The question of the size and limits of our universe can fry our mind without reading into it. Still more amazing, some among us always believed that we live in multiple, parallel universes. Now scientists think they can prove the fantastic hypothesis.

There is testable science, and then there is fantasy and beautiful fairytales. Mathew Johnson of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, has a mission to take on one of the most impossible beliefs of the latter and place it firmly in the former category.

Johnson's tactic is quite simply to establish a way of testing for different scenarios of how universes might collide, if they exist. He develops a computer model that simulates collision of physical bubble-like objects on a small, workable scale.

The metaphor for the multiverse used in the study is then quite similar to ordinary, observable processes here on Earth.

Imagine watching a pot of boiling water slowly simmer and form bubbles. Some of these bubbles grow into bigger ones, others split up, bump into each other, interact etc. This is what proponents of the multiverse theory believe about the vacuum, which they say came before the Big Bang: an empty field full of energy that had nowhere to go, and thus began creating bubbles - universes, that began to collide with each other and interact in different ways. They represented the totality of every dimension we have come to know - space, time, all the constants and physical laws.

Experts have mapped a huge magma reservoir below Mount Rainier in Washington state that begins melting deep in the Earth's mantle before pushing upwards to where it will eventually be tapped for eruption. Researchers from the United States and Norway used seismic imaging and the measurement of variations in electrical and magnetic fields to create a detailed road map of the pathway molten rock takes to the surface.

Their findings, published this week in the journal Nature, are aimed at helping experts understand the volcano's inner workings, and eventually determine when it might again erupt. A state landmark, Mount Rainier last erupted in the 19th century. It is widely expected to erupt again, according to the U.S. National Park Service.

The tallest volcano and fifth-highest peak in the contiguous United States, it towers some 14,410-feet (4,392 meters) about 58 miles (93 km) southeast of Seattle, from most of which it is visible.

A team of astronomers using the Red Channel spectrograph at the MMT Observatory on Mt. Hopkins in Arizona has discovered the most distant Milky Way stars known to date - ULAS J001535.72+015549.6 and ULAS J074417.48+253233.0. These cool red giants are extremely far away, at distances of 775,000 and 900,000 light years, respectively.

The distant outskirts of our Milky Way Galaxy harbor valuable clues for understanding the formation and evolution of the Galaxy.

Yet, due to overwhelming distances and an extremely sparse population of stars, many objects have not been identified beyond 400,000 light years, with only seven stars known to date beyond this limit.

The team led by Prof John Bochanski of Haverford College has now discovered two stars in the Milky Way's outer halo that are the most distant ever discovered in our Galaxy.

Every experienced traveler knows never to leave home without a trusty map. Thanks to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), stargazers and future explorers now have the most detailed map of Mars ever made.

The high-resolution map showcases in vivid color the planet's geologic terrain. Scientists expect it to offer clues to the geologic processes that shaped the red planet's barren, windswept landscape as well as to guide any future human expeditions.

Humans have been sending robotic emissaries to our neighbor for more than five decades now, but only since the 1990s have orbiters had the ability to map out the minerals, water, and subsurface geology of Mars. The oldest regions of the planet, nearly four billion years old, are colored dark brown. The youngest areas are colored orange and red.

A new federal earthquake map dials up the shaking hazard just a bit for about half of the United States and lowers it for nearly a quarter of the nation.

The U.S. Geologic Survey updated Thursday its national seismic hazard maps for the first time since 2008, taking into account research from the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami off the Japanese coast and the surprise 2011 Virginia temblor.

Most of the changes are slight. Project chief Mark Petersen said parts of Washington, Oregon, Utah, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and Tennessee moved into the top two hazard zones.

 Video: Electric bacteria connect to form wires

Unlike any other life on Earth, these extraordinary bacteria use energy in its purest form - they eat and breathe electrons - and they are everywhere

STICK an electrode in the ground, pump electrons down it, and they will come: living cells that eat electricity. We have known bacteria to survive on a variety of energy sources, but none as weird as this. Think of Frankenstein's monster, brought to life by galvanic energy, except these "electric bacteria" are very real and are popping up all over the place.

Unlike any other living thing on Earth, electric bacteria use energy in its purest form - naked electricity in the shape of electrons harvested from rocks and metals. We already knew about two types, Shewanella and Geobacter. Now, biologists are showing that they can entice many more out of rocks and marine mud by tempting them with a bit of electrical juice. Experiments growing bacteria on battery electrodes demonstrate that these novel, mind-boggling forms of life are essentially eating and excreting electricity.

