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The midnight sun casts a golden glow on an iceberg and its reflection in Disko Bay, Greenland. Much of Greenland's annual ice mass loss occurs through calving of icebergs such as this.

This artist's impression shows the orbits of planets and comets around the star 61 Vir, superimposed on a view from the Herschel Space Telescope

This image from NASA's Cassini mission was taken on Nov. 27, 2012, with Cassini's narrow-angle camera.

The possible quantum states of a chain of particles can be represented as points in space, with lines connecting states that can be swapped with no change in the chain's total energy. MIT researchers and their colleagues showed that such networks are densely interconnected, with heavily trafficked pathways between points.

Observations made with NIST's Electron Beam Ion Trap indicate that in ions with a strongly positive charge, electrons can behave in ways inconsistent with quantum electrodynamics (QED) theory, which describes electromagnetism. While more experiments are needed, the data could imply that some aspects of QED theory require revision.

The picture on the left shows a calm sun from Oct. 2010. The right side, from Oct. 2012, shows a much more active and varied solar atmosphere as the sun moves closer to peak solar activity, a peak known as solar maximum, predicted for 2013. Both images were captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observing light emitted from the 1 million degree plasma, which is a good temperature for observing the quiet corona.

Artist's impression of the surface of the dwarf planet Makemake.

Artist impression of European Data Relay Satellite (EDRS) system