The Martian volcano Olympus Mons is about three times the height of Mount Everest but it's the small details that Rice University professors Patrick McGovern and Julia Morgan are looking at in thinking about whether the Red Planet ever had life.

Using a computer modeling system to figure out how Olympus Mons came to be, McGovern and Morgan reached the surprising conclusion that pockets of ancient water may still be trapped under the mountain.

If there's still ancient water, there may still be ancient life, they say.   Their research is published in Geology. 

Most college students will admit to searching their couch cushions for extra coins to do laundry. But Jon McKinney's cushion hunt isn't about finding money. He wants to help epidemiologists identify what's triggering diseases like asthma in children, and he's got the backing of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Working with Dr. Glenn Morrison, associate professor of environmental engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, the junior is developing the science behind “building forensics,” an emerging field that lies at the outer edge of environmental engineering. 

Nanomaterials like carbon possess unique properties, which have led to first applications in novel electronic devices and sensors. These materials are based on ordered, atomically thin layers of carbon atoms, for example in the form of a single layer as so-called “graphene”, or rolled-up in carbon nanotubes.

The electronic properties of such structures are closely related to those of graphite, which consists of a stack of graphene sheets. Despite intensive research in the past, the fundamental behavior of electrons in this material are not fully understood and still controversially debated.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found within Saturn's G ring an embedded moonlet that appears as a faint, moving pinprick of light. Scientists now believe it is a main source of the G ring and its single ring arc. 

Natural wood, with its unique grain patterns, is what gives traditional acoustic instruments warm and distinctive sounds, while the power of modern electronic processing provides an unlimited degree of control to manipulate the characteristics of an instrument's sound. Now, a guitar built by a student at MIT's Media Lab promises to provide the best of both worlds.

A new Hubble image shows three galaxies locked in a gravitational tug-of-war that may result in the eventual demise of one of them.

About 100 million light-years away, in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish), three galaxies are playing a game of gravitational give-and-take that might ultimately lead to their merger into one enormous entity. A new image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope allows astronomers to view the movement of gases from galaxy to galaxy, revealing the intricate interplay among them.