No matter how abundant or renewable, solar power has a thorn in its side. There is still no cheap and efficient long-term storage for the energy that it generates. | Continue reading
The Best Illusions of the Year competition is nothing to sneeze at – every year a group of experts (along with internet users) vote for the most interesting and mind-melting illusions, submitted from all over the world. | Continue reading
What is it about spiders and their eight arched legs – sometimes fat and furry, or thin like dark needles – crawling close, ever closer to our skin, that provokes such fear and outright revulsion? | Continue reading
For the first time, geologists have confirmed that our planet's inner core is indeed solid - although not quite as firm as previous models have suggested. | Continue reading
Can the origin of life be explained with quantum mechanics? And if so, are there quantum algorithms that could encode life itself? | Continue reading
The remains of a child unearthed in a 5th century CE Italian cemetery are indicative of the unease that must have been felt in the region as a malaria outbreak ravaged the population. | Continue reading
Using a newly developed microscopic technique, scientists have been able to create a detailed, 4D image of early mouse embryo development, down to the single cells involved – a fascinating look into the very first stages of life for mammals. | Continue reading
It's October right now, so your doctor has prescribed that you step outside and appreciate a cloud. | Continue reading
Nobody likes getting dialled by some weirdo who won't say anything when you pick up. But sometimes, such stories have a blissfully cute ending. | Continue reading
Neuroscientists have successfully hooked up a three-way brain connection to allow three people share their thoughts – and in this case, play a Tetris-style game. The team thinks this wild experiment could be scaled up to connect whole networks of p | Continue reading
Roughly 24,000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, is a dead star that shouldn't exist. Not, that is, according to current theory. The neutron star, accreting material from a much larger binary companion, is spewing out r | Continue reading
Across the world, the buzz of bee colonies is growing faint, and hives are failing. In what's been described as "ecological armageddon", this vital pollinator is vanishing. | Continue reading
The planet is struggling. Study after scientific study warns that we've pushed far beyond the physical boundaries of what our living world can sustain. | Continue reading
One of the world's most renowned mathematicians showed how he solved the 160-year-old Riemann hypothesis at a lecture on Monday - and he will be awarded US$1 million if his solution is confirmed. | Continue reading
If you aren't fond of spiders, this scene will sound like a nightmare. A 300-metre-long (1,000-foot) field of spiderweb has sprung up in western Greece in the town of Aitoliko. | Continue reading
Why is it sometimes so hard to convince someone that the world is indeed a globe, or that climate change is actually caused by human activity, despite the overwhelming evidence? | Continue reading
Nerves that carry information from the inner ear to the brain were assumed to come primarily in two forms, called type I and type II nerves. But now an analysis of the RNA of each of these cell types in mice has revealed one of those cells isn't as i | Continue reading
Something is amiss in the state of New Mexico, and the chain of mysterious events has all the hallmarks of a sci-fi plot. | Continue reading
Within near-Earth space, there are over 18,000 asteroids whose orbit occasionally brings them close to Earth. | Continue reading
The mystery behind how birds navigate might finally be solved: it's not the iron in their beaks providing a magnetic compass, but a protein in their eyes that lets them "see" Earth's magnetic fields. | Continue reading
It was July 1969 when Neil Armstrong's boot first landed on the rocky surface of the Moon. | Continue reading
It was the early 1970s and the future of human civilisation had never looked brighter. There was only one problem. | Continue reading
It's compact, bushy, and responsible for telling other neurons to shush. Beyond that, nobody is entirely sure what a newly discovered variety of brain cell called a rosehip neuron does. | Continue reading
Scientists are usually a rather cheery bunch. But every now and then, they have a habit of wondering how the Universe might cave in and destroy us in the blink of an eye. | Continue reading
You probably use Wi-Fi on the regular to connect your smartphone, computer, or other electronic device to the glory of the world wide web. | Continue reading
The puzzle of how Einstein's equivalence principle plays out in the quantum realm has vexed physicists for decades. Now two researchers may have finally figured out the key that will allow us to solve this mystery. | Continue reading
If our Universe happened to be locked in an eternal heartbeat of expansion and collapse, black holes would leave an impression. And it could look just like a number of swirls recently detected in the faint echo of light at the edge of space. | Continue reading
The ability to reverse ageing is something many people would hope to see in their lifetime. This is still a long way from reality, but in our latest experiment, we have reversed the ageing of human cells, which could provide the basis for future anti | Continue reading
Astronomers have detected yet another mysterious and powerful fast radio burst hitting Earth from an unknown source in space. | Continue reading
By releasing specially bred mosquitoes that can't transmit viruses, scientists have been able to virtually eradicate dengue fever from the city of Townsville, Queensland, in north-eastern Australia – and they say the same methods could be scaled up | Continue reading
Two of the most bizarre phenomena in quantum physics have been brought together in a single experiment for the first time – and scientists are already using the set-up to probe the very limits of reality. | Continue reading
Poring over four decades of satellite data, climate scientists have concluded for the first time that humans are pushing seasonal temperatures out of balance - shifting what one researcher called the very "march of the seasons themselves." | Continue reading
Samples of permafrost sediment frozen for the past 40,000 years were recently thawed to reveal living nematodes. | Continue reading
A group of German engineering students won the third SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition on Sunday, as their prototype pod shattered speed records and raced through a nearly mile-long tunnel at 290 miles per hour (466 kilometre per hour). | Continue reading
For weeks, the UK has been gripped by a punishing, record-breaking heatwave. While conditions on the ground may be unprecedented, what's happening underneath it comes as an even bigger shock. | Continue reading
Archaeological digs around ancient Egyptian sites still have plenty of secrets to give up yet – like the huge, black granite sarcophagus just discovered at an excavation in the city of Alexandria, on the northern coast of Egypt. | Continue reading
Scientists have identified a key molecule exploited by HIV when the virus infects human cells, and the discovery could represent a major step forward in defeating the deadly disease. | Continue reading
Several Russian cities had a fantastic light show last Thursday, as a bright meteor burst into a fireball over the landscape. | Continue reading
An Australian invention, Seabin, which automatically scrubs floating rubbish from the ocean, already has pre-orders of 2,500 from around the world. | Continue reading
Bacteria are slippery little suckers. They evolve rapidly, developing resistance to antibiotics and therefore becoming increasingly difficult to deal with. Now, for the first time, researchers have caught on film one of the mechanisms the microbes us | Continue reading
It can be pretty frustrating when you're searching for an academic reference and just can't find it anywhere you look – but it's downright spooky if the paper you seek never existed in the first place. | Continue reading
We've all seen the Terminator movies, and the apocalyptic nightmare that the self-aware AI system, Skynet, wrought upon humanity. | Continue reading
Witnesses reported a fireball streaking across the sky above Botswana on Saturday night. | Continue reading
Sometime after August 2008, the US Department of Defence contracted dozens of researchers to look into some very, very out-there aerospace technologies, including never-before-seen methods of propulsion, lift, and stealth. | Continue reading
When Jean-Lou Justine received the first photograph of a giant worm with a head like a shovel, the biologist was astounded. | Continue reading