Bill Condie

For demanding futurists like Anton van den Hengel, the revolution cannot come quickly enough.

For someone who spends his life working with robots, Anton van den Hengel sure is rude about them. “They are really, ...

New route of contamination could spread pollutants further.

We’ve become sadly familiar with the ease with which microplastic pollutants (MP) can be ingested in by aquatic organ...

New research is delving into the little know cryovolcanism of the outer solar system.

The dwarf planet Ceres has had as many as 22 ice volcanoes, new research suggests.Images from NASA’s Dawn mission has...

Engineers in US develop chemical and energy-free alternative antifreeze technique.

Researchers in the United States have come up with the first passive anti-frosting surface which could revolutionise ...

Changes to gut biota found with regular use of disinfectants.

Household cleaners could be responsible for making children overweight, by changing their gut microbiota, medical res...

Historian Billy Griffiths delivers a uniquely human and humane perspective on archaeology. Bill C...

We often think of science as a forward-facing discipline, bringing the promise of tomorrow and the solutions to the p...

Bacteria immune to the effects of antibiotics are rising.

A superbug is usually defined as a microorganism that’s resistant to commonly used antibiotics – but not all superbug...

Machine learning and deep neural networks are helping roboticists create machines that can see th...

Remember The Jetsons – the animated sitcom that reflected popular 1960s imaginings that technology had all the answer...

Wolf Nation looks at America’s complex 300-year relationship with the wolf and the fight to bring...

NON-FICTIONWolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolvesby BRENDA PETERSONHachette - Merloyd Lawre...

'A clear and compelling narrative that encapsulates a snapshot of the state of our current knowle...

The people living in the region around the Dordogne River in Southwest France, home to many prehistoric sites, feel s...

While you don’t need to know any science to take the tour, there is plenty here for those who do,...

NON-FICTION Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss & J. Richard Go...

Ever wondered what our canine pals smell through their super-sensitive snouts, and how they do it...

NON-FICTIONBeing a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell by Alexandra Horowitz Simon & Schuster (2016) RRP $3...

Bill Condie reviews the book behind the 2017 film.

Non Fiction Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Raceby Margot Lee...

A great thinker, Albert Einstein closed his mind to other schools of thought. Bill Condie reviews...

NON-FICTION Einstein’s Greatest Mistake: The Life of a Flawed Genius By David Bodanis Little, Brown (2016) RRP $35.0...

Six gloriously illustrated science books on the Cosmos Christmas wishlist, reviewed by Bill Condie.

NON-FICTION Story of Life: Evolution Illustrated by Katie Scott The Five Mile Press RRP $24.95Another stunner from Th...

A previously unknown ability to boost the immune system gives hope that an old treatment could he...

A German soldier is loaded into an ambulance for transport to a field hospital during the Great War. German chemists ...

The incidence of multidrug-resistant TB is far higher than earlier estimates suggest, a new study...

X-ray of lungs and thorax with upper lobes – tuberculosis on both sides.Ernst-Georg KohoutResearchers have sounded a ...

A new study warns of 7.8 magnitude quake if two faults ruptured together. Bill Condie reports.

The collapsed Cypress Freeway in Oakland after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which killed more than 60 people and ...

A new organ matching guide based on genetics could improve chances of long-term functionality and...

Up to a half of all kidney transplant patients will be back on the waiting list for a new organ within 10 years. A ne...

A new theory would explain the mass anomaly on the dwarf planet. Bill Condie reports.

This high-resolution image captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft combines blue, red and infrared images taken by...

NON-FICTION In Praise of Simple Physics: The Science and Mathematics behind Everyday QuestionsBy Paul J. Nahin Prince...

Andrew Brookes/Getty ImagesNew rules governing clinical trials will come into force in the US in the New Year, which ...

NON-FICTION Lolcatz, Santa, and Death by Dog: Strange and true tales from science and technology by Andrew Masterson ...

NON-FICTION The Manga Guide to Regression Analysis By Shin Takahashi and Iroha Inoue No Starch Press (2016) RRP A$32...

Engineers have turned to the octopus for inspiration in the first of a potentially new generation...

In this image octobot's pneumatic network is shown in pink.Ryan Truby, Michael Wehner, and Lori Sanders, Harvard Univ...

Our circadian rhythms may inadvertently allow viruses to replicate faster at some times than othe...

CRADDOCK TONY/Getty ImagesThe time of day we are exposed to a virus may affect how we respond to it and how sick we b...

Sediments in Yellow River gorge support oral histories that go back to the founding of Chinese ci...

Jishi Gorge upstream the landslide dam. The grey silt deposits dozens of metres above the water level are lacustrine ...

An analysis of bones on the South Island may solve the riddle as to why the birds were not transp...

A red junglefowl rooster, ancestor to modern domesticated chicken Gallus gallus, part of the Introduced wild populati...

NASA's spacecraft is halfway through the first of its two 'capture orbits' and now on the way to ...

Juno spacecraft's orbits include two long capture orbits.NASA/JPL-CaltechThe Juno spacecraft has turned a corner. Hav...

The star system AR Scorpii was discovered 40 years ago, but it took a group of amateur astronomer...

An artist’s impression shows the strange object AR Scorpii – a double star system combining a rapidly spinning white ...

X-ray data showing small, old stars behaving in an unexpected way has forced a rethink into the n...

An artist's illustration depicts the interior of GJ 3253, a low-mass red dwarf star about 31 light-years away from Ea...

The first-ever DNA study of ancient rice sheds new light on where the crops came from. Bill Condi...

Japanese short-grain rice, Oryza sativa or japonica – one of the two main cultivars in production today.ULTRA.F/Getty...

Visitors to the Olympics should have few concerns about contracting Zika, but inhabitants of the ...

Favelas such as Roccinha in Rio de Janeiro provide ideal conditions for the spread of Zika among inhabitants, but vis...

NON-FICTION The Last Man on the Moon By Eugene Cernan and Don Davis St Martin’s Press (2000) RRP $24.99 This highly ...

One of the brightest objects in the universe will deliver pinpoint accuracy to navigation over 15...

The ESA's deep space tracking station in Argentina with, inset, Quasar P1514-24 on the guidance map.ESA/D. PazosQuasa...

The gravitational pull of the sun and the moon has a tidal effect on the Earth's crust that gives...

The San Andreas fault at Parkfield, which appears as a seasonally dry creek bed.Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times via ...

NON-FICTION Lure of the Thylacine: True stories and legendary tales of the Tasmanian tiger by Col Bailey Echo Publish...

DNA analysis of Neolithic skeletons has unearthed a previously unknown population group that intr...

Rice paddy near Yasuj in the Zagros Mountains in what is today Iran. The mountains are the site of some of the earlie...

A galaxy 'built in reverse' with youngest stars on the inside is unlike anything astronomers have...

In optical light, UGC 1382 appears to be a simple elliptical galaxy (left). When astronomers incorporated ultraviolet...

A previously unknown subduction zone deep beneath eastern Bangladesh has been building up strain ...

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is a hive of multistory buildings housing around 17 million people in the greater D...

A Kuiper Belt object on a vast elliptical 700-year orbit around the sun may give new insights int...

The orbit of the dwarf planet, currently known as 2015 RR245, shown as an orange line. ALEX PARKER/ OSSOSA dwarf plan...

Electronic data storage devices, such as USB sticks, could benefit from switching between states....

ruthyoel / Getty ImagesA discovery by Japanese scientists could double the storage capacity of USB flash drives by co...

A gas giant 340 light-years from Earth in a complex star system has one of the widest orbits of a...

An artist's impression of the triple-star system HD 131399 from close to the giant planet orbiting in the system.Euro...

NON-FICTION South Pole: Nature and Culture by Elizabeth Leane Reaktion Books (2015) RRP $29.99 There is something i...

The structures protecting the fruit from the heavy impact of falling from a coconut palm could be...

The ladder-like design and angle of the vessels in coconut shells helps to dissipate energy.Plant Biomechanics Group ...

The spacecraft that opened up the mysteries of Pluto is now on course to rendezvous with a myster...

An artist’s impression of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO), located on the outer rim of our solar system at a staggering di...

Scientists are a step closer to understanding when Homo floresiensis vanished and modern humans t...

A Homo floresiensis skull from a mould made from fragments of the skull of Homo floresiensis, a hominid species found...

Were the long entrance passages to ancient tombs designed to make faint stars clearer to the nake...

The red giant star Aldebaran dominates the picture of stars in the constellation of Taurus.Monsignor Ronald Royer/Get...

A new source of this rare but vital gas has been identified.

Vast helium reserves have been discovered in Tanzania that scientists say will rescue the world from a critical short...

The Mars rover Curiosity has discovered a vein of manganese oxides that could have only formed in...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover at a location called "Windjana", where the rover found rocks containing manganese-oxide m...

New modelling sheds light on the ocean beneath Enceladus as another study points to the likelihoo...

Icy Enceladus, just 504 kilometres across, hangs in the space between the spacecraft Cassini and the giant planet Sat...

Astronomers are studying the first dark vortex to appear this century. Bill Condie reports.

Neptune photographed by the Voyager 2 probe in 1989, with the 'Great Dark Spot' (also known as GDS-89) visible at the...

NON-FICTIONThe Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up Toby Dean Burnett Allen & Unwin (2...

Hekla usually erupts every 10 years or so, but is overdue – the last event was in 2000. A geologi...

Snow capped Hekla volcano lies quietly, but could erupt at any time scientists say. Despite this deceptively peaceful...

Astronomers used X-rays to discover how the debris in an accretion disc flows towards the centre....

An artist's impression of the thick accretion disk that has formed around a supermassive black hole following the tid...

Discovery could shed new light on the behaviour of the rare ultra-magnetic pulsars. Bill Condie r...

The Crab Nebula is the best-known wind nebula. At its centre is a rapidly spinning neutron star that accelerates char...

An unexpectedly powerful force helped suck even large molecules from the planet's atmosphere. Bil...

An artist's concept of the electric wind at Venus. Rays represent the paths that oxygen and hydrogen ions take as the...

Humans played their part, but were not the only reason for the collapse of populations in Patagon...

A guanaco in Patagonia today. The animals' earl ancestors only survived here because they arrived after the competiti...

The space agency has marked a return to its X series of experimental aircraft that could improve ...

This artist's concept of NASA's X-57 Maxwell aircraft shows the plane's specially designed wing and 14 electric motor...

A new study shows the presence or absence of a specific bacteria turns on and off behavioural pro...

Lactobacillus reuteri had a dramatic affect on the behaviour of mice. Photo ResearchersOne specific species of gut ba...

...by an asteroid that tracks our every movement. Bill Condie reports.

As we orbit the Sun, a little asteroid orbits us, scientists have discovered, in a dance that will go on for centurie...

A sudden flare up of a distant star resulted in heat so intense its changed the chemistry of its ...

Researchers found that FU Orionis has dimmed by about 13% in short infrared wavelengths from 2004 (left) to 2016 (rig...

'Fossils of the universe' may hold the key to the origins of life, Harvard scientists suggest. Bi...

