Black hole

NASA has launched a $250-million observatory, Swift, which will gauge the violent celestial explosions that astro-nomers believe represent the birth screams of black holes. The unmanned observatory, rocketed into orbit last week, will hunt for gamma-ray bursts by January 2005 and wipe out a few mysteries surrounding these explosions.

Pigeon power

How pigeons use the earth?s magnetic field to navigate their way home over long distances has now been explained in Nature. The pigeons probably use tiny magnetic particles in their beaks to sense our planet?s magnetic field, say scientists at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. They cast serious doubts on a theory that says the birds use smell to navigate.

Tiny test tube

The world?s smallest test tube has been created by the scientists at the University of Oxford and University of Nottingham. The tube can be us-ed to create materials with novel molecular characteristics or even components for quantum computers. This is, in fact, a 2,000-nanometre-long nanotube with an inner diameter of 1.2 nanometres.