A spectacular new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the heart of the Lagoon Nebula. Seen as a massive cloud of glowing dust and gas, bombarded by the energetic radiation of new stars, this placid name hides a dramatic reality.

The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a dramatic view of gas and dust sculpted by intense radiation from hot young stars deep in the heart of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8). This spectacular object is named after the wide, lagoon-shaped dust lane that crosses the glowing gas of the nebula.

This structure is prominent in wide-field images, but cannot be seen in this close-up. However the strange billowing shapes and sandy texture visible in this image make the Lagoon Nebula's watery name eerily appropriate from this viewpoint too.

A 2008 Google Earth search led to the discovery of Kamil crater, one of the best-preserved meteorite impact sites ever found. Earlier this year, a gritty, sand-blown expedition reached the site deep in the Egyptian desert to collect iron debris and determine the crater's age and origins.

One day within the last several thousand years, a rare metallic meteorite travelling over 12 000 km/hour smashed into Earth's surface near what is today the trackless border region between Egypt, Sudan and Libya. The impact of the 1.3 m, 10-tonne chunk of iron generated a fireball and plume that would have been visible over 1000 km away, and drilled a hole 16 m deep and 45 m wide into the rocky terrain.

Since then, the crater had sat undisturbed by Earth's geologic and climatic processes, which usually render all but the very largest terrestrial impact craters invisible. It was also, as far as is recorded, unseen by humans.

Five years ago an archaeological team broke news of a major find that forever changed our views about the history of the Middle East.

Researchers from the Oriental Institute, and the Department of Antiquities in Syria, announced in a press release that they had found the "earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world."

They had discovered that a city in Syria, named Hamoukar, had been destroyed in a battle that took place ca. 3500 BC by a hostile force. Using slings and clay bullets these troops took over the city, burning it in the process. Their motive may have been to gain control over trade in the area - particularly that of copper coming from Southern Turkey.

The likeliest culprit for this act is a city named Uruk - located to the south in modern day Iraq. The artifacts found at Hamoukar which postdate the battle, were created in the same style as those discovered at Uruk.

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed a circular mound which they believe used to serve as a burial ground for the ancient Bulgars in pre-Christian times, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) said on September 21 2010

The site, unique in South Eastern Europe, was found near the north coast of the Black Sea, where the Bulgars first settled after arriving from the east. Thus, the scientists have ascribed the origin of the site to the ancient Bulgars, "about whom very little is known" the report said.

The Huns also had similar burial mounds but they were of significantly smaller proportions than those used by the ancient Bulgars, the report said, and if the findings confirm what the archaeologists believe, it is likely that they will eventually discover the remnants of "old Bulgar aristocracy" once excavation is complete.

It is believed that the site dates back to the pre-Christian Pliska period of Bulgaria. The mound itself was detected about 15 metres from the royal complex in layer of earth about 70cm below the medieval town of Pliska.

A redevelopment project in this Albanian town has been halted after construction work discovered a 6th-century tomb.

Officials hailed the delay as a landmark decision in this impoverished Balkan country, where rampant construction often obliterates cultural heritage such as archaeological sites.

Vangjel Stamo of Albania's archaeological service said Tuesday that recent development in Durres has "damaged so much of the archaeology."

Two years ago, Albania created a state archaeological service, but laws meant to ensure that potential archaeological sites were excavated ahead of development were regularly ignored. Officials say they don't know how many sites may have been lost to construction.

Archaeologists now intend to build a shelter over the tomb discovered in Durres last weekend, which contained bones but no artifacts, and to dig around it in the hope of finding an entire cemetery.

Archaelogists have claimed that scrawl on the back of a letter recovered from a 17th century dig site reveals a previously unknown language spoken by indigenous peoples in northern Peru.

A team of international archaeologists found the letter under a pile of adobe bricks in a collapsed church complex near Trujillo, 347 miles north of Lima. The complex had been inhabited by Dominican friars for two centuries.