The transit of Venus over the skies of Santa Monica beach, California. We could spot dark carbon planets passing in f...

There is a pattern to dust storms on Mars and they can affect the entire planet. Bill Condie repo...

Comparison images of Mars taken in 2001 by the Hubble Space Telescope show the planet, left, a global dust storm engu...

A new NASA study tries to work out what the atmospheres of 'hot Jupiters' have in common. Bill Co...

Hot Jupiters, exoplanets around the same size as Jupiter that orbit very closely to their stars, often have cloud or ...

DNA analysis has finally settled decades of archaeological debate. Bill Condie reports.

A reconstruction of Oetzi the Iceman, a close relation to the ancient farmers who came to Europe. ANDREA SOLERO/AFP/G...

NON-FICTIONThis Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progressedited by John BrockmanHarpecollins (201...

Georgia Tech mathematicians have offered a proof for graph theory's Kelmans-Seymour conjecture. B...

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We mark the anniversary of the first American spacecraft's lunar landing with a look at the histo...

An artist's impression of Surveyor 1 on the lunar surface ready to transmit data to Earth.PIERRE MION/GETTY IMAGESIt ...

The emergence of the first strain of bacteria resistant to colistin is causing alarm among health...

A coloured scanning electron micrograph shows E. coli bacteria, a new strain of which is resistant to all known antib...

The changing times suit the clever cephalopods, which are proving adept at adapting to a warmer c...

Giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama) males fighting. A collapse in its population led to the surprising discover...

A new algorithm may make forecasting tsunamis faster and more accurate. Bill Condie reports.

Tsunami evacuation route sign on the road to Tofino, British Columbia.Alasdair TurnerSeismologists have created a new...

Genetic analysis of a skull in Romania suggests that a group of early humans may have returned to...

The female skull from the Pestera Muierii cave. E. TRINKAUS AND A. SOFICARUWhile it is well-known that early humans m...

Could life and biological processes complete the electrical circuit that powers a vast hidden sea...

An enhanced-colour view from NASA's Galileo spacecraft shows an intricate pattern of linear fractures on the icy surf...

NASA's pioneering spacecraft takes a new image of a tiny Kuiper Belt object that is orbiting the ...

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is starting to send back information about an object in the Kuiper Belt that is orbiti...

Supercharging conversion of carbon dioxide to sugars could dramatically improve crop yields.

A pyrenoid (blue) is seen in a cross-section of an algal cell by false-coloured electron microscopy. The pyrenoid sit...

Twenty punters collectively picked the top four horses in this year's race using a platform devel...

Mario Gutierrez rode Nyquist (purple helmet) to victory, with Exaggerator (green helmet) second in the 142nd Kentucky...

A distant, dark new world is larger than we thought, and its surface could be covered with volati...

An artist's conception of 2007 OR10. Astronomers suspect that its dark reddish colour is due to the presence of irrad...

NASA has doubled the number of confirmed exoplanets it has identified and now scientists say ther...

An artist's concept depicts a selection of planetary discoveries made to date by NASA's Kepler space telescope. NASA/...

Viewing the eruptions from Saturn's moon against the backdrop of a star has shown how they change...

Narrow jets of gas and icy particles erupt from the south polar region of Enceladus, contributing to the moon's giant...

Adding organic material makes for a better 3D-printed scaffold than plastic alone, US researchers...

A sample 3-D printed scaffold that matches the lower jaw of a female patient. – Johns Hopkins MedicineChoice of mater...

Pluto's outermost moon has a surface dominated by pristine water ice, latest analysis confirm...

Pluto’s moon Hydra as seen from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. – NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI The latest data about th...

Scientists did not think Pluto had the gravity to hold on to heavy ions, but once again the dwarf...

Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph...

Genome of 51 individuals shows population movements driven by climate change. Bill Condie reports.

Three approximately 31,000-year-old skulls from Dolni Věstonice in the Czech Republic. For the next 5,000 years, all ...

New modelling may provide an explanation for one of the most mysterious features on the Moon'...

An image of the Reiner Gamma lunar swirl from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. – NASA LRO WAC science team ...

Cambridge scientists are edging closer to understanding two mysterious ultra-luminous X-ray sourc...

An artist’s impression depicting a compact object – either a black hole or a neutron star – feeding on gas from a com...

Scientists have mapped data from tiny grains of magnetite in a breakthrough that could give us in...

The history of the Earth’s magnetic field is indelibly written in vortex-like structures inside grains of the iron ox...

A pioneering oceanographic study of one of Saturn's moon's seas gives a clearer picture o...

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Usually there is a gap in coral reefs at the mouth of rivers. So scientists were amazed to find a...

The Amazon deposits three million tonnes of sediment every day into the Atlantic Ocean. This outpouring of water and ...

A new study of a fossilised baby titanosaur suggests it required little attention from its parent...

Graphic comparing size of a baby and adult Rapetosaurus to a person – Raul Martin and Kristina Curry Rogers ...

Seismologists gather to discuss a raft of measures to manage risk. Bill Condie reports.

Devastation in the wake of the 2011 Japan tsunami led to the development of a risk management plan in the US. – Getty...

MIT researchers have found a way to treat different types of coal into semi-conductors with diffe...

Anthracite is one of four types of coal. It is the hardest type of coal with the highest carbon content. – Science Ph...

NON-FICTIONCure: a journey into the science of mind over bodyby JO MARCHANTText Publishing (2016)RRP $32.99 ...

New experiments suggest gravitational pull may be generating more heat than previously thought. B...

A colourised surface image of Europa shows the blue-white terrains which indicate relatively pure water ice. – NASA/J...

Stem cell discovery could transform the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Bill Condie reports.

A micrograph of a section through the human pancreas shows the central purple "Langerhans islets", which contain the ...

Habitat will be attached to the International Space Station to test  durability in the extremes o...

This artist's concept depicts the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), constructed by Bigelow Aerospace, attach...

A system that creates momentum for a spacecraft by repelling protons in the solar wind could get ...

NASA has begun testing components of a new propulsion system that could see spacecraft ride the solar wind into inter...

Boeing and NASA join forces to test lightweight, low drag, stiletto-shaped wings that could repla...

Greg Gatlin, NASA aerospace research engineer from NASA's Langley Research Center, inspects the truss-braced wing dur...

A combination of genetic modification and immune system suppression appears to have overcome reje...

Pig-to-human heart transplants could lie in the future. – Pan Hong/Getty Images Animal-to-human organ trans...

Scientists have discovered why certain animals came through a massive and sudden change of climat...

An illustration of a Lystrosaurus, an early ancestor of mammals which dominated ecosystems in the recovery after the ...

The European Space Agency says a possible binary system would be the first seen in our nearest ne...

Inset shows the light curve of the source, a possible neutron star, as analysed by XMM-Newton's European Photon Imagi...

Two new developments could take the guesswork out of detecting recent brain injury. Bill Condie r...

Chicago Bears' Jay Cutler sustains a concussion on a sack by New York Giants' Aaron Ross in 2010. – Brian Cassella/Ch...

Gum and bone structures will be made to order, reducing the need for invasive surgery to replace ...

Saso Ivanovski with a bio-printed section of jaw. The breakthrough could save patients' teeth. – Murray Rix ...

Lightweight elastomer could be used for a wide range of flexible electronic devices. Bill Condie ...

Graphene has been hailed a wonder material, but has yet to make the leap from lab to real world. Researchers in Austr...

Engineers claim a flying wing, currently being prepared for a new round of test flights, could dr...

Rsearchers David Lee, Golda Nguyen and Scott Gleason recover the Prandtl-D No. 3 after one of its first flights. – NA...

The discovery of an infected mosquito show the origins of the disease are much earlier than previ...

A 15- to 20-million-year-old mosquito Culex malariager, discovered in the Dominican Republic preserved in amber, and ...

Warmer conditions due to climate change are not combined with droughts the way they have been in ...

Bordeaux's grands crus classés – and humbler wines across France – are enjoying a series of excellent vintages as cli...

The discovery of a mechanism that creates natural layers in coatings could lead to improved indus...

Henrik Sorensen/Getty Images It turns out watching paint dry can be pretty exciting, at least if you are a ...

The violent region at the centre of our galaxy is the prime candidate, after gamma ray analysis, ...

Photo montage of gamma-rays as measured by the HESS array on the night sky over Namibia, with one of the small HESS t...

Observations from Earth-based telescope show the light's intensity changes as the day goes by...

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By 2050, half the world's population will suffer from short-sightedness, a new study suggests...

Getty Images The incidence of myopia, or short-sightedness, is increasing significantly around the world, ...

Scientists have discovered a microbe that has evolved to break down PET. Bill Condie reports.

Plastic waste pollutes Labuan Bajo beach on the Indonesian island of Flores. – Tristan Savatier/Getty Images ...

Astronomers using a new imaging technique have been given their sharpest-ever glimpse of an old s...

The inset shows the VLTI reconstructed image of the close pair of aging stars IRAS 08544-4431 with the brighter centr...

An ambitious European mission to Mars is designed to gather evidence as to whether life has ever ...

Artist's impression depicting the separation of the ExoMars 2016 entry, descent and landing demonstrator module, Schi...

NON-FICTIONAdam Spencer’s World of Numbersby Adam SpencerXoum (2015)RRP $34.99Broadcaster and science geek Adam Spenc...

A brain-machine interface has translated thoughts into commands to drive a robotic device that gi...

Rhesus monkeys were trained to control wheelchairs with thoughts to get grape rewards. – Intangible Creations!! / Get...

A new computer simulation of past volcanic activity has led to a major rethink of how the Red Pla...

Global mosaic of 102 Viking 1 Orbiter images of Mars. At the centre is Valles Marineris, with the three Tharsis volca...

Brain scans reveal dogs process information from facial expressions in much the same way that hum...

– WIKICOMMONS Most dog lovers are convinced their pets understand themand that they react to facial expres...

NASA has commissioned the design of a low-noise supersonic aircraft that could overcome commercia...

More than 40 years after the Anglo-French-designed jetliner Concorde made its first commercial flight, NASA has put s...

A new algorithm helps to identify the language of each pod of whales. Bill Condie reports.

A long-finned pilot whale surfaces. A new study analyses differences in communication patterns. – Science Photo Libr...

New study suggests we maligned the extinct animal, which was at least as smart as a pigeon. Bill ...

A museum employee looks at a Dodo in display at the 'Extinction: Not the End of the World?' exhibition at The Natural...

An analysis of what were thought to be spear points suggests that they were rather general tools ...

Moai statues on Easter Island. – Image Source/Getty Images For decades we have been told that the Rapa Nui...

Exciting data continue to flood in from the New Horizons' mission as scientists grapple with ...

The new geological map covers the left side of Pluto’s heart-shaped feature. – NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI NASA scient...

New analysis starts to fill in details of who came to the Eternal City and from where. Bill Condi...

The skull of a 35- to 50-year-old male who was buried in a cemetery in the modern neighbourhood of Casal Bertone, in ...

