If you find yourself in the reality show doldrums, pining for the rivalries of Top Chef or American Idol … perk up. The biggest reality show in Science Town kicks off October 4. That’s right: it’s Nobel prize season. Unfortunately, the decision making has gone on behind the scenes; there will be no calling in or texting to vote for your laureate of choice. Nor will you see footage of a winner answering an early morning phone call (or conversely a loser hurling a cell phone across a room). But you can comment on the winners on our website — Science News will be covering the science...

The verdict is in on this year’s Arctic sea-ice melt: third worst since satellites began keeping track of the northern polar cap in 1979. Satellites and scientists continually monitor the Arctic Ocean’s skin of ice, which melts back in the summer and expands again in the winter. Researchers have been watching the ice’s decline with increasing alarm, especially after the summer of 2007 brought a record-breaking minimum. Ice extent recovered a bit in the summers of 2008 and 2009, but the long-term trend is unmistakable: The ice is shrinking in extent as well as thinning. Thinner ice is mo...

Google’s all-seeing eye gives some people the willies. The technology megalith’s Street View provides panoramic spreads of city streets, allowing users to stroll virtually in places they have never been. Apartment hunters can peek at houses from real estate listings. The directionally challenged can look for landmarks on the way to their destinations. But Street View shows much more than what’s there. It also reveals who was in a neighborhood, and whatever they were up to, at the moment the car-mounted Google camera whizzed past. Concerns have already been raised that Street View is a d...

BLOG: Sphagnum reproduces with a bang that compensates for life so close to the ground.