Earth

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

Bono could become the richest musician on the planet after Facebook Inc.'s first day of trading, according to numerous reports. Elevation Partners, the investment group of the lead singer of the rock band U2, owns 2.3% of Facebook, worth an estimated $1.5 billion based on the company's IPO, according to various reports on the Web.

When Pink Floyd first took its concept album "The Wall" to the concert stage more than three decades ago, even lead singer and chief songwriter Roger Waters couldn't imagine a day when rock music might get any bigger. But 32 years later, his magnum opus about the battle between individual freedoms and authoritarian oppression has magnified beyond Waters' own expectations of yore. Now the man who once excoriated the voluminous expansion of the rock concert experience has helped institutionalize it. "I famously hated playing to large numbers of people and playing in stadiums," Waters, 68, said from a tour stop in Austin, Texas, earlier this month.

CAIRO - A mechanic hammered a fender and boys wandered amid tin and rust as Adham Bishr, his opinions flaring on an agitated afternoon along the Nile, said Egypt's next president should give him a job, not tell him how to worship God. Men gathered around Bishr in a scrap of shade, arguing over inflation and politics before disappearing into the grit and anger of a neighborhood at Cairo's edge. The men, mostly unemployed drivers, mill hands and laborers, want work; their sons, college students with dim prospects, wonder whether the future will bring enough money to take a wife.

The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis. Everywhere we look, it appears that the world was designed so that we could flourish. The position of the Earth around the sun, the presence of organic materials and water and a warm climate - all make life on our planet possible. Yet, with perhaps 100 billion solar systems in our galaxy alone, with ubiquitous water, carbon and hydrogen, it isn't surprising that these conditions would arise somewhere.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

Today, a century and a half after Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," the overwhelming majority of scientists in the United States accept Darwinian evolution as the basis for understanding how life on Earth developed. But although evolutionary theory is often portrayed as antithetical to religion, it has not destroyed the religious faith of the scientific community. According to a survey of members of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51%)

"Battleship"is not the first major motion picture to be based on a board game - who could forget 1985's benighted "Clue"? - but it is surely the most expensive. With every superhero more celebrated than Amazing-Man or the Chameleon already spoken for (ditto for hot toys like Transformers), Hollywood has fallen back on popular games as likely fodder for action epics. If "Scrabble: The Movie" or "Qwirkle or Death" appears on a future marquee, don't say you weren't warned. As its north-of-$200-million budget indicates, "Battleship" has been expanded considerably from its origins as a pre-World War I pencil and paper game to include a major alien invasion that puts the very fate of the human race at stake.

Here on Earth A Natural History of the Planet Tim Flannery Atlantic Monthly Press: 316 pp., $25

If the meek are going to inherit the earth, they'd better hurry up. CHARLES THOMAS NEWTON Del Mar

WASHINGTON - The number of U.S. satellites watching Earth is expected to plummet by 2020, and weather forecasting, including hurricane tracking, could suffer as a result, a new report warns. The study, released last week by the nation's top science advisors, estimated that the fleet of science satellites operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would "decline precipitously" from a peak of 110 probes last year to fewer than 30 in 2020. The drop is a result of several factors, including budget problems and rocket accidents, and scientists said the United States risked blurring its vision of Earth if it did not act quickly to replace satellites expected to die during the next eight years.

The biggest full moon of the year Saturday (tonight) will bring the highest and lowest of tides too. And, according to NASA Science News , dogs may howl and the bright glare of moonbeams may keep you up that night. (If you don't believe me, watch the video above that explains it.) In fact, the "perigree moon," as it's known, occurs at 8:40 p.m. Pacific time when the moon in its orbit comes closest to Earth -- and only super-keen observers will be able to distinguish it from a regular full moon.

In the Louisiana parish that was home to generations of my family, people lived hard lives as field hands or sharecroppers, laboring from "can see in the morning" to "can't see at night. " They hoed and picked cotton, corn, peas and other crops; they understood the planting cycle; they ate locally grown fruits and vegetables without ever visiting a supermarket. Long before the terms "eco-friendly" and "environmentalism" came into vogue, generations of Americans embraced the principles of recycle, reuse, reduce without ever naming them.

There is something about bright lights and loud noises that attract the child in all of us. And when they come from the heavens, they're fodder for even our adult selves. Take meteor showers, for example. Over the weekend, the Lyrids made their annual spin through the local skies, igniting the usual flashes, as they've done for some 2,600 years. This time, they also seemed to have caused an explosive boom heard in some parts of California and Nevada. This year's show was a bit more spectacular than in the past, because the moon was in a new phase -- meaning the sky was darker than usual, creating a nice, rich background that showcased the celestial sparks.

You might expect Earth Day to be trumpeted with pictures of melting ice packs, disappearing glaciers and sad-looking polar bears. But that's so 47 seconds ago. Instead, we bring you a stunning photo gallery documenting the ways in which the world's explosive population growth has aggressively changed the landscape. The aerial photos above are just one example. They illustrate deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 1992 and 2006; the clearing in the Mato Grosso state in southwest Brazil is occurring at a rate of about 22,000 square kilometers per year.

Earth Day 2012 arrives with sticker shock: Brace yourself for the $60 light bulb. Light bulb manufacturer Philips is flipping the switch Sunday on its new super-duper energy-efficient LED light bulb; that's when the bulb will go on sale at various outlets, including Home Depot . The full retail price is $60, but consumers will be able to find online deals, rebates and subsidies that will cut the price by $10 or more,  according ...

"Another Earth" is quietly and movingly out of this world. Director Mike Cahill has woven sci-fi imaginings and quantum physics theories of parallel universes into a provocative meditation on the prospect of rewriting your life history. It is no simple task to spin such abstract notions into smart (versus cheesy) entertainment, but there is such a strong creative voice stirring in Cahill's first feature that it's easy to forgive the shortcomings. The film stars the ethereal young actress Brit Marling, who co-wrote and co-produced with Cahill, and the rock-solid William Mapother (Ethan on "Lost")

As Earth Day directs our attention to how to live more gently, here are 10 tips for greener travel, gathered with the help of David Owen, author of the recently released book “The Conundrum,” and with eco-destination operators, hoteliers, travel experts and environmentalists from the Natural Resources Defense Council. 1. Make every trip count. “The environmental key to travel is not how you go, but how much you go and how far you go,” says Owen, whose book is subtitled, “How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse.” Owen notes that trains aren't necessarily greener than planes.

The very title of the subversive documentary "Surviving Progress" sounds counterintuitive. Isn't progress a good thing, the sure cure for civilization's ills? What's to survive? Plenty, according to this expect-the-unexpected Canadian film based on Ronald Wright's bestselling "A Short History of Progress. " Both brainy and light on its feet, bristling with provocative insights and probing questions, this film feels like it's expanding your mind while you're watching it. The premise of "Surviving Progress," much more dystopian in its quiet way than "The Hunger Games," is that we delude ourselves if we think the seeming improvements that growth and development bring will result in quality-of-life advances or even survival of the planet.