Mars' Noctis Labyrinthus – the "labyrinth of the night" – is a hauntingly beautiful place wit...

This image shows sharp detail of landslides in the steep-sided walls of the flat-topped graben in the foreground, and...

Contrary to the song As Time Goes By, a sigh is not just a sigh: it’s a vital reflex that keeps u...

Sighing is an emotional response to things like exhaustion and despair. It also has a physiological purpose. – aydiny...

As the mosquito-borne zika disease spreads across South and Central America, a Brazilian city is ...

The Brazilian city of Piracicaba is expanding the use of genetically engineered mosquitoes to control mosquito borne ...

NON FICTIONThe Quotable FeynmanEdited by Michelle FeynmanWith a foreword by Brian Cox and reflections on Richard Feyn...

NON FICTIONFish Sticks, Sports Bras and Aluminum Cans: The Politics of Everyday Technologiesby Paul R. JosephsonJohns...

Bill Condie reviews the Discovery Science documentary series Impossible Engineering

HMS Queen Elizabeth – Discovery Channel Impossible Engineering Discovery Science (2015)This has potential ...

A traditional indigenous healing treatment kills 16 strains of bugs, Canadian researchers discover.

The clay from Kisameet Bay, British Columbia, with apparent antibiotic powers. A rare clay used by indige...

The prophet of the computer age.

Detail of a model of Babbage's difference engine. – Getty Images The Science Museum in London is celebratin...

Bill Condie discovers the surprising pleasure of pondering questions we cannot answer.

NON FICTIONEven More Things That Nobody Knowsby William HartstonAtlantic Books (2015)RRP $34.99It turns out there are...

New Zealand is famous for its glow worms that can be found across the country in caves, on the damp, overgrown banks ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf2oMz_ECSQ&feature=emb_title Wim van Egmond’s microscopic video of a Trachelius ...

Reddit user Muppaphone caught the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Entomology Collection having a laugh by inclu...

The launch window for the European Space Agency's next Mars shot is fast approaching, with 14 March the first availab...

Giant melting icebergs may be nutrient factories that are helping to slow the rate of climate change even as warmer w...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lebUfMmdJEA&feature=emb_title The European Space Agency has another exciting year...

Palaeontologists have unearthed a massive ancient crocodile that would have weighed in at 3,000 kilograms and been ne...

An ancient mutation that occurred a billion years ago may have set the stage for multicellular life according to new ...

Mars' seasonal cap of carbon dioxide ice sublimates – goes directly from ice to gas – every spring. The process erode...

NASA has released more stunning images from the New Horizons spacecraft of the remarkable varied surface of Pluto. Th...

Drilling technology designed for the European Space Agency's Mars probe could deliver a portable charger that could r...

OSIRIS wide-angle camera image taken on 16 December 2015, when Rosetta was 111.9 kilometres from the nucleus of Comet...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is providing dramatic images as it weaves its way through a field of steep shifting sand ...

Bill Condie discovers that children do not necessarily have the advantage when it comes to learni...

NON FICTIONBecoming fluent: How cognitive science can help adults learn a foreign languageby Richard Roberts and Roge...

Australian science agency the CSIRO reports that its research ship, the RV Investigator is off to spend the  southern...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j5-rRiUNbU&feature=emb_title What's Up for January? A meteor shower, a binocular...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SY7ojOx6mo&feature=emb_title Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition ...

This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a new ga...

Bill Condie reviews a book examining how the science of medieval Islam helped to shape the Wester...

NON FICTIONLight from the East: How the science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western world, by John FreelyI....

The crew at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) will be working throughout Christmas and New Year. ...

Flight engineer Tim Kopra and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly successfully moved the International Space Station'...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B6oiLNyKKI&feature=emb_title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCBE8ocOkAQ&featur...

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has made its closest pass to the dwarf planet Ceres. It is also its last fly-by of the body.Th...

NASA says it won't be ready for the 2016 launch window for its Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geod...

Physicists of the University of Luxembourg have discovered a material with special electric properties, which might l...

Curiosity rover has found much higher concentrations of silica at some sites the rover has investigated in the past s...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has begun transmitting data and images from its final close fly-by of Saturn's active moon ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvYCI6sFmnk&feature=emb_title By any standards, 2015 was an exciting year for spa...

An ancient thighbone found in China adds to evidence that prehistoric humans existed on mainland Eurasia at the same ...

A new study suggests that bilingual stroke patients are almost twice as likely to recover than those who spoke only o...

Engineers from the University of North Dakota are evaluating their space suit design that would be worn by NASA astro...

NASA has released this image of Earthrise over the lunar surface, taken by the agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ...

High-energy X-rays (magenta) coming from a supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy are captured by NASA's ...

This high-resolution swath of Pluto (below) sweeps over the cratered plains at the west of the hemisphere imaged by t...

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Nepal in April 2015 triggered far fewer landslides and much less damage to glacial la...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivw7AzkykOY&feature=emb_title NASA has a long history of transferring technologie...

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a cosmic double-bladed lightsabre-like phenomenon emanating from the heart of a...

Three new crew members have joined existing astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).The men - one Rus...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P32j17Fl5L0&feature=emb_title NASA explains the complex process of making a space...

Bill Condie reviews a book about how to survive the possible impacts of climate change.

NON FICTIONThe handbook: Surviving and living with climate change by James Whitmore and Jane RawsonTransit Lounge Pub...

Three new crew members will arrive at the International Space Station today after taking off from the Baikonur Cosmod...

Bill Condie looks at a mathematical colouring book, a sci-fi anthology and more.

FICTIONAlice’s adventures in Wonderland: 150th anniversary edition
By Lewis Carroll, Illustrated by Salvador Dalí, Ed...

A range of 3D printers are now within reach of ordinary households. Bill Condie describes some co...

The future has arrived. A range of 3D printers are now within reach of ordinary households, but the technology is sti...

Methane emissions from cattle in Australia are 24% lower than previously estimated, new research suggests.An update o...

Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly of NASA captured this image from aboard the International Space Station on Saturd...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKC85-jnPpU&feature=emb_title Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will lead a new comp...

The microscopic, plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton bloom across the North Atlantic in spring and autumn.Thi...

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRIThe image above is the highest resolution yet of the pitted surface of a section of Pluto's heart-sha...

Astronomers have discovered giant storm raging across the face of a small, cool, distant star."The star is the size o...

A pesticide used before the early 1980s may be associated with signs of Parkinson's disease, according to a new study...

The Alaska Salmon Program of the University of Washington each year conducts surveys of sockeye salmon during their r...

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released this image of Venus was captured by the Akatsuki spacecraf...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8er_0yY1S1o&feature=emb_title Scientists working on NASA's Dawn mission have foun...

Young men whose mothers smoked during pregnancy had lower aerobic fitness compared to those whose mothers did not, ac...

Doctors in Australia have developed a new lifestyle risk score that can be used to predict risk of mortality.The scor...

The latest NASA research suggests that we may have been overestimating the amount of carbon stored by temperate US fo...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has sent back images of Saturn's tiny moon Prometheus that is just 86 kilometres in diamete...

Researchers have found that older people who spent time walking or jogging perform better in memory tests.The study, ...

Slowing growth in emissions from China has led to the first decline in carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere in a de...

NASA has released this composite image of Saturn's moon Titan, an infrared view acquired during Cassini's flyby on 13...

Six gloriously illustrated science books on the Cosmos Christmas wishlist. By Bill Condie.

NON-FICTIONAnimalium by Katie Scott and Jenny BroomFive Mile Press RRP $39.95Gloriously illustrated, Animalium is pre...

Hawaii's supreme court has put a question mark over the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) project by ruling that the const...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNBA-kzGtTM&feature=emb_title Some days at the office as a marine scientists can ...

Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft, a commercial resupply mission for the International Space Station, launched successf...

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRIThe highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft yet to be released shows in detail t...

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which earlier this year sent back ...

These two videos from National Geographic's award-winning multimedia coverage of cheetahs shows the science of the bi...

The combined power of NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes has been used to image the faintest object ever seen...

The lift-off today of the European Space Agency's LISA Pathfinder mission will pave the way for future missions by te...

The guide on Antarctica Flights, Diana Patterson, is well qualified to explain the frozen landscape unfolding below. ...

The common cuttlefish hides from sharks by shutting down its own electrical field, US scientists have discovered.Comb...

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, has been NASA's main Sun-watching mission for 20 years and it is sti...

A rare cloud formation known as a Fallstreak Hole has been sighted over eastern Victoria in Australia.Dozens of peopl...

Organic flaxseed oil could be a new line of defence against the superbug golden staph (Staphylococcus aureus) accordi...

Bill Condie reviews a book that celebrates the ship - and the scientists - who have explored Anta...

NON FICTION Southern Surveyor: Stories from Onboard Australia's Ocean Research Vessel by Michael VeitchCSIRO Publishi...

Astronomers have discovered a black hole that grew much more quickly than its host galaxy, a finding that calls into ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3FOHU4BHtU&feature=emb_title F. Paul, The Cryosphere, 2015 & USGS/NASA Th...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AifKYs1OYuY&feature=emb_title The BBC introduced a robotic model of an emperor pe...

Hundreds of robots will arrive in Sydney in 2019 to battle for the coveted RoboCup – the football World Cup for robot...

NASA has completed its so-called Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of polar ice. The mission was actually two o...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9p4bYPl1s0&feature=emb_title Scientists are hoping gene technology and plant bre...

New studies suggest that a person’s position among siblings has a lasting impact on their life, Oxford University's s...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI3KtR3LoqM&feature=emb_title The production of gas means that your body is hosti...

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope caught this curious galaxy, the result of a merger of two smaller ones. The process h...

A rocket belonging to Blue Origin, the private-spaceflight company owned by Jeff Bezos, has for the first time succes...

The 2016 Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel cell car has gone on sale in California but faces stiff odds odds against it's su...

NASA has produced this graphic showing the paths by which carbon has been exchanged between Martian interior, surface...

A mathematics student has worked out the secrets of how chocolate behaves in a chocolate fountain, showing they are m...

Australian scientists may have come up with a way to protect the Great Barrier Reef from the dangerous run-off into r...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwoghxwETng&feature=emb_title The slow mo guys have created a fire tornado and fi...

The European Space Agency has released this image focusing on a section of Aurorae Chaos and Ganges Chasma on Mars. I...

A new crew has arrived at the Concordia Antarctic research station. It includes a doctor, Floris van den Berg, who is...

Ancient fossil forests, thought to be partly responsible for one of the most dramatic shifts in the Earth's climate i...

Astronomers have been surprised by the power of a magnetic field generated by a dim, cool red dwarf star located abou...

Even with identical meals, everyone metabolises them differently, and every diet should be tailored for a person's un...

The James Webb Space Telescope's telescope structure was lifted and lowered by crane onto the bright yellow optical a...

An animation shows how a proposed constellation of satellites with thermal infrared imaging sensors would locate wild...

Swedish researchers have found a way to coat medical implants and prostheses to prevent the build-up of a biofilm of ...

