Snowy Owl On The Hunt

photo location:
El Paso County, Colorado, USA

It was a cold winter's day when a Snowy Owl flew low over the frozen prairie hunting for field mice and rabbits.

400 Trillion Miles Away, a Comet Storm Waters a World

An artist's conception illustrates a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi
A fusillade of comets 400 trillion miles away may be a replay of the early days of Earth

Julian Barnes wins the 2011 Man Booker Prize

Julian Barnes has won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his novella The Sense of an Ending.
The 65-year-old writer won for The Sense of an Ending, a 150-page novella about a middle-aged man looking back on his younger days.

National Geographic Expeditions Winners, 2011 Photo Contest

Expedition: Land of the Polar Bears
Tundra Trek — Brilliant day for a hike on the Arctic tundra, surprisingly alive with flora, as well as reindeer and Arctic fox. It seems the mountains make their own weather on Svalbard, or at least, cloud formations, this one no exception.

Ice Canopy, Japan

A diver explores an ice canopy off Hokkaido, Japan. The frozen seas here are a harsh realm to explore, but they’re anything but bleak, sustaining a variety of life above and below.

Meteor Shower

Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, the source of the Draconid meteor shower, is seen in a 1998 picture.

The possibility of a meteor storm has NASA and other spacecraft operators keeping keen eyes on how the Draconids might affect the International Space Station (ISS) and other satellites currently in Earth's orbit.

Nobel Prize for Literature 2011 won by Tomas Tranströmer

Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer has won the 2011 Nobel literature prize.

The academy said it awarded the 80-year-old poet "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality."
Transtromer wins the £942,000 prize - the richest in the world of books.
After publishing 10 volumes of poetry, Tranströmer suffered a stroke in 1990 which affected his ability to talk.

After a break of six years, he came back with Grief Gondola, a book that sold 30,000 copies in his native Sweden, a stunning figure by poetry standards.

Following this success, Tranströmer published nothing for eight years, except for his correspondence with Bly, before returning in 2004 with a collection of 45 haikus, Japanese-style poems invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 was awarded "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae" with one half to Saul Perlmutter and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess.

Flying House?

House off the Ground With Balloons.