The Latest Breaking News from Earth

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Around midday on June 13 last year, my colleagues and I were scanning the skies when we thought we had discovered a strange and exciting new object in space. Using a huge radio telescope, we spotted a blindingly fast flash of radio waves that appeared to be coming from somewhere…

The remains of 166 people part of a Celestis Memorial Spaceflight are presumed lost after The Exploration Company's "Mission Possible" capsule presumably crashes into Pacific Ocean.

Researchers in China have developed a way of locating giant "equatorial plasma bubbles" in the ionosphere by analyzing the vibrant airglow that forms above them. The findings could help avoid potential disasters in air travel and emergency response situations.

There is currently a 4.3% chance that the giant space rock 2024 YR4 will hit the moon in seven years. If this does happen, debris from the nuclear bomb-like impact could trigger a "spectacular" meteor shower that will endanger Earth-orbiting satellites.

Just don't zoom in when you scroll all the way back to 1984.

A walk in the desert and a curious discovery could have revealed that the secrets of alien life grow in the harshest conditions on Earth in the form of lichen.

There will be several chances to see the shadow of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, pass across the ringed planet's Earth-facing surface over the next few months. The rare spectacle is only visible every 15 years.

How common is common knowledge?