A German research group has discovered the two key mechanisms for the loss of capacity in lithium ion batteries and h...

European Space Agency materials specialist Tommaso Ghidini has given a TEDxESA talk on 3D printing for space, explain...

ESA/Rosetta/MPS The Rosetta spacecraft orbiting the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko...

Astronauts often comp-lain that they eyesight becomes blurry in low gravity, a problem scientists will have to solve ...

Scientists have uncovered evidence that jellyfish have actually devolved over the centuries to become a microscopic p...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ung-PySdOLA&feature=emb_title Scientists at Australia's peak government science a...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ1n2W-BaYA&feature=emb_title The European Space Agency has used data from both t...

Data from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-1A shows one of Greenland’s glaciers – Zachariah Isstrom – is losing f...

An unidentified piece of space junk will hit the Earth's atmosphere later today over the Indian Ocean about 100 kilom...

New Horizons scientists have made this false colour image of Pluto using a technique called principal component analy...

A rocky planet 1.2 times the size of Earth orbiting a nearby red dwarf star is being hailed by astrophysicists as one...

This image from the European Space Agency's land monitoring mission Sentinel2-A shows the Nile delta, illustrating gr...

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has detected a monstrous new cloud of frozen compounds in the low- to mid-stratosphere of S...

Most inner moons in the solar system keep one face pointed toward their central planet, but this animation by NASA sh...

A map just published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface shows the path that the Ebola virus took during the ou...

NASA scientists have released new modelling that suggests the long, shallow grooves lining the surface of Martian moo...

Scientists in Australia have caught and tagged two critically endangered spear tooth sharks – the first adults of the...

Researchers have used electron microscopy to develop a unique way to build 3-D structures as small as one to two bill...

Baby birds that grow up with food shortages become fatter in later life than those that were well-fed as chicks, rese...

NASA scientists have presented more details of Pluto’s long history of geologic activity at the 47th Annual Meeting o...

Yemen is facing its second tropical cyclone in a a week as Cyclone Megh strengthens off the coast.Cyclone Chapala las...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted relics from the earliest days of our galaxy right at the heart of the Milky...

A baby girl in the UK has been cleared of leukaemia following an experimental immunotherapy using gene-edited cells.I...

New research suggests that fitful, broken sleep – such as getting up every few hours to a newborn baby – may be worse...

A burglary at his home gave materials scientist Dr Kang Liang reason to develop a new forensics technique that makes ...

NASA has given us a closer look at one of the tools – a set of robotic eyes – that could be used for satellite servic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rttkpPFNkmY&feature=emb_title The American Chemical Society's Reactions series, c...

Earthquakes might make regions more prone to landslides well into the future, research by scientists at Cardiff Unive...

Scientists have so far been unable to explain why this manta ray, filmed swimming off the coast of Lady Elliot Island...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Ez9VnWQMs&feature=emb_title The European Space Agency is setting a course for J...

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission (GPM) core satellite data has been used to create a video showing the de...

NASA will soon begin accepting applications for the next class of astronaut candidates as the agency prepares to ramp...

Scientists have for the first time measured the force of interaction between pairs of antiprotons and have found it i...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tmbeLTHC_0&feature=emb_title NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), that keeps...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDE2DOICuc&feature=emb_title Cuttlefish survive by being able to blend into thei...

The publishing industry has responded to the Einstein anniversary with gusto. Bill Condie reviews...

In case you hadn’t noticed it’s been 100 years since Albert Einstein submitted the final version of his world-changin...

Mammoths were not receiving enough essential chemical elements in their diet by the end of their reign, thanks to sho...

An archaeologist in Florida has turned to ancient animal bones in an attempt to find out more about the daily lives o...

Volkswagen's use of software to evade emissions testing of its vehicles will directly contribute to 60 people across ...

International Space Station Expedition 45 Commander Scott Kelly took this selfie during a spacewalk this week.Sharing...

The 2015 Antarctic ozone hole area was larger and formed later than in recent years, according to scientists from NAS...

European Space Agency comet-chaser Rosetta has unexpectedly detected abundant molecular oxygen in the coma of comet 6...

NASA has tested components for a methane-powered engine that could be used for Mars landers.The space agency has neve...

An astrophysics student at the Australian National University has turned to artificial intelligence to help her to se...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk5I62PPMH4&feature=emb_title Scientists have developed a "sonic tractor beam" ca...

Australia's new Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, has advocated an end to the use of fossil fuels, but acknowledges th...

The Cassini-Huygens mission has just returned to Saturn's icy moon Enceladus for a flyby of i...

This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows battered terrain around the north pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus....

Outside the International Space Station, cameras captured dramatic views of Hurricane Patricia at on 23 October as th...

Giant fossilised teeth of the megalodon have washed up on a beach in North CarolinaTeeth of a giant prehistoric shark...

This image of Kerberos was created by combining four individual Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) pictures tak...

Wearable health monitoring electronics are rapidly becoming less obtrusive and the wearers will soon simply not notic...

Earth is an oddity, arriving early in the evolving Universe, a new theoretical study suggests.Based on an assessment ...

The Australian government has taken its offer to spend A$4 million on a research centre to be headed by climate chang...

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, mission has shed new light on how the solar system and its heliospher...

Scientists have read the first Eurasian vulture genome, discovering the unique make-up that allows them to digest rot...

The Australian Prime Minister's Prize for Science and Prize for Innovation are announced today, along with a number o...

It's time for the Orionid meteor shower again. It appears every year in October when the Earth travels through the de...

An orange pigment found in lichens and rhubarb called parietin could slow the growth and kill human leukaemia cells, ...

Scientists say they have found evidence that life may have begun on Earth 300 million years earlier than previously t...

The European Space Agency has just released this image, captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera about its Mars ...

The 1997 and 2015 El Niño animations were made from data collected by the TOPEX/Poseidon (1997) and the OSTM/Jason-2 ...

Bill Condie reviews a book that looks at the origins and status of Australia's native dog.

NON FICTIONThe dingo debate: origins, behaviour and conservationBdited by Bradley SmithCSIRO Publishing (2015)Anyone ...

A new lightweight, stretchable material with the consistency of memory foam could be used to make artificial organs, ...

Tesla's model S isn't the world's first autonomous system, but its super-advanced cruise control system, called Autop...

Last Friday, astronaut and commander of the current International Space Station's Expedition 45 crew, Scott Kelly, ch...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has begun returning its best-ever views of the northern regions of Saturn's moon Enceladus....

The latest image of Pluto is taken from the centre of Pluto’s heart feature, which NASA scientists are calling Sputni...

Survivors of Ebola may carry the virus in their semen for months after they recover, according to a study published i...

NASA's image of the day looks back to 15 October 1997 and the launch of a Titan IVB/Centaur carrying the Cassini orbi...

Southern Ocean sea ice cover reached its yearly maximum extent on 6 October at 18.83 million square kilometres, NASA ...

Thanks to iflscienc.com for pointing out this video taken from a drone of China's huge 500-meter aperture Spherical R...

New Horizons spacecraft, having left the Pluto-Charon system, is now destined to meet another Kuiper Belt Object, but...

Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have produced new maps of Jupiter using  annual "portraits" of the gia...

Kelsi Singer, from NASA's New Horizons science team, has been blogging about craters and what they can tell us about ...

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing has released details of Microlattice, a new material it has developed, which it says is ...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft today begins the first of three close encounters with Saturn's moon Enceladus with images e...

Aspirin, or acetylsalicylic acid, has been something of a wonder drug – one of the oldest and most commonly used medi...

The image above of the shifting sands on the surface of Mars was taken by NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Expe...

One of the best ways to learn about robotics is to build your own robot. Bill Condie surveys the ...

Jeffery Phillips Robotics is complex and multi-disciplinary, combining engineering, construction, electroni...

Scientists have used a gene editing technique to improve the chances of the successful transplant of pig organs into ...

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the Int...

Oxford University student science magazine Bang! Science reports on a review in Trends in Pharmalogical Sciences disc...

The first of NASA's new mini satellites that was launched last week has radioed back to confirm it is in orbit and op...

A new study confirms that Mars was once, billions of years ago, capable of storing water in lakes over an extended pe...

Elephants have extra copies of a gene that encodes a well-defined tumour suppressor, p53, a new study has found, whic...

“NASA is closer to sending American astronauts to Mars than at any point in our history,” says NASA Administrator Cha...

NASA has released the first colour images of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes, providing new insights about the dwarf planet...

The European Space Agency has released this image from its SMART-1 mission that orbited the Moon. At the centre of th...

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for their work on mapping how cells repair damaged ...

New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) runs a competition to choose the best photo...

Fast-moving waves racing through a dusty disc surround a young star have baffled scientists who have never seen a fea...

A new study has found that those consuming the same calories and doing the same exercise were 10% heavier in 2008 tha...

Japan's Takaaki Kajita and Canada's Arthur McDonald have won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery tha...

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has compiled a survey of wildlife discovered by scientists across Bhutan, north-...

Images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft of Charon, Pluto's moon and the largest satellite relative to its planet ...

One of the challenges of a NASA mission to Mars will be providing heat shield to protect spacecraft entering the plan...

Climate change is wreaking havoc on bumblebees and flowers in the Colorado mountains, with a study comparing 40 years...

Tim Flannery looks on the bright side. Bill Condie reviews his latest book on climate change.

NON FICTIONAtmosphere of hope: Searching for solutions to the climate crisisBy Tim FlanneryText Publishing (2015)Hope...

NASA researchers have replicated the bubbling chimney-shaped structures on the seafloor to investigate how the very f...

A study has shown that chimps prefer the taste of cooked food begging the question why they never learnt to do it for...

NASA researchers recently launched a helium-fileld scientific balloon to the edge of space to discover if bacteria mi...

Jellyfish are among the oldest creatures on the planet, but also subject to less research than most animals and scien...

Viruses lying dormant inside the human genome may “reawaken” to cause motor neuron disease, according to new research...

Galaxy clusters, huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter, are the largest structures in the Univer...

Canadian researchers hope that their work will lead to a test to identify at-risk infants."It shows there's a short, ...

The team behind NASA's Dawn spacecraft this week are at the European Planetary Science Conference in Nantes, France, ...

A supercharged ash cloud sparks stunning lightning strikes at an erupting Chilean volcano in what is known as a "dirt...

One less obvious challenge to people landing on Mars is the adaptation to gravity after a long space flight and wheth...

UK building materials company Tarmac has developed a new kind of concrete that instantly soaks up thousands of litres...

Marine biologist David Gruber was filming coral off the Solomon Islands for National Geographic when he encountered a...

The European Space Agency is highlighting a computer simulation of what it would look like when two black holes the s...

Now that we know what to look for, there is evidence of downhill water flows in many places on Mars. Here, the dark, ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDv4FRHI3J8&feature=emb_title Scientists brief reporters at a media conference to...

Bill Condie reviews a droll history of inventions.

Imagination and a pile of junk: A droll history of inventors and inventions, by Trevor NortonCoronet (2015)Trevor Nor...

