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Revealed: HUNGRY frosty Arctic cleft that could eat 2 Grand Canyons
A huge mega-canyon, nearly double the length of America's Grand Canyon, has been discovered beneath a mile of ice in Greenland.
The canyon in a 3-D visualisation of the Greenland bedrock for the northern half of the island, looking north
The canyon looks like a winding river channel and is at least 750km (466 miles) long, …
Vulture 2 spaceplane rises from the powdered nylon
There's mounting excitement here at the Special Project Bureau's mountaintop headquarters as we prepare to receive the parts of our Vulture 2 spaceplane.
Our chums down at 3D printers 3T RPD Ltd have just dusted off the outer wings and wingtip rudder assemblies, seen here in these rough CAD views. The top couple of images show …
We've cracked riddle of ANTIGRAVITY mountains on Saturn's Titan - boffins
Pic An icy shell around Saturn's largest moon Titan is thicker and tougher than boffins previously thought – and it is concealing a bizarre interior with inward-facing spikes.
ESA's Huygens probe image of a mountain on the surface of Titan A root mountaintop on Titan. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
NASA's Cassini …
NASA's nuclear Mars tank REBELS against human control
NASA's famous nuclear-powered, raygun-armed Mars rover Curiosity has broken free of human control and made up its own mind where to drive across the rusty plains of our neighbour world, according to boffins at the space agency who were formerly in charge of it.
Mars rover Curiosity route. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech No, I WILL NOT …
Quantum crypto nearly ready to go mobile
While the world is still waiting for a full-blown quantum communications setup, quantum key distribution – QKD – is already a contested product market. Now, an international collaboration has shown that QKD can be brought to the smartphone.
The project, carried out by the University of Bristol, Cambridge, Griffith University in …
Boffin snatches control of colleague's BODY with remote control BRAIN HAT
In an announcement that's going to be a boon to the tin-foil haberdashery business, scientists at the University of Washington (UW) have successfully built a non-invasive system to remotely control the actions of humans.
Brain to Brain communications at the University of Washington Mind control from the Ministry of Silly Hats …
3D printed guns are for wimps. Meet NASA's 3D printed ROCKET ENGINE
Weapons enthusiasts have been experimenting with 3D-printed guns for months, with mixed results. But NASA has set its sights much higher – quite literally – having successfully tested 3D-printed parts under the torturous conditions of rocket engines.
The most recent such test took place on August 22, the space agency revealed on …
Boffins lay bare exotic Lara Croft meteorite element ununpentium
Boffins have found fresh evidence for the existence of the new, super-heavy element ununpentium, known to gamers as the element found in meteorites in games like Call of Duty and Tomb Raider.
Periodic table up to date in May 2013
The element with atomic number 115 has no official name yet, but its temporary moniker is …
Boffins' keyboard ELECTROCUTES Facebook addicts
Cunning MIT student boffins have come up with something marvellous: a keyboard that sends a jolt of electricity into those who spend too much time on Facebook.
The Pavlov Poke is the brainchild of MIT PhD candidates Robert R. Morris and Daniel McDuff, who are trying to complete their dissertations but find obsessive Facebook is …
Boffins force Skype to look you in the eye
Accurate eye-to-eye contact in a videoconference, a feature of high end systems as well as any phone or tablet with a front-facing camera, is a problem for laptop users, because the camera is almost slightly off-direction from the image.
Hence, as any Skype user knows, there's an unfortunate effect in which people are looking …
Meet the world's one-of-a-kind ENORMO barge-bowling bridge of Falkirk
Geek's Guide to Britain Proving it's not just the Victorians who can make huge structures in steel, the Falkirk Wheel can lift six canal boats 25 metres in one go, moving them from one waterway to another.
The Forth & Clyde Canal, running across central Scotland, used to be connected to the Union Canal, linking Glasgow to Edinburgh via a stairway of 11 …
Bionic Brit Babbage Bear boards brilliant balloon, bests ballsy Baumgartner
Vid and pics We're delighted to report that Raspberry Pi mascot Babbage Bear wrested the world skydiving record crown from Felix Baumgartner on Monday - by leaping into the void from a breathtaking 39,000m.
Stepping from his foam launch platform, Babbage took the plunge into the history books, pipping the Austrian's 38,969m jump, as this …
NASA: Full details on our manned ASTEROID SNATCH mission
Video NASA is pressing ahead with plans to capture an asteroid, pack it in an orbit around the Moon, and then send up a two-person crew to investigate and take samples, and it has released a video showing how it plans to achieve all this.
Orion asteroid capture mission The two craft involved in capturing a shard of the Solar System …
Pulsars: the GPS beacons of the cosmos
Want to navigate over huge distances with nearly superhuman accuracy? All you need is a laptop, the right software, and some way to keep track of the signals of distant pulsars.
