In a close-up from the HiRISE instrument onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, this mysterious dark pit, about 150 meters across, lies on the north slope of ancient martian volcano Arsia Mons. Lacking raised rims and other impact crater characteristics, this pit and others like it were originally identified in visible light and infrared images from the Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. While the visible light images showed only darkness within, infrared thermal signatures indicated that the openings penetrated deep under the martian surface and perhaps were skylights to underground caverns.

The Styx River, the legendary portal to the underworld, harbors a deadly bacteria that may have ended Alexander's life.

An extraordinarily toxic bacterium harbored by the "infernal" Styx River might have been the fabled poison rumored to have killed Alexander the Great (356 - 323 B.C.) more than 2,000 years ago, according to a scientific-meets-mythic detective study.

The research, which will be presented next week at the XII International Congress of Toxicology annual meetings in Barcelona, Spain, reviews ancient literary evidence on the Styx poison in light of modern geology and toxicology.

According to the study, calicheamicin, a secondary metabolite of Micromonospora echinospora, is what gave the river its toxic reputation.

The Styx was the portal to the underworld, according to myth. Here the gods swore sacred oaths.

A long lost Hollywood silent film featuring Charlie Chaplin is to be screened for the first time in nearly a century after being discovered at an antiques fair.

The comedy called A Thief Catcher was made in 1914 and was missing for so many years that Chaplin's appearance in it as a buffoon policeman had been forgotten.

The 10-minute movie was discovered by the American cinema historian, Paul Gierucki, who bought a can of old film marked "Keystone" at an antiques sale in Michigan.

He assumed it was just another Keystone Kops movie and didn't watch the 16mm reel for months.

When he finally looked at the film, which is in good condition, he was amazed to see what looked like Chaplin emerging from the bushes in a police uniform, several sizes too big, armed with a nightstick.

A comet may have hit the planet Neptune about two centuries ago. This is indicated by the distribution of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of the gas giant that researchers - among them scientists from the French obser-vatory LESIA in Paris, from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Re-search (MPS) in Katlenburg-Lindau (Germany) and from the Max Planck Insti-tute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching (Germany) - have now studied. The scientists analyzed data taken by the research satellite Herschel, that has been orbiting the Sun in a distance of approximately 1.5 million kilome-ters since May 2009. (Astronomy & Astrophysics, published online on July 16th, 2010)

When the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter sixteen years ago, scientists all over the world were prepared: instruments on board the space probes Voyager 2, Galileo and Ulysses documented every detail of this rare incident. Today, this data helps scientists detect cometary impacts that happened many, many years ago. The "dusty snowballs" leave traces in the atmosphere of the gas giants: water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocyanic acid, and carbon sulfide. These molecules can be detected in the radiation the planet radiates into space.

In February 2010 scientists from Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research discovered strong evidence for a cometary impact on Saturn about 230 years ago (see Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 510, February 2010). Now new measurements performed by the instrument PACS (Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer) on board the Herschel space observatory indicate that Neptune experienced a similar event. For the first time, PACS allows researchers to analyze the long-wave infrared radiation of Neptune.

Worried about Earth-threatening asteroids? One of NASA's newest space telescopes has spotted 25,000 never-before-seen asteroids in just six months.

Ninety-five of those are considered "near Earth," but in the language of astronomy that means within 30 million miles. Luckily for us, none poses any threat to Earth anytime soon.

Called WISE for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the telescope completes its first full scan of the sky on Saturday and then begins another round of imaging.

What's special about WISE is its ability to see through impenetrable veils of dust, picking up the heat glow of objects that are invisible to regular telescopes.

"Most telescopes focus on the hottest and brightest objects in the universe," said Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "WISE is especially sensitive to seeing what's cool and dark, what you could call the stealth objects of the universe."

Boffins offer 'lava' thesis, poohpooh alien/Elvis theories

Space boffins believe they may be on the verge of discovering a vast, hidden network of tunnels beneath the surface of the Moon.

The tunnels aren't thought to be the work of long-extinct (or perhaps still surviving) intelligent moon aliens, perhaps driven to adopt a subterranean existence by a notional disappearing atmosphere aeons ago. Nor is any involvement by Tibetans, Elvis or others seeking a secluded dwelling far from prying human eyes suspected.

A new game promises to take shoot 'em up gameplay into a thrilling new dimension.

Battle Tag, from Just Dance publishers Ubisoft, revives the real-world thrills and spills of laser quest, albeit with a couple of neat video gaming twists. Players don hit-detecting vests, pick up their laser pistols and then proceed diving over the furniture as they endeavor to blast their rivals while not being shot themselves. Needless to say any expensive ornaments or family pets should be placed out of danger before play commences, as things are bound to get messy.

This is an intriguing step beyond console gaming for Ubisoft. Consoles still play a key part of the action, though. In the first place the console acts as a glorified scoreboard, recording all hits while telling players to "try to be less pathetic than last time" and other such encouraging exhortations. Meanwhile a sensor unit boasts a 300-metre range, meaning that the blasting action can easily extend into the garden, down the street and into the local park if required. "Survival" and "Deathmatch Versus" modes are offered for two teams of players.

Archaeologists working at the World Trade Centre site in New York have found the remains of a wooden ship apparently buried there more than 200 years ago.

The remains of the 30ft length of a wood-hulled vessel were found when workers excavating the site, where a new World Trade Centre is being built, hit a row of wood timbers, The New York Times reported.

"They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship," said archaeologist A. Michael Pappalardo.

The archaeologists have been working on the site - scene of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 - to document historical material uncovered during construction.

Historians and archaeologists are analyzing a treasure trove of Qin dynasty documents that promise to tell us more about life in the time of the First Emperor of China - Qin Shi Huang.

Qin Shi Huang unified China in 221 BC after conquering the other Chinese states. His reforms were numerous. He forced all of China to use a single currency, brought in a uniform system of rules and started construction of the Great Wall. He is perhaps best known for the Mausoleum he constructed with life-size Terracotta warriors nearby.

He died in 210 BC and in the ensuing chaos a new emperor, Han Gaozu, came to power. He inaugurated the Han Dynasty, a ruling line that would reign over China for 400 years.

The document discovery was made in 2002 in Liye City. It's an ancient settlement located in the area of modern day Xiangxi.

They were discovered when a construction team, working on a middle school, came across a well. When archaeologists ventured in they found a stash of 18,000 documents that were written on slips of bamboo and wooden boards. In addition they also found about 18,000 blank documents - stationary that was not used.

An extrasolar planet nearly as big as Jupiter is circling so close to its parent star -- a year passes in just 3.5 days -- that its atmosphere is being baked off into space, creating a comet-like tail.

The planet, known as HD 209458b, is located about 153 light-years away.

Scientists had suspected since 2003 that stellar winds would be strong enough to sweep the planet's atmosphere into space and had even modeled what it would look like, says Jeffrey Linsky, with the University of Colorado in Boulder, who led a team that used Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to make observations.

"We have measured gas coming off the planet at specific speeds, some coming toward Earth. The most likely interpretation is that we have measured the velocity of material in a tail," Linsky said in a press statement.