Narwhals don't go to graduate school, and they're not much use as grant-writers. But they're able to do a few things oceanographers find challenging�such as dive to depths of nearly six thousand feet beneath the ice of Baffin Bay in winter. So scientists have enlisted them in gathering climate-change data in the Greenland Current.

The Tokyo-based Shimizu Corporation is one of the world's leading construction and engineering contractors. It's also a prolific producer of corporate science fiction: fanciful, high-concept design projects that offer glimpses of astonishing futures. Its "Luna Ring" envisions such a future for the moon�and for Shimizu.

Oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico? Mysterious astronomical phenomenon? Tattoo run amok? Answer after the jump.

The iconic twentieth-century computer game continues to exert an addictive appeal. And if researchers at Oxford University are right, it may be a uniquely therapeutic way to blunt the effects of traumatic experience as well.

It's sumptuous and elegant. But what is it�a puzzle or game? A clockwork cribbage player? A static electricity generator? Answer after the jump.

Pluto's loss of planetary status seemed to have been sealed by the 2006 discovery of a batch of similarly-sized planet-like objects in the same orbital neighborhood�one of which, later named Eris, was thought to be larger than erstwhile ninth planet. According to new findings, however, Pluto's diameter is larger than that of its more massive neigbhor. For now, Pluto gains in status as the largest of these so-called dwarf planets. Whether this will be enough to secure a record contract remains to be seen.

images have been important in the story of science and technology for a very long time�especially since the advent of movable type and the printing press in the West. I�m asking for help in compiling the Wonderful Gallery of Scientific Imagery. What images have had the greatest impact on the course of scientific knowledge and technological innovation?

You think your mornings are hard? Try waking up after be trapped under a glacier for five thousand years.

It's a lunar crater�in this case, a rather striking one found in the Bay of Rainbow's in the moon's northern hemisphere. But as the blazon of Chinese characters indicates, there's something different about this image. The probe Chang'e 2�named for the Chinese goddess who lives on the moon with her companion, the herbalist Jade Rabbit�is scouting sites for a planned Chinese robotic moon landing in 2013. The budget for Chang'e 2 is reportedly a mere $134 million.

Perhaps the most visceral effect Google Earth offers takes place when you open the program and that vision of the Earth from space swings into view. It's tempting to head off into space itself�but the space imagery Google includes is low-res and very incomplete. Now, two Fermilab scientists have created a layer of rich, detailed images of galaxies and galaxy clusters, using data from the Sloan Sky Survey...