This 390-year-old bonsai tree survived an atomic bomb, and no one knew until 2001

Study: Humans put more trust in people whose pupil size changes to mimic their own. Related: Pupils are sphincters.

30 years ago today a microburst caused Delta Flight 191 to crash short of the runway at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Image gallery: New red/blue anaglyph 3D photos of comet 67P/C-G.

Photo: Aurora caused by a major coronal mass ejection, as seen from NASA’s Polar satellite in November 2004.

New Ebola Vaccine Has ‘100 Percent’ Effectiveness In Early Results

Philae lander detects ‘building blocks of life’ on comet 67P/C-G.

“World’s best whisky” is being sent to the ISS to be aged, to test how microgravity will affect the flavor.

Video: Beautiful time-lapse footage of storms by Mike Olbinski.

How the African National Congress used early personal computer tech to send encrypted messages in the fight against apartheid.

Snowplows called in to clear bridge of bugs during extraordinary mayfly emergence.

Photo: New Horizons imaged Pluto from the far side, revealing the dwarf planet’s thin, sun-lit atmosphere of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide.

Rare photos of the Eastland disaster, 100 years ago today (some are graphic).

Photos: The “Airplane Graveyard” in the Pacific, where surplus planes were dumped just after WW2.

A beautiful new photo of Ceres craters from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft

NASA announcement: Kepler-452b is the first near-Earth-size planet to be found in the habitable zone of star that is similar to our sun.

Researchers identify how the skin of the Texas horned lizard funnels water from the general environment into its mouth.

Animated GIF: Time-lapse of a meteor striking the atmosphere and vaporizing.

Researchers have found that a fungus is responsible for the unusual kind of ice formation known as “hair ice.”

NASA planning press conference tomorrow at 9am Pacific to announce new Kepler discovery.

New study shows that a single-celled organism with components resembling an eye acquired them endosymbiotically from other organisms. This may provide insight into the evolution of the eye.

Stephen Hawking announces $100 million hunt for alien life.

Unexpected geologically young frozen plains detected in the heart of Pluto’s ‘heart.’

Moderately interesting: Contrast in device preferences between Reddit users and Hacker News users.

Image: 360 degree animated 3D view of the icy mountains of Pluto.

Film, 1933: The first practical steam plane was so quiet “people on the ground could hear the pilot call to them from the air.”

Beautiful interactive: As you travel away from the Earth you can listen to the music which has been carried a corresponding distance by the propagation of radio transmissions.

New HD photo from New Horizons supports hypothesis that Pluto has water ice, “young” surface.

Impartial third-party analysis of our recent kerfuffle.

New photo of Comet 67P/C-G from 154km out.

In a comment thread on reddit, Alan explains the effects of being on the business end of a front-page post in one of the largest subreddits (/r/todayilearned).

Large Hadron Collider discovers “pentaquark” particle that was predicted to exist in the 1960s.

Best image of Pluto yet, HD images expected in the coming hours/days.

An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.

Photo: This canister is attached to the New Horizons spacecraft (via reddit.com/r/space).

Photo: Galaxy NGC 6744 has flocculent arms and an elongated core like the Milky Way. No other galaxy we know of more closely resembles our own.

Per Wikipedia, photos of Pluto from New Horizons will xfer at about 1 kbit/s, comparable to a mid-80s dial-up modem.

New photo of Pluto from New Horizons from 3.1 million km away.

Photos: Ruins of the Soviet space shuttle program

Image: A world map that shows only the time zones.

Audio: Why People Do Bad Things; a look at how framing shapes ethical choices.

Video: The Mechanics of the Film Projector

After a hospital error, two pairs of Colombian identical twins were raised as two pairs of fraternal twins.

Video: Sharks Discovered Inside Underwater Volcano

Pluto becoming clearer as New Horizons approaches.