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NASA gave a chance to public to name features on Pluto, like to help them name a mountain, or a crater on the Pluto's largest moon Charon. They have to do the submission until April 24.

NASA's New Horizons probe is going to reach orbit of Pluto and Charon, the dwarf planet's largest moon, and will be the first time that it will map them.

Once the data starts rolling in, names will be required, and the New Horizons Science Team will get into collaboration with the International Astronomical Union. It governs the appellations given to astronomical objects. The team has asked the public to nominate ideas and vote for their preferences here.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has come up with a particle detector that can detect the movements of individual electrons in a radioactive gas.

The machine has been designed to measure the mass of the neutrino, which is considered to be tiny even by the standards of subatomic particles.

An article was published in Physical Review Letters with a catchy title, 'Single-Electron Detection and Spectroscopy via Relativistic Cyclotron Radiation'. Through the article, boffins explained their contribution in the efforts to measure the mass of the neutrino.

Researchers have found new facts about the sexual life of cephalopods, which include squid and octopuses. While studying vampire squid, researchers came to know about some squid species that breed at the almost end of their life cycles. They put in all their energy into the creation of eggs that are released shortly before the species dies.

However, such is not the case with vampire squid that is found in oxygen-depleted environments, 600 to 900 meters below the sea surface. They enjoy their sexual life with their partners throughout their lives.

Henk-Jan Hoving of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, said, “Their slow mode of life seems insufficient to support one big reproductive event, unlike other coleoid cephalopods”.

Recently found Bronze artifacts in Alaska and carbon dated to about 1,000 years ago have provided evidence that suggests that trade routes existed between East Asia and northwestern North America long before the coming of Christopher Columbus.

It has been considered that the first Americans caused a land bridge between Asia and Alaska about 15,000 years ago. According to researchers, the land bridge wiped out 10,000 years ago and it has been suggested that goods and ideas continued to flow back and forth between the two continents after the land route was gone.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe has caught a rare image of dust rising from the Comet 67P’s surface. The image shows an interesting cosmic ‘burp’ of dust and gas caused by its ongoing warming while approaching the sun.

ESA scientists said that the comet-hunting spacecraft caught the rare instance of a dust jet at the moment of its creation.

At present, the comet is four months away from its closest approach to the sun. It has produced many such jets from its sun-facing side, but this latest jet was seen originating from the dark side of the comet. Scientists have called it a valuable opportunity for gathering new understanding of the comet's dynamics.

Holger Sierks from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany said that this was a chance discovery.

As per a Discovery news report, scientists claim that the strontium (atomic) clock has become so accurate and stable that for the next 15 billion years, not even a single second will be gained or lost by the clock.

According to the report, atomic clocks usually operate by measuring the vibrational frequency of atoms as these atoms move between different energy levels. These atoms could be strontium or cesium. As expected, every atom oscillates at very high frequencies billions or trillions of times per second.

According to a study by scientists on the clock, “This enhanced stability will not only bring the accuracy of the time to a new level. It will also allow the atomic clock one day replace the current time measurement reference, the cesium standard”.