China will launch a mission to land on the dark side of the moon in two years' time, state media reported, in what will be a first for humanity.

The moon's far hemisphere is never directly visible from Earth and while it has been photographed, with the first images appearing in 1959, it has never been explored.

Rumors are rippling through the science world that physicists may have detected gravitational waves, a key element of Einstein's theory which if confirmed would be one of the biggest discoveries of our time.

There has been no announcement, no peer review or publication of the findings -- all typically important steps in the process of releasing reliable and verifiable scientific research.

Scientists will send a few final prods to robot lab Philae, incommunicado on the surface of a comet hurtling through space, but hopes for a reply are running out, they said Tuesday.

A last-chance maneuver was attempted Sunday to shift the tiny lander into a sunnier angle for its battery-replenishing solar panels.

A Canadian helicopter pilot has died after plunging 20 meters (66 feet) down a crevasse when he landed on a remote ice shelf in Antarctica, Australian officials said Tuesday.

David Wood, 62, was winched out of the deep crack after two hours by specialist officers from Australia's Davis scientific research station.

Forty-five whales have died after stranding themselves on a southern Indian beach, a government official said Tuesday, with local fishermen struggling to save others.

The pod of whales started beaching themselves on Monday afternoon along a 15-kilometer (9-mile) stretch of coast near Tiruchendur on India's southernmost tip.

The gut microbes of the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy found frozen in a European glacier in 1991, have shed new light on the history of human migration, scientists said Thursday.

Researchers thawed the mummy of the man, also known as Otzi, who was killed by an arrow when he was between 40 and 50 years old and hiking across the Otztal Alps between modern-day Italy and Austria.

Women are about three times as likely as men to say they are bisexual, and increasing numbers of U.S. women say they have had sexual contact with other females, new data showed Thursday.

More than 9,100 adults aged 18–44 took part in the 2011–2013 National Survey of Family Growth.

Scientists revealed Wednesday the trigger that can plunge a colony of obedient and sterile worker bees dutifully serving their queen into a chaotic swarm of sexual rebellion and regicide.

It's in the beeswax, according to a study published in the British journal Royal Society Open Science. 

Australian scientists Wednesday said they had devised an "innovative method of conservation" through feeding giant monitor lizards small cane toads so they won't be killed by larger-sized amphibians.

Cane toads, an invasive species from Central and South America that were introduced to Australia in 1935, are so toxic they can kill predators that try to eat them and are continuing to spread across northern Australia at an estimated 40-60 kilometers (25-37 miles) a year.

On billboards across the Florida Everglades, a burly Native American man pries open an alligator's mouth, pressing his face dangerously close to the reptile's 80 glinting teeth. "Adventures Await," the ads promise, as motorists whiz by.

The man's name is Rocky Jim, Jr., a 44-year-old Miccosukee Indian who has been wrestling alligators for 31 years, entertaining countless tourists from a sand pit and pond beneath a chickee hut along the Tamiami Trail, a two-lane road linking Miami to the port city of Tampa.