That should not come as a complete surprise, says Kenneth Nealson at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. We know that life, when you boil it right down, is a flow of electrons: "You eat sugars that have excess electrons, and you breathe in oxygen that willingly takes them." Our cells break down the sugars, and the electrons flow through them in a complex set of chemical reactions until they are passed on to electron-hungry oxygen.

Get ready for some huge asteroid whizzing action, because this summer we'll be witnessing 4 large space rocks passing by Earth. In August, kilometer-wide asteroids are slated to miss our home planet, luckily at a safe distance, so the armageddon isn't scheduled and Bruce Willis can stay home. First of the Near Earth Objects (NEO), asteroid 2002 JN97, discovered in May 2002 will pass our planet by 61 lunar distances (LD) on August 2. The rock is estimated to be nearly 3 kilometers wide. It will fly by the Earth at a velocity of 21 km/s
We don't witness asteroids that big, passing by very often. In July there is only one asteroid that could have at least 1 km in diameter predicted to fly by Earth. It is estimated that the July 20 object, 2014 ER49 won't have more than 1200 m. Scientists estimate that several dozen asteroids in the 6-to-12-meter size range fly by Earth at a distance even closer than the moon every year. But only a fraction of these are actually detected.

Mark your calendars for August 17, because this is the day of a real asteroid frenzy. 2001 RZ11 has about 3 km in diameter and among with its 1 kilometer-wide companion, 2013 WT67, will make the day. The rocks will pass the Earth at a safe distance, of course. The first one at 34 LD and the second much closer, but still 16 LD. What is significant, 2001 RZ11 is enlisted as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA). Those objects have the potential to make close approaches to the Earth and are of a size large enough to cause significant regional damage in the event of impact. PHAs are space rocks larger than approximately 100 m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU (about 20 LD). There are currently 1489 known PHAs.

Last but not least, on August 30, about 1 kilometer-wide asteroid 2002 CU11 will swing by. At a velocity of 26 km/s, the rock will fly at the closest distance of all the asteroids mentioned above, 13.5 LD. So we can call it potentially hazardous. Next time to see it so close? Aug. 31, 2080, the 2002 CU11 will come closer than 2 LD.

As of July 04, 2014, 11209 Near-Earth objects have been discovered. Some 865 of these NEOs are asteroids with a diameter of approximately 1 kilometer or larger.

Light is in crisis. The universe is far brighter than it should be based on the number of light-emitting objects we can find, a cosmic accounting problem that has astronomers baffled.

"Something is very wrong," says Juna Kollmeier at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, California.

Solving the mystery could show us novel ways to hunt for dark matter, or reveal the presence of another unknown "dark" component to the cosmos.

"It's such a big discrepancy that whatever we find is going to be amazing, and it will overturn something we currently think is true," says Kollmeier.

The trouble stems from the most recent census of objects that produce high-energy ultraviolet light. Some of the biggest known sources are quasars - galaxies with actively feeding black holes at their centres. These behemoths spit out plenty of UV light as matter falling into them is heated and compressed. Young galaxies filled with hot, bright stars are also contributors.

If the writing style on Wikipedia seems occasionally stilted, turns out there may be a perfectly good reason for that.

An increasing number of entries on Wikipedia are being authored by automated software, or bots, that pull raw information from databases, then use algorithms to generate text in standardized templates.

In fact, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, a single bot program in Sweden has written more than 2.7 million articles on Wikipedia - or about 8.5 percent of the total collection.

The "Lsjbot" is the creation of Swedish university administrator Sverker Johansson, who holds degrees in linguistics, civil engineering, economics and particle physics. Johannson's author bot can generate up to 10,000 new entries a day.

Newly discovered Changyuraptor yangi lived 125m years ago and was like 'a big turkey with a really long tail'

© Stephanie Abramowicz/Dinosaur Institute, NHM
An artist's impression of the new species of four-winged, microraptor dinosaur Changyuraptor yangi.

A new species of prehistoric, four-winged dinosaur discovered in China may be the largest flying reptile of its kind.

The well-preserved, complete skeleton of the dinosaur Changyuraptor yangi features a long tail with feathers 30cm in length - the longest ever seen on a dinosaur fossil. The feathers may have played a major role in flight control, say scientists in the latest issue of Nature Communications, in particular allowing the animal to reduce its speed to land safely.