Neutron detectors at the South Pole begin flashing, and the scientiston watch gets on the horn to astronauts at the International Space Station. Shut down your equipment and take cover in the shielded capsule, he says: A solar storm is coming.

That scenario is a bit closer to reality, thanks to a team of researchers that has found a way to estimate the intensity and arrival time of charged particles spewed toward Earth by strong solar storms. Such space weather could irradiate astronauts and fry satellites, and until now there hasn't been a good way to forecast it.

Not all space storms are the same. Some of the charged particles spewed by solar flares travel exceptionally fast and thus are extremely energetic, while others travel more slowly, says John Bieber, a space physicist at the University of Delaware, Newark. The more energy a particle carries, the more damage it can do. Because the less-energetic slower particles typically far outnumber fast ones, however, they do most of the overall damage. That delay offers the opportunity for an early warning before the most intense part of the solar storm strikes, he says.

The big problem is that solar storms are hard to predict. Sun-watching satellites can help monitor solar flares, but they can't provide accurate estimates of when the radiation will arrive or how strong it will be. Now, reporting in Space Weather, Bieber and his colleagues suggest a better way: neutron sensors at the South Pole. For decades, these sensors have been used to estimate the rate at which cosmic rays and other charged particles strike Earth's atmosphere. The sensors actually detect the neutrons created in the upper atmosphere when high-speed particles slam into the nuclei of atoms of gases, knocking them apart and sending the neutrons groundward. Some of those speeding particles are protons in solar flares.

To avert a possible catastrophe - this time set for February 2013 - scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint or big guns. The stickler is that time has long run out to build a spaceship to carry out the operation.

­NASA's data shows the 60-meter asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, will whistle by Earth in 11 months. Its trajectory will bring it within a hair's breadth of our planet, raising fears of a possible collision.

The asteroid, known as DA14, will pass by our planet in February 2013 at a distance of under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is closer than the geosynchronous orbit of some satellites.

There is a possibility the asteroid will collide with Earth, but further calculation is required to estimate the potential threat and work out how to avert possible disaster, NASA expert Dr. David Dunham told students at Moscow's University of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM).

Behemoth sunspot AR1515 is crackling with M-class solar flares and appears to be on the verge of producing an X-class explosion. On July 4th the active region hurled at least four minor CMEs into space, including one toward Earth. Click to view an animated forecast track of the incoming cloud.

According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather lab, who prepared the forecast, the cloud will reach Earth on July 7th around 0600 UT. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on that date.

Summer is a good time to relax, sleep late, enjoy a break from school or work. Waking before sunrise is just not done.

This summer is a little different. To find out why, set your alarm for dawn.

Every morning this July, the two brightest planets in the solar system will put on a show before sunrise. Look out any east-facing window to see Venus and Jupiter, shining side by side, so close together you can hide them behind your outstretched palm. It's a great way to start the day.

A giant string of invisible dark matter has been discovered across the universe between a pair of galaxy clusters.

The filament forms a bridge between two huge clusters called Abell 222 and Abell 223, which lie 2.7 billion light-years away. The universe is thought to be filled with such strings of dark matter, a mysterious substance that cannot be seen, only sensed through its gravitational pull.

Scientists have made previous attempts to find dark matter filaments, which are predicted by theories that suggest galaxy clusters form at the intersections of filaments. Dark matter is thought to make up 98 percent of all matter in the universe.

"This is the first time [a dark matter filament] has been convincingly detected from its gravitational lensing effect," said astronomer Jörg Dietrich of the University Observatory Munich, in Germany. "It's a resounding confirmation of the standard theory of structure formation of the universe. And it's a confirmation people didn't think was possible at this point."

Many astronomers thought detecting filaments would have to wait until telescopes became significantly more advanced, but Dietrich and his colleagues benefited from the rare spatial geometry of this cluster, which allowed them to detect signs of what's called weak gravitational lensing.

According to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, massive objects warp space and time around them, causing anything traveling through it, including light, to proceed along a curved path.

The long and complicated journey to detect the Higgs boson, which started with one small step about 25 years ago, might finally have reached its goal. This was reported by LHC particle accelerator scientists today at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, near Geneva.

The Higgs boson is the final building block that has been missing from the "Standard Model," which describes the structure of matter in the universe. The Higgs boson combines two forces of nature and shows that they are, in fact, different aspects of a more fundamental force. The particle is also responsible for the existence of mass in the elementary particles.

