The hype is beginning to invade the cultural landscape like bio-engineered kudzu: the end of the world is a mere three years away.

In late December, 2012, thanks to an unusual celestial alignment – or maybe just the expiration date of the Mayan calendar – our planet will be wracked and ruined. Look on the bright side: you can blow off your estimated tax payments for that year.

Hollywood producers – never ones to miss a silver lining – are hoping to make some hay with Earth’s imminent quietus. A soon-to-be-released film, bearing the inventive title “2012”, will let you see just how visually stunning doomsday can be.

Read Complete Story.

NASA/JPL News on Dana Backman's upcoming paper on asteriod belts around Epsilon Eridani.

SETI Institute scientists Kathy Rages and Mark Showalter are members of a team studying new Keck II telescope images of Uranus to probe the seasonal dynamics of Uranus.  Read the article from the University of Wisconsin.

Click for larger image

A two-hour observation of Jupiter using an improved technique to remove atmospheric blur has produced the sharpest whole-planet picture ever taken from the ground, according to astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, the SETI Institute (Franck Marchis), and the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

UC Berkeley Press Release

ESO Press Release