The blue glowing jets of science fiction spacecraft came a step closer to reality on Wednesday as US physicists unveiled the world's first solid-state aeroplane powered in flight by supercharged air molecules.

More than a century on from the Wright brothers' first artificial flight, scientists hailed the "historic" test of the new technology, which could eventually slash greenhouse-gas emissions from aviation.

Ever since Orville and Wilbur Wright's momentous glide in the winter of 1903, aircraft have been driven by propellers or jets that must burn fuel to create the thrust and lift needed for sustained flight.

A team of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology managed to unlock a process known as electroaerodynamics, previously never seen as a plausible way to power an aircraft.

They were able to fly the new plane, with a wingspan of five metres (16 feet), a distance of 55 metres at a speed of 4.8 metres-per-second.

That's hardly supersonic, but the implications of this unprecedented mode of flight could be stratospheric.

"The future of flight shouldn't be things like propellers and turbines," said Steven Barrett, who designed the prototype.

"It should be more like what you see in Star Trek with a kind of blue glow and something that silently glides through the air."

At first glance, the plane itself doesn't look lightyears away from other renewable aircraft, such as the Solar Impact II craft that in 2015-16 used energy from the Sun to fly around the world.

Unlike Solar Impact, Barrett's plane doesn't have any propellers or solar panels -- or any moveable parts whatsoever.

Instead of engines, it is powered by a system comprising two main sections.

At the front of the plane sit a series of parallel electrodes made up of lightweight wires that produce an enormous voltage -- +20,000v -- supercharging the air around it and splitting away negatively charged nitrogen molecules known as ions.

At the plane's rear are rows of aerofoils set to -20,000v. The ions automatically move from a positive to negative charge, dragging with them air particles that create the so-called "ionic wind" to provide the aircraft with lift.

A star 8,000 light years from Earth is on the verge of a huge supernova explosion, which could produce the Milky Way's first gamma-ray explosion, a dangerous and extremely energetic event.

Australian scientists at the University of Sydney discovered the rare 'God of chaos' star, which they say could produce the Milky Way's first known gamma-ray burst, a lethal combination of dust and gas mixed with wind as fast as 12 million km/ph, which is one of the most extreme energetic events after the Big Bang.

The researchers published their findings in the latest issue of the journal 'Nature Astronomy'. 'God of chaos' is part of a two-star system named after the Egyptian serpentine Apep.

Apep comprises of two hot, luminous stars which orbit each other every hundred years or so. Scientists say one of the stars has the perfect conditions to create a gamma-ray burst which has the potential to strip Earth's ozone from the atmosphere, drastically increasing our exposure to UV light from the sun.

Fortunately, the star doesn't appear to be aimed at Earth, however researchers say they "can't be certain what the future has in store" for Apep.

"The system might slow down enough so it explodes as a normal supernova rather than a gamma-ray burst. However, in the meantime, it is providing astronomers a ringside seat into beautiful and dangerous physics that we have not seen before in our galaxy," said leader of the research group Professor Peter Tuthill.

Archaeologists at a site in what's now Jordan have found evidence of a cosmic calamity

A superheated blast from the skies obliterated cities and farming settlements north of the Dead Sea around 3,700 years ago, preliminary findings suggest.

Radiocarbon dating and unearthed minerals that instantly crystallized at high temperatures indicate that a massive airburst caused by a meteor that exploded in the atmosphere instantaneously destroyed civilization in a 25-kilometer-wide circular plain called Middle Ghor, said archaeologist Phillip Silvia. The event also pushed a bubbling brine of Dead Sea salts over once-fertile farm land, Silvia and his colleagues suspect.

People did not return to the region for 600 to 700 years, said Silvia, of Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque. He reported these findings at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research on November 17.

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Earth's latest ice age may have been caused by changes deep inside the planet. Based on evidence from the Pacific Ocean, including the position of the Hawaiian Islands, Rice University geophysicists have determined Earth shifted relative to its spin axis within the past 12 million years, which caused Greenland to move far enough toward the north pole to kick off the ice age that began about 3.2 million years ago.

Their study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is based on an analysis of fossil signatures from deep ocean sediments, the magnetic signature of oceanic crust and the position of the mantle "hot spot" that created the Hawaiian Islands. Co-authors Richard Gordon and Daniel Woodworth said the evidence suggests Earth spun steadily for millions of years before shifting relative to its spin axis, an effect geophysicists refer to as "true polar wander."

"The Hawaiian hot spot was fixed, relative to the spin axis, from about 48 million years ago to about 12 million years ago, but it was fixed at a latitude farther north than we find it today," said Woodworth, a graduate student in Rice's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. "By comparing the Hawaiian hot spot to the rest of the Earth, we can see that that shift in location was reflected in the rest of the Earth and is superimposed on the motion of tectonic plates. That tells us that the entire Earth moved, relative to the spin axis, which we interpret to be true polar wander."

NASA's asteroid trackers have warned that two gigantic asteroids will zip past earth on November 20, 2018. The first asteroid dubbed, Asteroid 2018 VQ6 will have its close approach at around 07.29 AM GMT, while the second space body, Asteroid VP7 will make its close flyby at 07.49 AM.