Weizmann Institute scientists have been prominent participants in this research from its onset. Prof. Giora Mikenberg was for many years head of the research group that searched for the Higgs boson in CERN's OPAL experiment. He was then leader of the ATLAS Muon Project - one of the two experiments that eventually revealed the particle. Prof. Ehud Duchovni heads the Weizmann Institute team that examines other key questions at CERN. Prof. Eilam Gross is currently the ATLAS Higgs physics group convener. In the Weizmann team three scientific "generations" are represented: Mikenberg was Duchovni's supervisor, who was, in turn, Gross's supervisor.

Gross: "This is the biggest day of my life. I have been searching for the Higgs since I was a student in the 1980's. Even after 25 years, it still came as a surprise. No matter what you call it - we are no longer searching for the Higgs but measuring its properties. Though I believed it would be found, I never dreamed it would happen while I was holding a senior position in the global research team."

The Kennedy Space Center in Florida is where the capsule will be fully built

NASA's future form of transportation into deep space, the Orion capsule, made its way to NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Friday, June 29. There, the spacecraft will be built in its entirety.

The Orion capsule, which is designed by Lockheed Martin, will eventually take astronauts into deep space to locations like asteroids and Mars. It will be the most advanced spacecraft ever, with the ability to provide safe re-entry from deep space, a way to sustain astronauts in space, and an emergency abort option. The Orion spacecraft was first unveiled by Lockheed Martin in early 2011.

"This starts a new, exciting chapter in this nation's great space exploration story," said Lori Garver, NASA deputy administrator. "Today we are lifting our spirits to new heights."

Some 460 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, a thick disk of dust swirled around a young star named TYC 8241 2652 1, where rocky planets like our own were arising. Then, in less than 2 years, the disk just vanished. That's the unprecedented observation astronomers report in a new study, out today. Even more intriguing: The same thing may have happened in our own solar system.

Born about 10 million years ago, the TYC 8241 2652 1 system was chugging along just fine before 2009. Its so-called circumstellar disk glowed at the infrared wavelength of 10 microns, indicating it was warm and lay close to a star - in the same sort of region that, in our own sun's neighborhood, gave rise to the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The infrared data reveal that the dust was about 180°C and located as close to its star as Mercury is to the sun.

By January 2010, however, nearly all infrared light from the dusty disk had vanished. "We had never seen anything like this before," says astronomer Carl Melis of the University of California, San Diego. "We were all scratching our heads and wondering what the hell did we do wrong?" But subsequent observations with both infrared satellites and ground-based telescopes confirmed the surprising discovery, he says: "The disk was gone."

Melis and his colleagues report the mystery online today in Nature - but they don't know what caused it. "It's very bizarre," he says. "Nothing like this was ever predicted." He says there's no way something could eclipse the infrared-emitting disk for more than 2 years, because such an object would be immense. Furthermore, the star itself didn't fade.

Researchers in the biological sciences department in the Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary have revealed how white blood cells move to infection or inflammation in the body; findings which could help lead to developing drug therapies for immune system disorders.

The research is published this month in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

It's long been known that two human proteins -- L-selectin and calmodulin -- are involved in moving white blood cells to the site of inflammation or infection in the body. L-selectin is embedded in the cellular membrane of the white blood cells and acts like Velcro, tethering the white blood cell to the sticky surface on the wall of the blood vessel.

When the white blood cell reaches a site of infection or inflammation, it 'sheds' the L-selectin protein, which lets it leave the blood stream and enter the damaged tissue. This shedding process is controlled inside of the white blood cell by the protein calmodulin.

Scientists at Arizona State University have discovered that older honey bees effectively reverse brain aging when they take on nest responsibilities typically handled by much younger bees. While current research on human age-related dementia focuses on potential new drug treatments, researchers say these findings suggest that social interventions may be used to slow or treat age-related dementia.

In a study published in the scientific journal Experimental Gerontology, a team of scientists from ASU and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, led by Gro Amdam, an associate professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences, presented findings that show that tricking older, foraging bees into doing social tasks inside the nest causes changes in the molecular structure of their brains.

"We knew from previous research that when bees stay in the nest and take care of larvae - the bee babies - they remain mentally competent for as long as we observe them," said Amdam. "However, after a period of nursing, bees fly out gathering food and begin aging very quickly. After just two weeks, foraging bees have worn wings, hairless bodies, and more importantly, lose brain function - basically measured as the ability to learn new things. We wanted to find out if there was plasticity in this aging pattern so we asked the question, 'What would happen if we asked the foraging bees to take care of larval babies again?"

During experiments, scientists removed all of the younger nurse bees from the nest - leaving only the queen and babies. When the older, foraging bees returned to the nest, activity diminished for several days. Then, some of the old bees returned to searching for food, while others cared for the nest and larvae. Researchers discovered that after 10 days, about 50 percent of the older bees caring for the nest and larvae had significantly improved their ability to learn new things.