It turns out fish are a co-operative lot and look out for their mates' best interests.New research from the ARC Centr...

The enamel that protects our teeth may have evolved from the scales of ancient fish, a new study published in the jou...

New Zealand and British scientists say they have discovered the first direct evidence of a fungus that helps provide ...

NASA released this image of the perigee full moon, or supermoon, seen next to the Empire State Building at the beginn...

The internet is buzzing with speculation about what important science announcement NASA will make later today, that i...

Customised implants created with the help of a 3D printer have helped injured nerves regenerate in rats, MIT Technolo...

California sea otters have the densest fur of any mammal on Earth, allowing them to live in cold water even though th...

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced colour view of Pluto that combines blue, red an...

NASA is going to Mars, and astronaut Buzz Aldrin couldn't be happier about it.But the Apollo 11 moonwalker also has s...

Veil Nebula debris is one of the best-known supernova remnants, deriving its name from its delicate, draped filamenta...

Quadcopters team up to build a rope bridge in the ETH Zurich Flying Machine Arena.A motion capture system collects in...

A plant-eating dinosaur uncovered in northern Alaska has been found to be a distinct species from dinosaurs elsewhere...

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego have designed tiny machines that could one day clean up carb...

The illustration shows Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (left, top) based on four images taken by Rosetta's navigation...

Scientists are puzzled by an increased rate of X-ray flares from the giant black hole at the centre of our Milky Way ...

If you have to sit down for long periods, make sure you don't sit still. That is the message from a study published t...

Chinese scientists say the continental shelf beneath East China Sea and South China Sea collided with the continent 1...

Household vinegar is deadly to the destructive crown of thorns starfish, Australian scientists have discovered, givin...

Leafcutter ants don't eat the leaves they cut and cart away. Instead they use them in sophisticated farming operation...

NASA has stepped in to reassure the planet that there is no threat of an asteroid strike this month, despite viral in...

Researchers have teleported quantum information over 100 kilometres of optical fibre – four times further than the pr...

Safe, consumable electronics, such as those powered by the charged ions within our digestive tracts, could be used in...

The BullseyeBore is a drill attachment that uses lasers to tell you if you’re drilling straight. The attachment can b...

In a rare piece of good news on climate change, a paper in the journal Current Biology suggests that the loss of sea ...

A team of Canadian astronomers has given us our best view yet of an exoplanet orbiting its star 60 light years away.A...

On 27 September there will be a very rare event in the night sky – a supermoon lunar eclipse,  the first in more than...

Plans are in place to resume Concorde flights by 2019, a British newspaper reports.The iconic aircraft, the world's o...

Even before all the potential uses of graphene, the reigning king of wonder materials, have been worked out, there is...

French photographer Luc Jamet has beaten over a thousand amateur and professional photographers from around the globe...

The Mississippi swamplands are recorded in this Sentinel-2A "colour vision" image as part of the European Space Agenc...

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRINASA/JHUAPL/SwRIThe images above was taken just 15 minutes after New Horizons' closest approach to Pl...

A team at MIT has unveiled a first of its kind optically transparent glass printing process called G3DP.The additive ...

In 2013, a group of Stanford students launched a weather balloon outfitted with several cameras into space as part of...

A group of friends build the first scale model of the solar system with complete planetary orbits on a dry lakebed in...

The European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory – SOHO – detected its 3000th comet this week.In ano...

Scientists have established a link between infection with the bovine leukaemia virus and human breast cancer.In the s...

A PhD student at the Australian National University has resurrected an ancient Irish musical instrument, by 3D printi...

=A common microbe could soon be living in two places at once like Schrödinger's cat in the baffling quantum theory th...

An unusual light signal coming from the centre of a far-off galaxy alerted scientists to a binary black hole system w...

NASA has been putting its latest drone technology through its paces with a prototype system of its Detect-and-Avoid (...

A reduced fear of humans makes for more productive farm animals, a new study of the domestication process shows.Resea...

Researchers are more sure than ever that a global ocean lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn's geologically active mo...

The West Virginia Mountaineers, winners of NASA's 2015 Sample Return Robot Challenge, will be recognised for their ac...

The Pearl River delta in 1988NASAThe delta in a 2014 Landsat 8 image shows the extraordinary pace of urbanisation. NA...

A New Zealand study shows that Argentine ants, one the most invasive and damaging ant species in the world, host  a v...

A new report led by University of Arizona researchers compares the 2015 snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Ca...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTAhl1Ud5QY&feature=emb_title Ridley Scott, director of the 20th Century Fox film...

Astronomers have discovered a distant massive galaxy cluster with a core bursting with new stars, as it grows by feed...

Is it possible to expand the potential of your own brain? Bill Condie reviews a DVD series that t...

Todd Sampson experiments on his own brain in the interests of science. – Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment ...

NASA scientists have tested a gas generator – a key part of the F-1 rocket engine of the type that that propelled the...

A starving female polar bear.Kerstin Langenberger PhotographyThis shocking picture of a starving polar bear was taken...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYPI0LDBSCQ&feature=emb_title "When there are nine people aboard the Internationa...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has discovered sandstone formations that shows texture and inclined bedding structures ch...

A Spanish cancer patient has had his sternum and rib cage replaced with a 3D printed titanium version in a world-firs...

A sweeping view by ESA’s Mars Express extends from the planet’s south polar ice cap and across its cratered highlands...

Scientists have discovered a new human-like species in a burial chamber deep in a cave system in South Africa that is...

The Sentinel-2A satellite has transmitted new images of a huge algal bloom in the Baltic Sea caused by warm weather a...

Cod stored in the the Tudor warship Mary Rose was caught as far away as Newfoundland in eastern Canada, a new study h...

Clinical trials for a dengue fever treatment could start within a year, following a discovery by scientists at Austra...

Almost half of the risk of developing testicular cancer comes from the DNA passed down from our parents, much more th...

NASA is using data from the Dawn spacecraft to investigate more closely the bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres th...

An image from ESA’s Planck satellite of the two Magellanic Clouds.ESA and the Planck CollaborationThe European Space ...

The first TEDxESA conference will take place on 11 November at the European Space Agency's technical headquarters in ...

We've written before about how octopuses and cuttlefish change colour to provide their famous camouflage.Back in May,...

This diagram shows the seven pieces of Orion’s primary structure and the order in which they are welded together. NAS...

Seven weeks after New Horizons sped past the Pluto system, the mission team has begun intensive downlinking of the te...

Sharks and stingrays can detect tiny electric currents radiating from animals like prawns and small fish and use it t...

Messier 96 is of about the same mass and size as the Milky Way. It was first discovered by astronomer Pierre Méchain ...

Scientists have used a high-speed camera to film hummingbirds' aerial acrobatics at 1,000 frames per second.They can ...

Yesterday we reported on NASA's new analysis of the rocks of Mars to test the theory that carbon sequestration accoun...

Electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have demonstrated a new wireless communication techn...

Online scuba diving magazine Dive.In put together this info graphic on some of the most amazing things about our oceans.

Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on early Mars reacted with surface rocks to form carbonate, thinning the atmospher...

ESA’s billion-star surveyor, Gaia, has completed its first year of science observation in its main survey mode. ...

Chameleons don't change colour to match their environment – it's just the opposite. How do they do it? By manipulatin...

Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos, Andreas Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency) and Aidyn Aimbetov of the Kazakh Space Ag...

Cancer researchers in Sydney are launching a research program aimed at tackling the most serious cases of infant, chi...

Scientists at the University of Oregon say a type of tiny jellyfish - colonial siphonophores - that swims rapidly by ...

Nature Conservancy Australia's 2015 reader submitted photographic competition was judged by renowned nature photograp...

Coffee drinking has been linked to greater risk of heart attacks in young adults with mild hypertension.Lucio Mos, a ...

While the image is stunning, it has a practical purpose, too. By timing transits in the Saturn system, scientists can...

Nearly 60% of seabird species – 80 out of 135 – have plastic in their gut, according to researchers by 2050 virtually...

Bill Condie reviews Life's engines, a book about the importance of microbes to evolution.

Life’s engines: How microbes made Earth habitableBy Paul G. FalkowskiPrinceton University Press (2015)Long before the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVWFvKxrcLg&feature=emb_title NASA has developed a new material with the ability ...

Researchers in Boston have found that osteoarthritis patients who had total knee or hip joint replacement surgery wer...

Tributes are flowing in for Oliver Sacks, the eminent neurologist and author, who died on Sunday, aged 82.Sacks, who ...

One month before Katrina.NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Su...

Bouree Lam at The Atlantic asks whether the number of retractions of research papers is increasing because of more mi...

University of Oklahoma astrophysicist and his Chinese collaborator have found two supermassive black holes in Markari...

The genetic structure of plant populations can change within 15 years.

The genetic diversity of wild plant species could be altered rapidly by climate change, according to a study by the U...

A new study of experiments in the Large Hadron Collider suggest that some particles – leptons, to be precise – are be...

For the third time in less than two months, researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, have ...

NASA has completed the first developmental test series on the RS-25 engines that will power the agency’s new Space La...

Allonautilus scrobiculatus off the coast of Ndrova Island in Papua New Guinea.Peter WardBiologist Peter Ward has reco...

European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen will spend 10 days in space on a mission to the International Space ...

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have released a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope of the Twin Jet Ne...

Seas around the world have risen an average of 7.6 centimetre since 1992, with some locations rising more than 23 cen...

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego have 3D-printed a school of fish-shaped micro-robots that ca...

Murderers who kill their partners or other family members have a significantly different psychological and forensic p...

You could escape a black hole, Stephen Hawking says in a theory Gizmodo describes as "fantastically insane".The famou...

NASA researchers in California are using an updated version of a 150-year-old German photography technique – schliere...

An international team of scientists led by the University of Bayreuth in Germany has created the highest static press...

Blind people do categorise people by race, but it is a much slower process than with a sighted person, a sociologist ...

NASA and University of California, Irvine researchers have uncovered a strong link between high wildfire risk in the ...

Australia’s national science agency CSIRO has glued computer chips to the backs of 15,000 bees in a bid to discover w...

Bill Condie reviews a handbook to the Universe.

NON FICTIONThe Universe in your hand: A journey through space, time and beyondBy Christophe GalfardMacmillan,(2015)No...

Hubble images show the spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427  and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it in t...

Project Sunroof uses information in Google Maps to figure out how much sun falls on a roof. It takes into account stu...

A team of mathematicians recently discovered a new kind of pentagon capable of tiling a plane.“Aside from the practic...

Cosmos contributor and physicist Cathal O'Connell is part of a team that includes world class surgeons, biologists, b...

Last year Cosmos magazine featured the IceCube Neutrino Observatory a US$271 million project to drill down two and a ...

This year marks 50 years of successful NASA missions to Mars starting with Mariner 4 in 1965.Since then, a total of 1...

They might look modest but these louvres are an essential key technology enabling ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, that is t...

Concordia station in Antarctica is one of the most remote places on Earth to live, but that is what makes it so attra...