Initial analysis conducted by scientists at NASA reveal that VQ6 will measure somewhere between 12 meters to 35 meters in diameter. On the other hand, Asteroid VP7 is estimated to measure somewhere between 12 meters to 28 meters in diameter.

Experts believe that the first asteroids will reach its closest possible distance to Earth at around 0.02931 astronomical units (AU) and the second cosmic body will have its close approach at 0.01961 AU. It should be noted that one astronomical unit equals about 92.95 million miles, and it is actually the distance between the earth and the sun.

As these space bodies are making its close approach at around 2.72 million miles away, experts have classified these asteroids as 'Near Earth Object' (NEO). Even though a distance like 2.72 million miles is very gigantic in human terms, it is very close in astronomical terms.

"As they orbit the Sun, NEOs can occasionally approach close to Earth. Note that a "close" passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometers," NASA says.

China has obtained cutting-edge mapping software used by NATO and US militaries to collect intelligence on the battlefield, putting its armed forces on equal footing with the most advanced Western armies, a report says.

A Belgium-based defense contractor Luciad has sold the software to China, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) citing Chinese government sources. The software, which includes a Luciad Lightspeed application, is used to map the terrain and ensure situational awareness of military commanders.

The software, which is in used by NATO and US militaries, visualizes changes in enemy positions and identifies targets in real time. It's 75 times faster than its closest competitor and is remarkably accurate. The same software is reportedly employed by US Special Operations Forces, whose raid on Osama bin Laden in Pakistan made headlines in 2011.

The Met Office has told United Kingdom ministers that space storms could cause massive blackouts and destroy computers. According to the government agency's study, a space storm could bring down the internet and all communications.

According to a report by The Sunday Times, a new report is claiming that huge solar flares can generate such intense magnetic fields over Earth which in a flash could burn out delicate electronics and even set them on fire. The report, co-authored with scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Cambridge University said the UK should construct an early warning system because of their risk.

Great Britain is at a major risk of being crippled by huge electrical disturbances caused by solar storms in space unless a satellite network is built that can detect them coming. (And if you guessed the taxpayers are going to foot the bill, you'd be correct.)

Without memory, our lives would be exceedingly troublesome, and dangerous if not impossible. What if you had to look up what "green light" means every time you saw one? Many of us have had to witness loved ones suffering from dementia, including its common symptom of short-term memory loss. Human memory is somehow facilitated by the organ of the brain, where Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia take their toll. Cells have no brains. Yet biochemists are increasingly finding that cells do have memory.

Stem Cell Memory

The old picture of stem cells was that they remain pure and static, until signals trigger cell division and differentiation. Ongoing research reveals a new, more dynamic picture of stem cells: cells that can remember things and respond to their surroundings. According to Monique Brouilette in Quanta Magazine:

Stem cells, famous for replenishing the body's stockpile of other cell types throughout life, may have an additional, unforeseen ability to cache memories of past wounds and inflammation. New studies in the skin, gut and airways suggest that stem cells, often in partnership with the immune system, can use these memories to improve the responses of tissues to later injuries and pathogenic assaults.

"What we are starting to realize is that these cells aren't just there to make tissue. They actually have other behavioral roles," said Shruti Naik, an immunologist at New York University who has studied this memory effect in skin and other tissues. Stem cells, she said, "have an exquisite ability to sense their environment and respond." [Emphasis added.]

Most tissues have small reservoirs of stem cells that can replenish cells as they age or die. They can differentiate into any one of the cell types of the tissue. That's been their primary function, Brouilette writes, to serve as "miniature factories" for tissue regeneration. It was thought they had to remain "blank slates" that were unchanged from their histories. "But now a new picture is starting to emerge."

As an evidence-based journalist who follows newsworthy trends in neuroscience, I've been keeping an eye on the rising popularity of the cerebellum (Latin for "little brain"). In recent weeks, this often-overlooked subcortical brain region has skyrocketed to buzzword status. I have a hunch "cerebellum" might be on the verge of becoming a household word such as "amygdala," "hippocampus," and "prefrontal cortex" that have made the rare leap from the esoteric lexicon of neuroscience to everyday terminology.

For the past decade, I've been trying (without much success) to make the term "cerebellar" a household word by putting the importance of cerebrum-cerebellum interplay in the spotlight. In the list below, I present three key ingredients that I speculate may have created a tipping point which could result in our "little brain" becoming the next big thing in neuroscience.

After almost 10 years of construction, Shanghai has unveiled to the public its 'earthscraper' hotel built vertically along the precipice of an underground, water-filled quarry.

Costing 2 billion yuan ($287.9 million) to complete, the 88-meter-deep hotel is located in the Songjiang district. The Intercontinental Shanghai Wonderland, also known as Shimao Quarry Hotel, has cliff-view rooms that allow guests to stare into the abyss. Prices for the suites range from 3,400 to 3,800 yuan ($489 - $546) per night.

According to British architect Martin Jochman who designed the hotel, "It's the first time to turn an abandoned quarry into a wonderful hotel beneath the ground."