion kilometers (2.25 billion miles) out, about the same as Saturn from our sun. The astronomers say it is the right size for a planet, but they believe the object formed in less than 1 million years - the approximate age of the brown dwarf - and much faster than the predicted time it takes to build planets according to conventional theories.

Kamen Todorov of Penn State University and his team conducted a survey of 32 young brown dwarfs in the Taurus region.

The object orbits the brown dwarf 2M J044144 and is about 5-10 times the mass of Jupiter. Brown dwarfs are objects that typically are tens of times the mass of Jupiter and are too small to sustain nuclear fusion to shine as stars do.

Cyborgs - human beings merged with machines -- are a staple of science fiction. Star Wars's Darth Vader, Star Trek's Borg, and the Cybermen of Dr. Who are variations on this theme - and it's no coincidence they're all "bad guys." Cyborgs symbolize one of our greatest fears: that over time, we will become so enmeshed in our technology that we lose our humanity.

The real-life application of cyborg science is far from horrifying. Medical technology has developed implantable heart pacemakers, insulin pumps, hearing aids, and even computer chips for the brain to treat depression and Parkinson's disease. In that sense, we are already on the path to becoming cyborgs.

Transhumanists believe that the development of such technology will lead one day to "Human version 2.0" - an upgrade of the human body that not only eliminates many of the problems that plague us, but improves upon the basic human design. For instance, some transhumanists envision a day when the human brain will be re-wired with computer chips, allowing us to think, learn and communicate with unprecedented speed and accuracy.

There's an ethical leap between using technology to help people overcome disabilities, and using it to "improve" healthy humans. The 1972 science fiction novel, Cyborg by Martin Caidin, which was turned into the popular TV show The Six-Million-Dollar Man, bridges the gap by creating a cyborg superman as a life-saving measure. The title character was a NASA test pilot who suffered traumatic injuries when his plane crashed. His legs, left arm, and an eye were replaced with bionic parts, giving him superior speed, strength and vision.

Martin Caidin's novel may have been inspired by discussions taking place within the space community around that time. NASA had considered the possibility of engineering humans, not to create super heroes, but to help us travel to the other planets and the stars beyond.

A giant rock is walking among the "dirty iceballs" in the outer solar system, a new study suggests. Researchers say it may have journeyed there from the asteroid belt near Mars, or it may have been the victim of a cosmic crash that blasted away its once-icy exterior.

Quaoar was discovered in 2002 in the Kuiper belt, a ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. At about 900 kilometres across, or 40 per cent as wide as Pluto, it is not the biggest denizen of the belt, but researchers now say it may be the densest.

Wesley Fraser and Michael Brown of Caltech confirmed its size by studying archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope. They also used Hubble images to study the motion of its moon, Weywot, which allowed them to calculate Quaoar's mass.

Combining the size and mass revealed Quaoar's density to be between 2.9 and 5.5 grams per cubic centimetre. That is much higher than that of other Kuiper belt residents like Pluto, which has a density of about 2.0 grams per cubic centimetre.

Quaoar's high density suggests it is made almost entirely of rock, unlike its neighbours, which are a mixture of ice and rock, the researchers conclude. They say the rocky world may be a refugee from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, thrown outwards early in the solar system's history, when the orbits of the giant planets are thought to have shifted.

A newly discovered asteroid will zip close by Earth Thursday, but poses no threat of crashing into our planet even though it is passing within the orbit of the moon.

The asteroid, called 2010 GA6, is a relatively small space rock about 71 feet (22 meters) wide and was discovered by astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Az. The space rock will fly within the orbit of the moon when it passes Earth Thursday at 7:06 p.m. EDT (2306 GMT), but NASA astronomers said not to worry...the planet is safe.

"Fly bys of near-Earth objects within the moon's orbit occur every few weeks," said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement.

At the time of its closest pass, asteroid 2010 GA6 will be about 223,000 miles (359,000 km) from the Earth. That's about nine-tenths the distance between Earth and the moon [more asteroid photos].

The space rock is not the first asteroid to swing close by Earth this year.

One of the things that makes Iceland unique in Europe is the fact that Icelanders know the year the first settler, Ingólfur Arnarson, came to Iceland from Norway. The Icelandic script, Íslendingabók (Book of Icelanders), written by Ari the wise, tells of the first men coming to Iceland on explorations.

Three expeditions came to Iceland, but the first men who came to Iceland to live there permanently were Ingólfur and Hjörleifur. The two came to Iceland in 874. Hjörleifur was killed by his slaves, which only left Ingólfur and his wife Hallgerdur Fródadóttir. They settled in Reykjavík, now the capital of Iceland. An excavation in the center of Reykjavík seems to indicate that this story might be true. It shows that the remnants of building stem from the year 871+/-2 years. That website is worth examining. It has a number of interactive features and recreates the 871 environment.

In an analysis of the past 1.2 million years, UC Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki discovered a pattern that connects the regular changes of the Earth's orbital cycle to changes in the Earth's climate. The finding is reported in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.

Lisiecki performed her analysis of climate by examining ocean sediment cores. These cores come from 57 locations around the world. By analyzing sediments, scientists are able to chart the Earth's climate for millions of years in the past. Lisiecki's contribution is the linking of the climate record to the history of the Earth's orbit.

Bloomington, Ind. -- Could our universe be located within the interior of a wormhole which itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe?

Such a scenario in which the universe is born from inside a wormhole (also called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge) is suggested in a paper from Indiana University theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski in Physics Letters B. The final version of the paper was available online March 29 and will be published in the journal edition April 12.

Poplawski takes advantage of the Euclidean-based coordinate system called isotropic coordinates to describe the gravitational field of a black hole and to model the radial geodesic motion of a massive particle into a black hole.

Stephen Hawking speaks to students about recent discoveries concerning black holes.

What once was a concept of science fiction, the mystery of black holes are slowly being uncovered, said Professor Steven Hawking Monday in Rudder Auditorium in his lecture "Out of a Black Hole."

In an introduction Chris Pope, professor of physics at Texas A&M and astronomy and holder of the Stephen Hawking chair in fundamental physics, said he had been working with Hawking ever since he studied under him.

"I think it is safe to say that Stephen requires no introduction. I would, however, like to add words of my own as I have had the very great privilege to know him," Pope said.

"Stephen's research has been in some of the most challenging questions in physics, where did we come from? How will it end up?"

Because Hawking stumped the physics community in 1975 by showing that black holes are not black at all, but they emit radiation, Pope said, he created the problem concerned with the apparent loss of information inside the black hole. It is something Hawking has been worried about ever since.