Science News

When it comes to supporting life, do planets get any better than Earth? Well, maybe. Scientists have found a few planets two to 10 times more massive than Earth that may be more hospitable to living things, a Harvard astronomer says. He calls Earth "a marginal planet" for fostering complex life forms.

Caught up in a controversy over claims that climate change data has been suppressed, the director of Britain's influential Climatic Research Institute quits pending a probe. His organization provides data that Congress and the federal government are using in efforts to curb global warming.

Scores of icebergs that prompted a shipping warning last week have been driven off the course they were following to New Zealand, thanks to strong westerly winds. "It looks like they've all disappeared east of New Zealand," an oceanographer says. The flotilla likely broke off from Antarctica in 2000, when parts of two major ice shelves fell apart, scientists say.

The public's thirst for vampires seems as endless as vampires' thirst for blood. Vampires are everywhere these days -- from best-selling novels to TV shows to blockbuster movies like "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," starring Robert Pattinson, left. But where did the modern idea of vampires come from? The answer lies in the gap between science and superstition.

Doctors may have discovered an unlikely tool to kill cancer cells: tiny metal discs, too small to be seen by the naked eye. The discs vibrate when subjected to a magnetic field, damaging and destroying the cancer cells around them. Researchers hope the technique will spare patients the painful side effects associated with radiation and chemotherapy.