A small boat with four cases of California wine has left South Carolina and will submerge the wine in the ocean for three months to age it.

California-based Mira Winery is experimenting to see how the motion, temperature and light in the ocean may affect the aging of the wine.

Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3D glasses can do all that and more.

In the system, known as CAVE2, a screen encircles the viewer 320 degrees. A panorama of images springs from 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels, conveying a dizzying sense of being able to touch what's not really there.

Astronomers searching for planets outside our solar system have discovered the tiniest one yet — one that's about the size of our moon.

But hunters for life in the universe will need to poke elsewhere. The new world orbits too close to its sun-like star and is too sizzling to support life. Its surface temperature is an estimated 700 degrees Fahrenheit (371 degrees Celsius). It also lacks an atmosphere and water on its rocky surface.

The quest for rare earths vital to some of modern life's most indispensable technologies may see mining robots jet to the stars within decades, a world-first conference in Australia was told Wednesday.

Yttrium, Lanthanum and the other 15 minerals which make up the group of elements known as rare earths are crucial to everything from wind turbines and hybrid cars to cruise missiles and the ubiquitous smartphone.

The International Space Station regained contact with NASA controllers in Houston after nearly three hours of accidental quiet, the space agency says.

Officials say the six crew members and station are fine and had no problem during the brief outage.

What do pine cones and paintings have in common? A 13th century Italian mathematician named Leonardo of Pisa.

Better known by his pen name, Fibonacci, he came up with a number sequence that keeps popping up throughout the plant kingdom, and the art world too.

Scientists have discovered a 200-kilometer-wide (125-mile-wide) impact zone in the Australian outback they believe was caused by a massive asteroid smashing into Earth more than 300 million years ago.

Andrew Glikson, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, said the asteroid measuring 10 to 20 kilometers in diameter was a giant compared to the plunging meteor that exploded above Russia a week ago.

The number of African elephants killed by poachers in 2012 will most likely be higher than the 25,000 illegally killed the previous year, the head of U.N. wildlife trade regulator CITES said Tuesday.

"Right across the range of the African elephant, in 2011 25,000 elephants were illegally killed, and based upon our analysis done so far, 2012 looks like the situation deteriorated rather than improved," said CITES Secretary General John Scanlon.

Police in Pakistan are seeking nine men who illegally killed an endangered markhor goat in a national park, officials said Tuesday.

A police case has been registered against the hunters after they killed the markhor in the Chitral Gol National Park in northern Pakistan, close to the Afghan border on Monday, wildlife officials said.

NASA, universities and private groups in the U.S. are working on asteroid warning systems that can detect objects from space like the one that struck Russia last week with a blinding flash and mighty boom.

But the U.S. space agency reiterated that events like the one in the Urals, which shattered windows and injured nearly 1,000 people, are rare.