What began as an attempt to improve the search for gravitational waves has had the unexpected secondary outcome of demonstrating that pulsars could just …
Rasp Pi skydive: Ballsy Baumgartner best beware Brit bionic Babbage Bear
Pics Austrian high-altitude geezer Felix Baumgartner had better watch his back, because there's a furry Brit contender for the world skydiving record preparing to leap into the void from a breathtaking 39,000m.
Tomorrow (Saturday), weather permitting, Raspberry Pi Mascot Babbage Bear will ascend to the stratosphere over the green …
Plucky ISS 'nauts manage to bodge tricky camera gizmo onto podule IN SPACE
Pic Two Russian cosmonauts have managed to stick a new camera mount on the International Space Station despite a couple of hitches.
Expedition 36 Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Alexander Misurkin headed out the hatch of the Pirs docking compartment for an almost six-hour spacewalk at 12.30 BST yesterday - ready to install a …
Our Vulture 2 spaceplane sprouts sleek pointy beak
The nylon dust has almost settled on the epic design and build saga of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) Vulture 2 spaceplane as 3D printer 3T RPD Ltd fires up the machine to craft the last pieces of our revolutionary aircraft.
Yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen, the crack design team of Southampton Uni postgrads - …
BILLION-TONNE BELCH emitted from Sun to hit Earth this weekend
It's a stormy forecast from the space met offices for this weekend, as those whose business it is to monitor these things say the Sun has coughed out a couple of hefty plasma belches in our direction and these can be expected to pelt the planet with particles in coming days.
Better out than in
According to NASA, which felt …
Workers at world's largest – and most remote – telescope go on strike
Workers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, aka ALMA, have embarked upon a decidedly down-to-earth pursuit at the world's largest astronomical installation: they've gone on strike.
"The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array regrets that it was unable to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with its …
NASA restarts WISE telescope to spot potential Earth-killers
In these days of budget cuts and sequesters, it's especially important that NASA gets the most for its money, and so the agency will restart using the decommissioned Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope as part of its quest to map the heavens for asteroids.
WISE NASA kit is built to last
The WISE telescope was …
Oh noes! New 'CRISIS DISASTER' at Fukushima! Oh wait, it's nothing. Again
The world's media is working itself into an unedifying state of hysteria (again) following the news that radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, damaged two years back by a tsunami and earthquake which led to the death and injury of more than 20,000 people - though not a single one …
Fame-hating planets don't need to hang around STARS – boffins
Scientists have claimed that free-floating planets could form from dust clouds deep out in interstellar space – a finding that challenges the belief that planets are only created near stars.
Boffins from Japan's Osaka University had previously revealed the existence of hundreds of millions of orphan planets, but the latest …
3D printers stroke LOHAN's shapely midriff
Those UK readers living close to rapid prototyping firm 3T RPD Ltd's Newbury headquarters are invited to open their windows and listen for a distant whirring sound as our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) Vulture 2 spaceplane is meticulously hewn from the living nylon.
Last week, the crack team of Southampton Uni …
Space-walker nearly OPENED HELMET to avoid DROWNING
Back in July, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano went for a spacewalk from the International Space Station.
The sortie broke a record for the shortest spacewalk of all time because his helmet filled with water, leading to a swift termination lest he suffer the bizarre fate of drowning in space.
Parmitano's now blogged details of …
West Australia guarantees SKA funding to 2019
Australia's International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research has had its future secured through to 2019, courtesy of a $AU26 million commitment from the Western Australian government announced at the end of last week.
The ICRAR was instrumental in attracting part of the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project to …
Mighty multi-scope snaps stunning STARBIRTH image
Astronomers using the immense and astonishingly perceptive Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have captured a stunning image of the miracle of birth – starbirth, that is.
Herbig-Haro 46/44 as imaged by ALMA
Herbig-Haro 46/44 as imaged by ALMA (click to enlarge)
Starbirth – a violent affair – results in the …
CLIMATE CHANGE made sea levels FALL in 2010 and 2011
Global warming and climate change are usually thought to mean that world sea levels will rise, perhaps disastrously. But according to US government boffins, in recent times (2010 and 2011, to be precise) phenomena driven by human carbon emissions have actually caused world sea levels to fall.
The seas have, of course, been …
Alien antique show: Egyptians wore JEWELRY FROM SPAAAACE
Pic Archaeologists have discovered that ancient Egyptians fashioned their bling from rocks from outer space, not from iron ore.