This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn's icy moon Dione, with giant Saturn and its rings in the...

The tumours of mice with colon cancer diminished with size and number when the animals were fed cranberry extracts, i...

A novel synthetic DNA vaccine has been shown to induce protective immunity against the Middle East Respiratory Syndro...

A new study questions whether advertising featuring sex and violence is as effective as that with neutral themes. The...

To mark the release of The Martian, a movie about an astronaut marooned on Mars where only science and innovation can...

Julien MauveFrench photographer Julien Mauve has imagined a world where Mars is just another tourist hot spot and a b...

An optical engineer inspects the surface of two polished test mirror segments for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWS...

NASA is inviting people to add their names to a silicon microchip headed to the Red Planet aboard the InSight Mars la...

NASA has released new imagery of the surface of Saturn's moon Dione taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraf...

The “drinkable book”, containing pages of paper that can be used to purify sewerage into drinking water, is being hai...

Agricultural biotech giant Monsanto is developing "genetic sprays" that use RNA interference – known as RNAi – to com...

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer – known as LADEE – found neon in the lunar atmosphere during it...

Scientists fear there could soon be a large explosive eruption from the volcano Sakurajima.The Japan Meteorological A...

Psychologist Melanie Tannenbaum has taken a look at the psychology of why presidential hopeful Donald Trump is riding...

It all depends on whether you cut with or against the grain of the muscle. Cutting against the grain provides many sh...

Hubble Space Telescope has zoomed in on spiral galaxy NGC 428, approximately 48 million light-years away from Earth i...

A team of astronomers has discovered a Jupiter-like planet within a young system that could help us better to underst...

The RS-25 engine for NASA’s new rocket, the Space Launch System, is one of the most complex and efficient rocket engi...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will make its final close fly-by of Saturn's moon Dione next Monday when it will come withi...

NASA have released this image, a ten-second exposure, of a meteor streaking across the sky above Washington, DC durin...

Nine and 10-year-old children who are aerobically fit tend to have significantly thinner grey matter than those who a...

New research suggests that the pursuit of wealth was not the only driver of the Viking hit-and-run raids on monastic ...

Contrasting images taken a year apart clearly show the increased activity on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko as it ha...

This video taken by photography service Melbourne Aerial Video in Australia shows what it must be like to be a small ...

New grippers, using technology inspired by the tiny hairs on the bottom of geckos' feet that allow the lizards to cli...

Astronomers have identified the smallest supermassive black hole ever detected in the centre of a galaxy, which they ...

The European Space Agency will save around €15,000 ($16,600) a year just by replacing fluorescent and halogen lights ...

Australian scientists have created the world's first digital map of the composition of the floor of the world's ocean...

Scientists have since the 1950s known that Rapid Eye Movement sleep is the time when dreams are most vivid, but they ...

A giant survey involving many of the world's most powerful telescopes has found that the Universe is slowly dying, wi...

UK scientists believe that ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), a drug that is used to treat liver disease, may also slow the...

Astronauts Scott Kelly, Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan sample the fruits of their labor after harvesting a cr...

The Little Gem Nebula is located in the constellation of Sagittarius, roughly 6,000 light-years away Earth.This Hubbl...

Scientists have discovered that the shape of an animal's pupils is related to whether it is hunter or hunted.An analy...

Astronauts on the International Space Station will today harvest a crop of lettuce – the first fresh food grown in th...

MIT Technology Review takes a look at work by Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University enabling two types of robots ...

NASA’s Planetary Atmospheres and Outer Planets programs are funding new research into Jupiter's mysterious Great Red ...

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the center of the Lagoon Nebula, a deceptively tranquil name for...

Rather than an isolated incident, the destruction of the hitchBot this week represents a fairly common phenomenon – r...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMdhQsHbWTs&feature=emb_title The DSCOVR project, the deep space climate observat...

The second-generation Chevrolet Volt can travel 85 kilometres on a full charge, according to EPA testing, nearly 40% ...

India continues to pay tribute to its former president APJ Abdul Kalam, popularly known as "Missile Man" for his work...

The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager instrument on MSG-4, Europe's latest geostationary weather satellit...

An international team led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences has found that the consumption of...

Earthworms can digest plant material that most other herbivores cannot thanks to certain molecules in the earthworm g...

Chronic marijuana use by teenage boys does not appear to be linked to later physical or mental health issues such as ...

A process in the brain could help rescue lost memories or bury bad memories, a team of scientists says. That could pa...

Vesuvius, overlooking the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, has not erupted since 1944, but that doesn't mean it is no...

These three images of the dunes in the Libyan desert were provided by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2A mission...

The European Space Agency has released this colour-coded topography map of a portion of the region known as Terra Sir...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0_454EDwkk&feature=emb_title Researchers have created a robot that can jump on w...

Scientists have pieced together the continent of Pangea (which mean "all land" in Greek) that existed 250 million yea...

Phytoplankton blooms in the North Sea tend to be most abundant in late spring and early summer due to high levels of ...

Geochemistry of soil in the wake of the 2011 tsunami that ravaged northeastern Japan has given new insights into the ...

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii have independently confirmed the discovery of a...

The University of WA oceanography department is using special reverse computer modelling to re-create the drift of wr...

The American Chemical Society explores what tattoo ink is made of, why this body art is permanent – whether you like ...

The 3D-printed house took just 10 days to print, and three hours to assemble.

CNWest Chinese media are reporting that a 3D-printed house has been assembled in Xi’an, capital city of Shaanxi prov...

New imagery from the Cassini spacecraft shows unexplained arc-shaped, reddish streaks on the surface of Saturn's icy ...

Scientists have been amazed to find that a group of lizards, preserved in amber for 20 million years, are identical t...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will today start preparations for the arrival of the next Mars lander, InSig...

A photograph, taken by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station, highlights the Kamchatka Peninsula in fa...

More than 1,000 of the leading researchers in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have published an open letter...

Bill Condie reviews the documentary Uranium: Twisting the dragon's tail.

Derek Muller, documentary presenter, wears protective clothing as he walks through the deserted streets of Fukushima,...

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRINASA/JHUAPL/SwRIThe latest images released by NASA of Pluto, taken from the New Horizons spacecraft, ...

The site of a 23,000-year-old camp of hunter gatherers on the shores of the Sea of Gallilee in Israel suggest that wh...

The discovery of a four-legged fossil of a snake suggests it may have evolved as a burrowing animal rather than a mar...

Astronomers have found a close cousin of the Earth – a rocky planet circling its star in the "Goldilocks zone" where ...

Scientists have developed a technique to capture 3D images of the structures of nanocrystals – tiny particles that co...

These images are just a small selection from the exhibition at the UN Visitors’ Lobby in New York – My Planet from Sp...

The antenna that will connect Europe’s BepiColombo with Earth is being tested for the extreme conditions it must endu...

NASA is working on a new class of robotic probe designed to stay aloft in a planet's atmosphere for a long time witho...

Carbon released by burning fossil fuels could soon make radiocarbon dating impossible, scientists warn.Fossil fuels e...

Derek Muller of the YouTube science channel Veritasium explains the Magnus effect with a graphic example of basketbal...

Ignorance of the transmission of deadly diseases between wildlife and livestock and humans is putting lives at risk, ...

The original Americans came from Siberia over a land bridge in a single wave no more than 23,000 years ago, at the he...

Pluto has another mountain range, new images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft confirm.The mountains are situated o...

Russian entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking have intensified the search f...

Anthropologists are hopeful they have discovered the remains of Alexander the Great's father.A new analysis of bones ...

A 14,000-year-old molar of a young man shows the earliest evidence of dentistry, a new report says."It predates any u...

A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side o...

Bill Condie reviews an evolutionary detective story.

NON FICTION Cuckoo: Cheating by NatureBy Nick DaviesBloomsbury (2015)At first glance, 257 pages may seem rather more ...

Dead galaxies in a cluster about 300 million light years from Earth could be packed with dark matter, keeping them fr...

The triumph of the New Horizons mission, that flew within about 12,000 kilometres of Pluto last week, was the result ...

The war against genetically modified organisms is full of fear-mongering, errors, and fraud, writes Slate’s William S...

The world's largest bumblebee, South America’s Bombus dahlbomii, is facing extinction, with scientists unsure of how ...

New Scientist asks why, when girls do better than boys at maths and science in earlier years of high school, so few g...

North-eastern China continues to amaze scientists with its rich treasure trove of feathered dinosaur fossils. The lat...

This new image of an area on Pluto's largest moon Charon clearly shows a depression with a peak in the middle, shown ...

While our attention has been focused on the remarkable fly-by of Pluto by spacecraft New Horizons, NASA's other missi...

NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory Ahead (STEREO-A) spacecraft collects images in several wavelengths of ...

A new malaria drug, currently undergoing phase II clinical trials in humans, could provide a long-lasting one shot pr...

Scientists and politicians gather in Melbourne, Australia, today to discuss the country's threatened plants and anima...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoCj6_UF2YA&feature=emb_title NASA has put together this animation, combining var...

The first high resolution images of Pluto taken by spacecraft New Horizons during a fly-by of the dwarf planet have a...

Scientists warn that unless humans slow the destruction of Earth's plant life, civilisation as we know it may become ...

There has been much media coverage of the prospect of a so-called "mini ice age" as a result of research published wi...

Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society website has lost no time dropping in the best-resolution image available fr...

Stanford scientists may have solved a major problem with the development of hydrogen fuel cells – the difficulty in s...

A new mathematical framework that more effectively analyses "controlled chaos" could potentially be used to improve t...

NASA's Swift satellite has detected the start of a new X-ray outburst from the binary system V404 Cygni, where a blac...

As NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft hurtles the final million kilometres to its rendezvous with the dwarf planet Pluto,...

Targeting a protein that helps cancer cells to withstand chemotherapy could drastically improve treatment, according ...

How does the concept of free will tally with our growing knowledge of genetics and neuroscience? ...

NON FICTIONFreedom Regained: The possibility of free willBy Julian BagginiGranta.Are we products of our culture, slav...

The Philae lander on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko communicated with the Rosetta orbiter again on the weekend, alth...

Like a scene from Finding Nemo, clamber on board a sea turtle's back for an amazing ride through Australia's Great Ba...

Not only has New Horizons sent back some intriguing images of the far side of Pluto this weekend, it has also provide...

A diet of rabbit meat may have been the key to modern humans sweeping the Neanderthals from Europe and becoming the d...

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft continues to deliver on images and information about Pluto and its moons with this ima...

Good news for space junkies wondering where their next fix of discovery missions is going to come from after New Hori...

Wind turbines could be installed under some of the biggest bridges on the road network to produce electricity, accord...

New data from NASA shows that the solar wind often forms perfectly shaped waves as it rushes past the magnetic bubble...

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft's flyby sequence of science observations is officially underway.The spacecraft was sti...

A long-lasting gamma-ray burst has been observed after a super-bright supernova – a very unusual event.On the rare oc...

Minute physics explains the science of why a bicycle in motion, even without a rider, doesn't fall over.

