A new solar car is ready to be put to the test. A team of mechanical engineers from MIT is preparing their creation for Australia's World Solar Challenge. Eleanor was born in a dull basement underneath some labs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also known as MIT. But Eleanor is ready for a bright challenge as she's to compete in the 'World Solar Challenge' next September. The solar challenge is a grueling 7-day, 3,000-kilometer car race across the Australian Outback. The race is a testing ground for the latest in efficient solar-powered car design. [Fiona Hughes, MIT Mechanical Engineer]: "Eleanor is definitely pushing the limits of what can be done with solar panels and solar power." Eleanor has 6 square meters of silicon solar panels with about the same watts as a hair dryer. While it may not seem like much power, Eleanor's weight, just over two hundred kilograms, and aerodynamic design allow it to speed down a highway just as fast as many petrol-based cars. [Fiona Hughes, MIT Mechanical Engineer]: "Using just power from the sun, Eleanor can cruise without draining power from her battery pack at about 50 miles per hour. If we were draining power out of the pack we would be able to reach higher speeds, possibly to 70-80 miles an hour." So apparently, the real beauty of Eleanor is her battery pack. [George Hansel, MIT Physics Major]: "Our battery pack is composed of more than 600 cells from laptop batteries. They are lithium-ion cells and they give us an equivalent of about 6 to 7 times that of a normal car battery. But is only twice to three times as heavy." MIT has been competing in the race since 1987, and Eleanor is the 10th design students at MIT will race in Australia. http://utube-youtube.com/video/0i4Tq5XkXfM/MIT-Engineers-built-Solar-Race-Car-named-Eleanor.html

A bustling airport would hardly seem the place to find a new species of reclusive animal, but a team of California biologists recently found a shy new species of legless lizard living at the end of a runway at Los Angeles International Airport. What's more, the same team discovered three additional new species of these distinctive, snake-like lizards that are also living in some inhospitable-sounding places for wildlife: at a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield, among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley and on the margins of the Mojave desert. http://utube-youtube.com/video/bZ8ViVnQaKs/New-Species-Of-Legless-Lizard-Found-At-LAX-Los-Angeles.html

Perhaps the methane simply disappears quickly on Mars, through some unknown chemical process. 'It’s possible that we don’t understand something that’s going on in the Martian atmosphere