Science

Rise Of the Tiny Machines: Boffins cook up autonomous DNA sorting robot

ROTMIt's coming for your jobs, very, very slowly
15 Sep 10:04

Farewell Cassini! NASA's Saturnian spacecraft waves goodbye for its Grand Finale

But the mission is far from over, say scientists
42 Comments
15 Sep 09:32

Boffin wins (Ig) Nobel prize asking if cats can be liquid

Why people hate cheese and speaker worn in the vagina also score 'make you laugh, then make you think' awards
116 Comments
15 Sep 05:57

Hubble catches a glimpse WASP-12b, an almost pitch-black exoplanet

Black planet, black world
22 Comments
14 Sep 21:51

Scientists produce a map marking water hotspots on the Moon

Just landed on the Moon and fancy a drink? Step on up
19 Comments
14 Sep 06:29

New Horizons probe awakens to receive software upgrade

Kuiper-belt-bound craft needs a few weeks of tweaks to prepare for Space Duck 2.0
19 Comments
14 Sep 05:01

Signs of ground ice found on ancient protoplanet asteroid Vesta

Scientists reignite the idea of water-bearing asteroids bringing oceans to Earth
26 Comments
13 Sep 21:44

Weird white dwarf pulsar baffles boffins as its pulsating pattern changes over decades

AR Scorpii was the first white dwarf pulsar to be found
19 Comments
13 Sep 19:04

Cassini probe's death dive to send data at just 27 kilobits per second

Which is why its cameras will stop snapping a day before it smacks into Saturn
47 Comments
13 Sep 07:03

Boffins find a new way to catch the 'tails' of quasars in massive galaxies

Radio jets beamed from gigantic black holes are still a mystery
13 Sep 00:07

Astroboffins map 845 galaxies in glorious 3D, maybe dark matter too

It's all gone potato-shaped for some galaxies already
18 Comments
12 Sep 07:02

Boffins fear we might be running out of ideas

Research just isn't as effective as it used to be
93 Comments
11 Sep 23:57

Pains of giving birth to stars gives heft to elliptical galaxies

So, does my stellar nursery look big in this?
11 Sep 23:01

Boffins: 68 exoplanets in prime locations to SPY on humanity on Earth

Could any 'detect the transits of the Solar System planets'?
52 Comments
08 Sep 21:36

How alien civilizations deal with climate is a measure of how smart they are. Just sayin'...

Did, did these bio-boffins just sass us?
51 Comments
08 Sep 05:03

SpaceX sneaks in X-37B space plane launch ahead of Hurricane Irma

VideoAir Force picks Florida as new center for mini-shuttle
38 Comments
07 Sep 21:28

Close Encounters of the Kuiper Belt kind: New Horizons to come within just 3,500km of MU69

Probe skipped past Pluto by 12,500km, so this rock needs to prepare for its close-up
21 Comments
07 Sep 07:01

Violent moon mishap will tear Uranus a new ring or two

Astroboffins predict cosmic collision for ice giant
51 Comments
06 Sep 21:58

As Hurricane Irma grows, Earth now lashed by SOLAR storms

Biggest Sun flare in years could be heading our way
40 Comments
06 Sep 18:50

Fruit flies' brains at work: Decision-making? They use their eyes

Before you scoff, consider how much we rationalise away what's in front of us
44 Comments
06 Sep 09:55

Unable to give up on life on Mars, bio-boffins now thrilled to find boron

Another glimmer of hope of finding ET on otherwise barren brutal busted-flush dust world
27 Comments
06 Sep 05:01

Hurricane Irma imperils first ever SpaceX shuttle launch: US military's secret squirrel X-37B

What goes up, Musk stay on the ground at this rate
45 Comments
05 Sep 23:52

Climate-change skeptic lined up to run NASA in this Trump timeline

Rep Bridenstine wants to get into space – presumably after we've destroyed this world
112 Comments
05 Sep 20:55

Asteroid Florence buzzes Earth, brings two moons along for the ride

4.5km rock is the largest object we've seen up close, albeit still 7,000,000km away
49 Comments
05 Sep 06:59

Give a boffin a Xeon and a big GPU, get a new big prime number

9194441048576 + 1 is six MEELLION digits long and the twelfth biggest prime ever found
37 Comments
05 Sep 01:53

15 'could it be aliens?' fast radio bursts observed in one night

Who or what had 10 million trillion trillion joules to play with, 3 billion light years away?
71 Comments
04 Sep 04:58

Hubble Space Telescope spies possibility of liquid water in TRAPPIST-1

First time boffins have detected water in the planetary system
36 Comments
01 Sep 20:10

Boffins want machine learning to predict earthquakes

Shocking! Lab experiments prove promising, but predicting real destruction is a lot harder
18 Comments
01 Sep 06:06

P≠NP proof fails, Bonn boffin admits

Norbert Blum says his proposed solution doesn't work
39 Comments
31 Aug 19:16

Boffins turn to AI to zip through piles of gravitational lenses

Fast method gives researchers more time to answer bigger questions about our Universe
30 Aug 23:24
Astronaut

Living in space basically shoves a warp drive into your blood stream

Human body 'tries to turn on all possible defense systems'
35 Comments
29 Aug 23:04

Boffins prove oil and water CAN mix – if you do it in a gas giant

On Earth it requires two diamonds and a ton of pressure
28 Comments
29 Aug 18:16
Engineer aboard Das Boot U-96 responds to telegraphs

US Navy develops underwater wireless battery-charging tech

Submersible drones are vulnerable when they surface to recharge, hence the need for wetter-is-better top-up tech
35 Comments
29 Aug 05:27

Scientists measure magnetic field around most distant galaxy yet

Galactic magnetism emerges early on in the universe's life

James Webb Telescope will be infatuated with Europa and Enceladus

NASA's investigations into the watery moons may hold secrets to life in the Solar System
24 Comments
26 Aug 07:41
Hurricane

US focuses eyes in the sky as Hurricane Harvey starts to slam into Texas

Residents flee as weather services upgrade storm to Category Three
51 Comments
25 Aug 21:58
greek vs. babylonian triangles

Forget trigonometry, 'cos Babylonians did it better 3,700 years ago – by counting in base 60!

Tablet beat Pythagoras by a millennium, may explain how the ancients built pyramids
158 Comments
25 Aug 03:59
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