hereisnowhy writes "A giant fossilized claw discovered in Germany belonged to an ancient sea scorpion that was much bigger than the average man, an international team of geologists and archaeologists reported Tuesday. In a report in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, the team said the claw indicates that sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenania was almost 2.5 meters long, making it the largest arthropod — an animal with a segmented body, jointed limbs and a hard exoskeleton — ever found. In the report, the authors said the scorpion exceeds previous size records for arthropods by almost half a meter."

The word from Bungie is that they consider the final chapter in the Halo story 99.9% complete. They're now in the home stretch, with time to polish. Says Luke Smith, "That last .1% percent is pretty important, however. Right now, some testing is being done in a controlled retail environment via our Halo 3 Epsilon. You've probably seen reports online or even folks on your friends' list playing it, so here's the scoop: The Epsilon is a closed, final phase testing for Halo 3. We won't be making the Epsilon available for public consumption, so while that's immensely disappointing for folks hoping that Friends and Family invites would be extended for the Epsilon, just know that each day you wait in agony is another day closer to September 25." Wired has a huge blowout feature on the title, with lots of screenshots, discussion of how the game was made, and more.

F4_W_weasel sends us to the BBC for news of the eighth lone neutron star ever discovered. It has no associated supernova remnant, binary companion, or radio pulsations. It's in our stellar neighborhood, at most 1,000 light years away. The object emits all its radiation (as far as wa can detect with current instruments) in X rays. The object is called Calvera, after the bad guy in The Magnificent Seven — which is itself the collective nickname for the seven such objects previously known.