The latest map of Pluto, made from images taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument aboard New...

A father's love for an ailing child leads to medical progress. By Bill Condie.

NON FICTIONCracking the CodeBy Stephen and Sally Damiani with Leah KaminskyVintage Australia (2015)Before Massimo Dam...

This time-lapse, taken over several hours, shows an amazing stationary supercell being produced over the Black Hills ...

The terrifying, dagger-like teeth of the sabre-toothed cat Smilodon fatal is grew at twice the rate of those of moder...

Alex Bellos, author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland and The Guardian's maths blog, explains how he came to researc...

Too much vitamin B12 may cause acne, or at least make it worse, according to a new study in the US."I think there's a...

BAE Systems test pilot Peter Wilson flies F-35B from land based ski jump ramp for the first time. It is designed for ...

South African and Argentinian palaeontologists have discovered a new 200 million year old dinosaur from South Africa,...

Women who develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may have a greater risk of future cardiovascular disease than...

A thick band of microtubules in certain neurons in the retina help provide energy required for visual processing, res...

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an immense cloud of hydrogen dubbed "The Behemoth" bl...

A new, high-resolution image of the nuclear pore structure could help us understand better how some diseases involvin...

Ben Krasnow of Applied Science describes how he made a stop motion animation of a phonograph needle in an LP groove u...

The Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria has teamed up with the state's biggest centre for the conservation of rare and thr...

A 240-million-year-old lizard-like animal discovered in a quarry in southern Germany is a key missing link in the evo...

Chlorine on its own won't make your eyes red. But when it reacts with human urine it forms chemical compounds that wi...

A discovery by researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center could lead to new techniques to prevent...

When British palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris first set eyes on a fossil of the creature above in the 1970s, he th...

New research has found "overwhelming consensus" among scientists that children raised by same-sex couples are no wors...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new technique to rapidl...

The three Swarm satellites have provided a first glimpse inside Earth and started to shed new light on the dynamics o...

Human Organs-on-Chips, designed by Donald Ingber and Dan Dongeun Huh at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, has won ...

An antibiotic-resistant superbug has become an urgent threat to human health, a new study says. The bacterium – Klebs...

Children as young as three show a natural inclination towards restorative justice fed by a strong concern over the we...

Congratulations to Brian Schmidt who has been named as the next vice-chancellor of Australian National University. Sc...

Both high-fat and high-sugar diets can cause changes in gut bacteria that in turn are responsible for  significant lo...

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly  – @StationCDRKelly – captured photographs and video of auroras from the International Spa...

Albert Einstein developed the general theory of relativity 100 years ago as an answer to fundamental problems of cont...

Electronics giant Samsung has unveiled a new "transparent" truck that streams video from a forward-facing camera thro...

We already knew modern humans had interbred with the Neanderthals before they disappeared from history (See the Cosmo...

The sun has emitted a mid-level solar flare, its image captured (above) by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Solar f...

Getting electric cars on the road is a bigger priority in promoting their use than funding charging stations, accordi...

Biotech startup Pembient plans to flood the market with synthetic, 3D-printed rhino horn, in a bid to save the animal...

This breathtaking compilation of time lapses of the Earth from the International Space Station was edited by Dmitry P...

Pluto and Charon in color It's still very low resolution but the first colour movies from NASA’s New Horizons mission...

Nick Henn of Canvas ChameleonsA tiny panther chameleon still coming to terms with its birth.Nick Henn of Canvas Chame...

Scientists say the build-up of tartar on 400,000-year-old teeth found in  a cave in Israel provides direct evidence o...

A radar image, created using data collected by the international Cassini spacecraft, shows the lakes of Titan in clos...

Traces of methane in Martian meteorites are a possible clue in the search for life on the Red Planet, scientists say....

The Smithsonian has some amazing footage here on the explosive mechanism many plants including violets, touch-me-nots...

A new NASA mission to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa is moving forward from concept review to development. Europa is c...

Large dinosaurs remains have seldom been found near the equator. In fact few dinosaurs of any kind, apart from a few ...

It accounts for nearly 40% of the Earth's total volume, making it the most abundant mineral in the world, but scienti...

Watching cat videos on the internet boosts viewers' energy and positive emotions and decreases negative feelings, acc...

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly), currently on a one-year mission to the International Space Station, to...

Australian researchers have found a way to produce gold without using cyanide for the first time.The country's govern...

Southern Chile's Calbuco volcano, near the cities of Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt, erupted on 22 April for the first...

New research suggests that molecules derived from avocados could be effective in treating a form of cancer. Professor...

The latest imagery from the Cassini spacecraft clearly shows the two large craters on Saturn's moon Tethys.The image ...

A study in Australia has found that tens of thousands of people stopped taking cholesterol-lowering statins in the wa...

The camera has always been a useful laboratory tool. Here we preview an exhibition that charts th...

Blow Up, Untitled 1, 2007, Ori Gersht [A still-life of flowers, frozen with liquid nitrogen then blown apart with a s...

Stone tools unearthed from a cave in Jordan, reveal clues about how humans may have started organising into more comp...

Rosetta's lander Philae has come out of hibernation, sending signals to ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Dar...

Driverless cars are on their way. The Google car is well advanced, with plenty of competitors hot on its heels, inclu...

All credit to DARPA – the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – for making this compilation of failures in i...

A new road project between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem has become an archaeological dig after the remains of a 1,500-year-...

A team of mathematicians has suggested that the reason why no trace was found of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH3...

The latest images of dwarf planet Ceres, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, give us the clearest view yet of the myster...

Daimler, Bosch and Daimler's car-sharing subsidiary car2go are partnering on a project to develop automated parking, ...

Stanford engineers have outlined a state-by-state plan that could transition the United States to having 100% renewab...

Depression during pregnancy and after childbirth may have its roots well before women become pregnant, new research f...

The budget carrier says that it will save time and money to have automated drones, using lasers, to inspect and analy...

MIT researchers have trained their robot, Cheetah, to recognise and jump over hurdles as it runs along – a first for ...

Tasha SturmMicrobiologist Tasha Sturm took a handprint from her eight-year-old son on a Tryptic Soy Agar (TSA) plate ...

While you've probably worked it out by trial and error, scientists have proven the shape of the perfect fire.In a stu...

The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), which will provide vital warnings of damaging solar eruptions and collec...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured this close-up image of a relatively recent impact crater in the Siren...

The three-horned dinosaur Triceratops had more complex teeth than previously thought, according to new analysis of fo...

This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. ...

NASA scientists describe the task of mapping our own Milky Way galaxy as like trying to create a map of your house wh...

One of Australia's smallest birds has found a cunning way to protect its nest from predators. The tiny brown thornbil...

Physicists at MIT have developed an experimental technique to observe and manipulate individual atoms at the interfac...

The world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is back at work after a two-year revamp. The 27 ki...

This illustration depicts Pluto and its five moons from a perspective looking away from the sun. The outermost moon i...

As regular readers will know, we like octopuses here at the Cosmos newsblog (see The Awesome Octopus) and so were exc...

A team of astronomers has detected tube-like structures only hundreds of kilometres above the Earth's surface.The tub...

Two turbines will generate about 4 megawatts of electricity.OpenHydro Electricity-generating tidal turbines are se...

Organic agriculture is more profitable for farmers than conventional agriculture, despite the lower yields, according...

Screws made out of silk have significant advantages in fixing fractured bones.GABRIEL PERRONEScientists have come up ...

An American animal scientists has come up with a new technique that could reduce or even eliminate the need for antib...

Breastfeeding for six months or longer has been associated with a lower risk of childhood leukaemia in a new Israeli ...

Scientists have found the remains of tiny creatures dating from the sixth century deep inside a glacier in Peru.The f...

An entertaining video from the everyday chemistry YouTube channel Reactions on smells and your dog – both going and c...

Researchers at Notre Dame University have been studying why some children have such difficulty understanding mathemat...

A new carbon material significantly boosts battery performance, according to the Stanford University scientists who d...

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way.It is loc...

Privately funded solar sail satellite LightSail has rebooted itself and sent a message to its controllers on Earth af...

The heatwave currently baking India with temperatures up to 47.6°C is not only deadly, but playing havoc with infrast...

The Red Bull Skydive Team takes to the sky above Mount Bromo, an active volcano in East Java, Indonesia.Bromo, which ...

A new breed of robots can recognise when they have lost a limb and adjust their walking motion to cope with the "inju...

A new shape memory alloy retains its properties even after ten millions of transformations, compared with the previou...

NASA is under way with testing equipment for its InSight mission to Mars. The latest tests were of a parachute that w...

NASA operates research support aircraft – commonly called chase planes – that act as escorts during research flights....

Hubble astronomers have captured a near-light-speed collision between two collections of matter ejected from a superm...

NASA has unveiled nine science instruments it will use on a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, to investigate whether ...

Hoverboard inventor Catalin Alexandru has set a record for a 375-metre flight on his creation, which was inspired by ...

The Slow Mo Guys show the mechanics of how the smoke from an extinguished candle – vapourised candle wax – can be use...

The internet contains vast amounts of information that does not show up on Google searches. The so-called "Deep Web" ...

Madagascar, already a by-word for extraordinary biodiversity, has been shown to have 11 more species than previously ...

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) images the solar atm...

Some blind individuals can use echoes from tongue or finger clicks to recognise objects in the distance.And in these ...

New research shows a clear correlation between infections and impaired cognitive ability measured by IQ."Our research...

Photographer Anand Varma created this timelapse of the metamorphosis of a bee from egg, to larvae to pupae to adult.T...

Engineers and physicists at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a way to use liquid crystals to grow compou...

Early snakes had hind legs, according to Yale palaeontologists who have analysed snake genomes and new fossil records...

A meta-analysis of data going back 50 years found that 49% of the variation for human traits and diseases could be bl...

#GirlsWithToys trends as female scientists get involved.

The Twittersphere has reacted rapidly to comments by California Institute of Technology astronomy and planetary scien...

Scientists have called into question previous research that suggested blood of a young mouse can reinvigorate an olde...

We may be able to enlist the help of viruses to fight antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, according to Israeli ...

It's 35 years since Mount St. Helens in the US state of Washington state exploded, killing 57 people and dramatically...

Vacuum chambers are essential to testing the operation of hardware in space while still on Earth. NASA, unsurprisingl...

Scientists have discovered how to make heroin and similar other opiates without using poppies.The team led by researc...

Spotted hyenas, just like Facebook users, tend to form bonds with friends of friends, a phenomenon known to behaviour...

Engineers have saved a loggerhead turtle, injured in a collision with a boat propeller, by replacing its jaw with a 3...

Prehistoric human societies were probably egalitarian places with equality between the sexes, a position that only ch...

Energy-starved Rwanda in central Africa is looking to put to use the 60 billion cubic meters of methane and 300 billi...

Zebrafish produce a chemical, called gadusol, that works as a sunscreen, protecting them frome the harsh sunlight in ...

This year, NASA's Mars rover Opportunity completed the first Martian marathon – 26.219 miles or 42.195 kilometres. It...

