In fall 2009, the theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss gave a talk about recent discoveries in cosmology that he engagingly titled, "A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing."

The popularity of the video, viewed nearly a million times on YouTube, prompted Krauss to develop the ideas in the talk into this short, elegant account of the origins of the universe and its likely demise trillions of years from now.

The head of Russia's beleaguered space program hinted on Tuesday that foreign powers may be behind the string of failures that struck his agency in the past year.

Roskosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin told the Izvestia daily he could not understand why several launches went awry at precisely the moment the spacecraft were travelling through areas invisible to Russian radar.

It may be the ultimate paternity test for a reptile believed lost to history.

U.S. scientists said Monday an iconic tortoise that has been presumed extinct in the Galapagos Islands for 150 years may still exist, based on DNA blood samples from the giant creatures' living children.

A rare duck normally only seen in Asia has somehow turned up in California, drawing excited bird watchers from all over the U.S. and Canada to a wildlife refuge in the state's Central Valley.

Wildlife officials say a male falcated duck, a bird common in China, was first spotted at the refuge on Dec. 8.

Iran's nuclear chief says his country is willing to help what he called "friendly" African nations that have uranium reserves to set up facilities to process the ore into nuclear material.

Fereidoun Abbasi says Iran has mastered the entire nuclear fuel cycle from extracting uranium ore to producing fuel for reactors and is ready to share the technology. Abbasi's comment was reported by the semi-official Mehr news agency Saturday.

Scientists are warning that the devastating drought in Texas could threaten the world's only remaining flock of whooping cranes.

The birds eat blue crabs and berries during their annual migration to the Gulf Coast. The high-protein diet is supposed to sustain North America's tallest bird through the winter and prepare it for the nesting season in Canada. But this year, the drought has made food and water scarce.

Fast-track warming in Europe is making butterflies and birds fall behind in the move to cooler habitats and prompting a worrying turnover in alpine plant species, studies published Sunday said.

The papers, both published by the journal Nature Climate Change, are the biggest endeavor yet to pinpoint impacts on European biodiversity from accelerating global temperatures.

A bureau in charge of monitoring China's frequently smog-choked capital will release more detailed reports, state media said Friday, following a public outcry over the hazards of fine particle pollution.

Beijing's decision to publish the data appeared aimed at appeasing residents' anger over the pollution and a lack of government transparency.

Conservationists in New Zealand were struggling Saturday to save 18 long-finned pilot whales after a mass stranding in which seven of the animals died.

The surviving whales had been refloated but appeared to lack the energy to swim away, the Conservation Department's area manager John Mason said.

Japan says it will soon require atomic reactors to be shut down after 40 years of use to improve safety following the nuclear crisis set off by last year's tsunami.

Concern about aging reactors has been growing because the three units at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in northeastern Japan that went into meltdown following the tsunami in March were built starting in 1967. Among other reactors at least 40 years old are those at the Tsuruga and Mihama plants in central Japan, which were built starting in 1970.