Three of the nine ancient beads from Gerzeh, Egypt Just bead it, bead it ... Three of the nine ancient beads from Gerzeh, Egypt
We're told beads kept at UCL's Petrie Museum in London predate the …
In case of LOHAN flight emergency, gobble THIS Iridium-Arduino sandwich
Pics We recently reported that we'd laid our grubby mitts on a second RockBLOCK Irdidium satellite comms unit - courtesy of Rock Seven.
Top and bottom views of the RockBLOCK
The RockBLOCK, pictured above, can "send and receive short messages from anywhere on Earth with a view of the sky", and it's this latter capability which has …
Boffin blends benevolent beer
It's not a hangover cure, but it could help retain the beneficial effects of beer while mitigating some of its damage. A researcher from Queensland's Griffith Health Institute has found a way to make beer work like electrolyte drinks without ruining its taste.
Associate Professor Ben Desbrow is working on the idea that beer …
Mind-reading MRI reads letters in the brain
Researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen are claiming that with a sufficiently-sensitive MRI and decent mathematical modelling, they can reconstruct images of the brain recognising letters seen by the test subject.
Specifically, the researchers say they have “used data from the scanner to determine what a test subject is …
Tiny fireball exoplanet completes one year in 8.5 hours
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a new, Earth-sized exoplanet for which orbiting its star is literally all in a day's work.
The newly discovered planet, dubbed Kepler 78b, completes one full revolution around its star in just 8.5 hours – fast enough that by the time you clock in at the …
Portuguese chicken invades Spanish airspace
A plucky Portuguese cockerel has added extra weight to the theory that model aircraft and High Altitude Ballooning payloads are magnetically drawn to trees by soaring to a heady 33,252m before crash landing in a bewildered Spanish villager's fig tree.
The flying rooster seen in the stratosphere
The Galo de Barcelos (Rooster …
Flab-fighting LOHAN fettles fantastical flying truss
Amid all the excitement surrounding the imminent appearance of the Vulture 2 spaceplane, the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team has been beavering away on the fantastical flying truss which will carry our magnificent aircraft heavenwards.
For LOHAN newbies, and those of you who haven't been paying attention at the …
Kiwi jetpack gets all-clear for manned tests
A decade of testing is close to paying off for New Zealand company Martin Aircraft Company, which has announced that it has received certification to conduct manned test flights for its Martin Jetpack.
The New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority has given the outfit the go-ahead to conduct manned flights of its twelfth prototype, …
2013 World Solar Challenge racers start the big reveal
SPB In 2011, The Reg's Special Projects Bureau followed the World Solar Challenge through the dead heart of Australia.
This year, we'll do it again. 2013's World Solar Challenge hits the road on October 6th and The Register's Vulture South team will hit the road too, tracking the racers from the top end through the never-never and …
An afternoon with Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer
Phil Plait – one-time NASA astronomer, science educator, and author of the Bad Astronomy blog at Slate, recently visited Australia to renew his acquaintance with the Oz confection-cum-dentist's-nightmare Minties. While here, the Bad Astronomer embarked on a multi-city lecture tour, took part in IFLS Live in Sydney, and spent an …
Curiosity looks up, spies Martian double-mooning
Video As Curiosity trundles across the Martian surface, the bulk of NASA's interest has been focused downwards at the ground, but the rover has also been looking up and has captured some remarkable video of the two moons of Mars overlapping each other overhead.
The images captured by the telephoto lens in Curiosity's Mast Camera …
Attention, addicts: LEGO meth lab pays homage to Breaking Bad
Fans of Lego and TV series Breaking Bad can now put together their very own miniature methamphetamine lab, assuming they've got pretty deep pockets.
The Lego Breaking Bad lab with figures
The Citizen Brick "Superlab Playset" features 500 pieces and three minifigs, designed to offer solace to those "bummed out" that Breaking …
Boffins claim Voyager has already left the Solar System
There's a boffin battle brewing at the fringe of the Solar System.
At issue is whether the venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft has left the region where Sol's electromagnetic winds blow, or is still in the tiny pocket of space we call home.
The “we're outta here” camp has penned a letter in The Astrophysics Journal titled “A porous …
NASA: Earth II may be hiding in unexamined data from injured Kepler
NASA has revealed that the Kepler spacecraft, which has been busily hunting for exoplanets for over four years, is no longer capable of carrying out its primary mission – but there's plenty of life left in the ol' girl yet, and plenty of planet-hunting data left to be analyzed.
"What we're saying is done today is our precision- …
KABOOOM! Space-faring dwarf's galactic pile-up snapped by X-ray boffins
Pics Astronomers have spotted a huge collision between a plucky little dwarf galaxy and a massive spiral rival that goes by the snappy name of NGC 1232.
NASA stargazers using the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory were alerted to the intergalactic pile-up after spotting a cloud of super-heated gas in the huge spiral galaxy, which is …