A new NASA study says that the last remaining section of Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf will have disintegrated befo...

DiscovHer, a new website and newsletter focusing on women in science, has a fascinating feature about Joan Clarke, on...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this sequence of views of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Ma...

A spacecraft propelled through space by the radiation from the Sun was first envisioned by Carl Sagan 40 years ago. N...

A couple of months ago we reported on the installation of the ASI (Italian Space Agency) ISSpresso machine on the Int...

Today's Google doodle celebrates the 127th birthday of Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann who died aged 105 in 1993. Sh...

A useful primer from Compound Interest, a useful site run by UK chemistry teacher Andy Brunning.The site takes a clos...

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new system for underwater robots that ...

The da Vinci Surgical System is used in this promotional video to stitch a grape back together.The technology is desi...

The latest images of Saturn from the Cassini mission show a deceptively tranquil planet that belies the turbulent wor...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyurHTD2Kro&feature=emb_title This video from Nature (via Lady Scientists of Tumb...

While research has shown a positive correlation between happiness and sexual frequency it has not been clear that the...

The Ebola virus can live on surfaces in hospitals for nearly two weeks, longer than it would under non-climate contro...

Spiders sprayed with water containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes have produced the toughest fibres ever mea...

A Space Exploration Technologies' passenger spaceship has made a quick debut test flight in Florida to demonstrate an...

Parts of a NASA super pressure balloon have been found in remote south-west Queensland, in Australia.The balloon's fl...

The video shows the remarkable annual event at Lost Lake in Oregon, which fills up every winter and empties like a ba...

The New Zealand Marine Studies CentreA rare three-metre Oarfish has washed up on a beach in New Zealand's Otago Harbo...

Two well-preserved fossils have re-written the history of the birds, showing this one lived five to six million years...

Astronomers have identified the farthest spectroscopically confirmed galaxy observed to date, as seen in this Hubble ...

Bacteria killed with silver can turn into "zombies" that kill living microbes, scientists have discovered.In the stud...

So-called performance-enhancing drugs have done nothing to improve times, distances or other results, according to re...

A powerful eruption is under way at the Axial Seamount, a massive underwater volcano located about 400 kilometres off...

My how you've grown...this is not Bluey, but this juvenile southern bluefin tuna has just been tagged behind the dors...

The Eta Aquarids – a meteor shower associated with Halley's comet – will peak on tomorrow, 5 May and 6 May.The dust c...

A team at NASA's Langley Research Center is developing a battery-powered plane that has 10 engines and can take off l...

300 years ago, on 3 May 1715, a rare solar eclipse occurred over England. It was the first to be predicted on the bas...

Until now drones have had more or less unrivalled air freedom – they can fly unimpeded wherever they like over our ci...

Spinifex grass from outback Australia could be used to make a nanofibre similar to Kevlar, that could be used to manu...

Up to one in six species face extinction due to climate change, a new study published in Science suggests.The researc...

Japanese engineers have produced a high-speed camera that can record events at more than one trillion frames per seco...

NASA and the US Air Force Research Laboratory have announced another successful flight of a plane with a new, flexibl...

Bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto have been seen for the first time, with scientists speculatin...

Phillip Island’s little penguins – also known as fairy penguins – exercise a distinct strategy of "resource allocatio...

Western country birth rates are now nearing replacement levels, a new paper by Oxford researchers argues.The publicat...

The male and female Stegosaurus looked very different, new research by Princeton University, published in PLOS ONE sh...

Researchers have developed a membrane that can be incorporated in an aircraft fuselage dramatically to reduce low-fre...

How Stuff Works' excellent YouTube channel looks at five of the nerdiest animals out there.

OK it's not really all that like a platypus but it is just as strange. So strange in fact that, like the platypus, sc...

Paracetamol, or acetaminophen, is one of the world's most popular painkillers, but a new study suggests it could also...

This video taken from a drone over Kathmandu shows the damage done to the Nepalese capital in the 7.8 magnitude earth...

The robot Baxter, pictured in the video above, was designed to be a simpler, safer manufacturing robot. It has a scre...

Scientists have found signs of gnawing and butcher marks on human leg, rib, other bones in a cave in the Cheddar Gorg...

There's a new strategy-based card game, called Ion, which makes a game out of chemistry.It challenges players to grou...

This brilliant image of a star nursery has been released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the NASA Hubble Space T...

The 7.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal and north India today, causing at least 1,500 casualties and widespread d...

A new stem-cell-based therapy could eliminate metastatic cells from the brain that develop from lung, breast or skin ...

There are no Sumatran rhinos left in the wild in the Malaysian state of Sabah, government minister Masidi Manjun says...

This timelapse is mixed with some other images of the two eruptions so far of the volcano.Calbuco volcano erupted on ...

It could be in your genes, researchers say."Female mosquitoes display preferences for certain individuals over others...

Many think it might.

The European Space Agency certainly does. It has funded a program to produce americium-241 – the end product of the d...

Biometric technology – the use of fingerprints, iris scans or voice recognition for user identification – is seen as ...

Anzac Day – 25 April – is not only the day when Australians honour their soldiers, for the country's wheat farmers it...

NASA is bringing together experts from all scientific fields in an initiative dedicated to the search for life on pla...

Physicist Marcus Wilson from the University of Waikato in New Zealand takes issue with the children's fairy story The...

Australian nanoscientist Amanda Barnard has become the first woman – and the first person in the southern hemisphere ...

The recent slowdown in the rise of global average air temperatures will make no difference to how much the planet wil...

The Calbuco volcano, one of the three most dangerous of the 90 in Chile, has erupted for the first time in 42 years.E...

Chinese researchers report that they have genetically modified human embryos in a move that takes science into contro...

Australian backyard beekeepers Cedar Anderson and his father Stuart Anderson have invented a revolutionary beehive in...

Wolves are more tolerant and kinder than dogs, according to a new study, which is at odds with the generally accepted...

Dietary supplements may increase the risk of cancer if you take too many of them, according to an investigation by Un...

This week, NASA is celebrating 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope. On April 24, 1990, the space shuttle Discovery...

Scientists have analysed samples of 170-year-old Champagne which was recovered from a shipwreck on the bottom of the ...

Vampire squid are named for their lives in utter darkness up to 3,000 metres beneath the oceans, not for sucking bloo...

British clockmaker John Harrison, who was derided for his claims to having designed the most accurate pendulum timepi...

Astronomers believe that a white dwarf star may have ripped apart a planet at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy as it ...

Rogan BrownArtist Rogan Brown created this incredibly detailed cut-paper sculpture of an E. coli bacterium.At 112 cen...

NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center and the Air Force Research Laboratory, with support from Lockheed Martin, hav...

Scientists have recreated the flavour and scent of a grapefruit in the lab, using an orange. But the work was far fro...

Plant scientists at the Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR) are now gathering data using a smartphon...

The winning image in NASA's Tournament Earth photo competition shows Piqiang Fault in China. Click to expand image. A...

Octopuses probably evolved from animals similar to clams, with a protective outer shell and almost no movement to spe...

Two physicists have mapped out a way to create "quantum music" with the probability of two members of the audience he...

It's no secret that it is easier to learn about a subject we find interesting compared to one we find boring, but why...

A school maths question posted on Facebook by a Singaporean TV presenter has gone viral, stumping thousands worldwide...

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has teamed up with a telescope on the ground to find a remote gas planet about 13,000 ...

This blurry image of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, was taken by the Ralph color imager aboard NASA's New Horizo...

People using muscle-building supplements containing creatine or androstenedione have a significantly higher likelihoo...

Genetically modified Salmonella could be used to kill cancer cells while keeping the patient safe from infection, acc...

The Rosetta spacecraft continues to track comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which will reach perihelion – the closest ...

A scientific notebook compiled by World War Two codebreaker and computer science pioneer Alan Turing has sold for $1....

There could be liquid water close to the surface of Mars, according to data collected by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity....

A safety system developed by Swiss engineers allows drones to recover stable flight from any position and land autono...

NASA has released this image of a circular depression on the surface of Mars captured by the High Resolution Imaging ...

An app that acts as your therapist to treat depression and anxiety has been launched by Northwestern Medicine in Chic...

A synthetic muscle that could be used to power prosthetic limbs, or on robots on a deep space mission, will be carrie...

A UNSW-led research team has encoded quantum information in silicon using simple electrical pulses for the first time...

Being too thin in middle age might be bad for brain health later in life, a new study suggests. The findings contradi...

An estimated 9% of adults in the US have a history of impulsive, angry behaviour and have access to firearms, accordi...

This week, RiAus looks at the incredible engineering of two attempts to break the land speed record.You can see more ...

Next week is International Dark Sky Week, designed to raise awareness of the scourge of light pollution, that has mad...

NASA missions to explore our solar system are finding water in surprising places, which the space agency gives us hop...

The chameleon's tongue, which it uses as a deadly weapon to capture and reel in its prey, can accelerate at four time...

Stanford University scientists have invented the first high-performance aluminum battery that's fast-charging, long-l...

Australia could restore the Great Barrier Reef to its former glory through better policies that focus on science, pro...

Powerful radar that until now has been limited to the military, could soon be cheap enough for cars and consumer dron...

A new way to create hydrogen fuel with a biological process using corn could greatly reduce the time and money it tak...

Publicly traded companies die off at the same rate regardless of their age or economic sector, by scientists at the S...

"I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have...

NASA today posted this image of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, the closest to our own Milky Way Galaxy.The Virgo clus...

A new study finds that – contrary to what some physicists have argued for the years – information is not lost once it...

Single-walled carbon nanotube composites could be used as a material in "unconventional" computing, scientists say.In...

The Sun undergoes a seasonal variability with its activity waxing and waning over the course of nearly two years, acc...

If you missed it, here's a time lapse video of the total lunar eclipse of 4 April – one of the shortest such events f...

A new technology that harvests blast furnace waste to make cement, while slashing water use and greenhouse gas emissi...

An antibody manufactured at the University of Queensland will be used in world-first human Hendra virus clinical tria...

Heat produced by Arctic soil microbes could increase the thaw of permafrost and the release of carbon to the atmosphe...

Human breast milk bought over the internet contained added cow's milk in 10% of cases tested by researchers in a rece...

Scientists have discovered three new species of wood lizards in the Andes of Peru and Ecuador. The new species differ...

Rock star turned physicist Brian Cox turns his attention to the story of evolution. Bill Condie r...

Brian Cox on Easter Island, one of the locations where he ponders mankind's destiny and our place in the cosmos in hi...

Most of our health care teams in developed countries now have “electronic health records”. But are we ready to have a...

The gallery shows pictures taken from the International Space Station of Super Typhoon Maysak. The storm, which has w...

Scientists discovered the genetic roots of prostate cancers, which could bring the hope of new treatments.The team di...

Two of the most famous hominids, Lucy and Little Foot, may have belonged to species that were contemporaries, accordi...

The exoskeleton comprises rigid sections attached to the human shank and foot (a) and hinged at the ankle. A passive ...