"Our investigations determined that this piece of paper records a number system in a language that has been lost for hundreds of years," Jeffrey Quilter, an archaeologist at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, said.

A photograph of the letter recently released by archaeologists shows a column of numbers written in Spanish and translated into a language that scholars say is now extinct.

"We discovered a language no one has seen or heard since the 16th or 17th century," Mr Quilter said, adding that the language appears to have been influenced by Quechua, an ancient tongue still spoken by millions of people across the Andes.

Pasty kids with greasy hair typing on command lines. Dark villains of the networked world. Security magicians with odd political beliefs. We have a lot of ideas about who hackers are, but very few people have actually tried to seriously investigate the anthropology of one of the more fascinating social groups to emerge at the end of the 20th century. NYU's Gabriella Coleman studies their culture, an odd brew of faith in freedom of information and traditional liberalism, along with a generous salt-and-peppering of nerdiness and counterculturalism. In the latest edition of our syllabus-as-essay series, Coleman guides us past the stereotypes and into the many hideouts and projects of the hacker underground.

Scientists said Wednesday they've discovered fossils in the southern Utah desert of two new dinosaur species closely related to the Triceratops, including one with 15 horns on its large head.

The discovery of the new plant-eating species - including Kosmoceratops richardsoni, considered the most ornate-headed dinosaur known to man - was reported Wednesday in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE, produced by the Public Library of Science.

The other dinosaur, which has five horns and is the larger of the two, was dubbed Utahceratops gettyi.

"It's not every day that you find two rhino-sized dinosaurs that are different from all the other dinosaurs found in North America," said Mark Loewen, a Utah Museum of Natural History paleontologist and an author of the paper published in PLoS ONE.

Louise Patten, whose grandfather was the only surviving officer on the Titanic, reveals the truth about how it sank.

All families have their secrets, but usually about things that don't matter to anybody else. Not in the case of Louise Patten, though - or The Lady Patten to give her her full title, the wife of former Tory Education minister, Lord (John) Patten, though her own career as one of the first women board directors of a FTSE 100 company, and as a successful author of financial thrillers, means that she has plenty of achievements in her own right.

As a teenager in the 1960s, Patten was let in on a secret by her beloved grandmother, which, if revealed, she was warned, would result in two things. The first was awful - it would destroy the good name of her dead grandfather, Charles Lightoller, awarded the DSC with Bar in the First World War, and a hero again for his part in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940. But the second would change history, overturning the authorized version of one of the world's greatest disasters, the sinking of the Titanic with the loss of 1517 lives in April 1912.

The tension between these two outcomes goes some way to explaining why, for 40 years, Patten kept quiet, not even, she reveals with a girlish chuckle from underneath the fringe of her striking black bob, telling her husband what she knew. What did he say when she finally did? 'I think it was "Good God".' Now, though, 56-year-old Patten has finally decided to come clean with the rest of the world in her latest novel, Good as Gold.

But can there really be anything new to say, almost 100 years on, about the Titanic? 'My grandfather was the Second Officer on the Titanic,' Patten explains. 'He was in his cabin when it struck the iceberg. Afterwards, he refused a direct order to go in a lifeboat, but by a fluke he was saved.'

For the first time in almost 20 years, northern autumn is beginning on the night of a full Moon. The coincidence sets the stage for a "Super Harvest Moon" and a must-see sky show to mark the change of seasons.

The action begins at sunset on Sept 22nd, the last day of northern summer. As the sun sinks in the west, bringing the season to a close, the full Harvest Moon will rise in the east, heralding the start of fall. The two sources of light will mix together to create a kind of 360-degree, summer-autumn twilight glow that is only seen on rare occasions.

Keep an eye on the Moon as it creeps above the eastern skyline. The golden orb may appear strangely inflated. This is the Moon illusion at work. For reasons not fully understood by astronomers or psychologists, a low-hanging Moon appears much wider than it really is. A Harvest Moon inflated by the moon illusion is simply gorgeous.

The view improves as the night wears on.