While it seems like a geologically dead planet today, early in its history tiny Mercury may have been a cauldron of volcanic activity, Nasa scientists said this week. Data from the US space agency's car-sized Messenger probe's latest close encounter with the planet nearest the sun on October 6 is helping to settle a debate dating back to the 1970s over the role volcanoes played in Mercury's history.
Messenger sent back images showing extensive and deep lava flows on the surface, including hardened lava more than two kilometres deep filling a crater 100 kilometres in diameter.
The unmanned spacecraft also detected a so-called "wrinkle ridge", a long geological feature on Mercury's surface about 600 meters high, apparently caused by long-ago contraction of the planet as it cooled, the scientists said.
This was the second of three scheduled encounters before Messenger enters into orbit around Mercury in 2011. It flew past Mercury on January 14 and will return in September 2009.
Gadgets to woo eco-aware shoppers
Gadget makers showed off their green credentials at a technology show in London yesterday to try to tempt consumers worried about soaring fuel bills, climate change and the financial crisis. Amid the usual array of power-hungry televisions, stereos and computers, a handful of companies promoted hi-tech products designed to cut energy consumption.
London-based firm DIY Kyoto has come up with the Wattson, a wireless device that lets families monitor exactly how much power they are using at home. It measures electricity consumption and displays the amount of power and how much it costs on a sleek portable box with a digital screen.
The device, which costs £100, glows red when households use more power than normal or blue when they are being energy-efficient.
Paganism spreads in UK prisons
The number of prisoners who describe themselves as pagan has more than doubled in England and Wales since 2003, according to new government figures.
According to prison service guidelines, pagan prisoners are permitted to keep artefacts, including a hoodless robe and a flexible twig for use as a wand, among their personal possessions. Naked worship, known as skyclad, is not allowed.
The figures showed that 328 inmates listed themselves as pagan in 2007, up from 133 four years ago. There are around 80,000 prisoners in Britain's jails.
The figures were released before Halloween, a festival on which pagan prisoners will be allowed to choose not to work or attend education.
Happy birthday, dear goose thief
Police in Taiwan served a lonely man cake and sang happy birthday after arresting him for stealing a goose to celebrate on his own, an officer in charge said yesterday.
Police in the southern township of Neipu treated the 49-year-old suspect, surnamed Lee, on Thursday after they caught him making off with the bird from a betel nut plantation, said Hsiao Chi-liang, second in command at the local police station.
"It was his birthday and he stole it to celebrate, so we bought him a cake," Mr Hsiao said. "He was very surprised." Officers took pity on Mr Lee because he was poor, single and living in a shabby home, he added.
Nevertheless, police have sent Mr Lee's case to the prosecutor's office for possible trial.
Rare giant bat makes comeback
A giant bat with a wingspan up to 1.68 metres has made a comeback from the brink of extinction in Tanzania in a rare conservation success, an environmental group said yesterday.
Numbers of the Pemba flying fox, a type of fruit bat, have risen to 22,000 since it was rated critically endangered two decades ago when "only a scant few individual fruit bats could be observed", British-based Fauna and Flora International said.
In a release coinciding with Halloween, it said that the bat's maximum wingspan was "greater than the height of the average British woman".
The bats were once considered a delicacy and were hunted and eaten throughout Pemba island, the bats' only habitat, in the Zanzibar archipelago off Tanzania.