In January 2011, aboard a scientific drilling ship in the Pacific Ocean, I witnessed an enigmatic green flash before sunrise. This optical phenomenon has been recorded to occur if the conditions are just…
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Even though we are communicating in more ways than ever using online technology, we remain largely confined to the audiovisual when we do it. An app that has been on sale in Japan for some time aims to…
Michael Gove is ploughing ahead with plans to gather an elite team of computer science experts to help bring coding into schools. He has rightly acknowledged that teaching programming in schools is vital…
According to cosmologists, galaxies are joined together by filaments, quite literally. These filaments form the cosmic web and are made of mostly dark matter, many stars and some gas. Observing these filaments…
Mention the word biodiversity to a city dweller and images of remote natural beauty will probably come to mind – not an empty car park around the corner. Wildlife, we think, should be found in wild places…
Cumbria University is to allow some students to pay their tuition fees in bitcoin, the digital currency hitherto more associated with drugs and guns. But target students probably don’t already have ready…
The UK’s largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has made its vast database of images freely available to all. The collection holds photos of hundreds of years worth of medicine, instruments and scientific…
Out of hibernation, Rosetta stirs at last. As one of the scientists involved in the mission, news that the unmanned spacecraft has woken up and restored contact with Earth comes as a great relief. It contains…
We are entering a time of great uncertainty for internet freedom following two recent events. Both occurred in the US but have repercussions for Europe, where the debate on the future of net neutrality…
January is a time when many of us seek to better ourselves. We want to learn a new skill or improve an existing one. A network designed especially for robots, RoboEarth, is being tested in the Netherlands…
“Tide goes in, tide goes out…you can’t explain that.” So claimed US talkshow anchor Bill O’Reilly, in a baffling attempt to discredit atheism which became something of a YouTube sensation. I have been…
The Rosetta spacecraft is due to wake up on the morning of January 20 after a 30-month hibernation in deep space. For the past ten years, the 3-tonne spacecraft has been on a one-way trip to a 4km-wide…
Across the globe, hundreds of species of birds can be seen flying in V-formations. We have long suspected that these formation might help birds fly with less effort. Yet the precise mechanics have remained…
Reports this week reveal the number of text messages sent between mobile phones has fallen into decline for the first time since the service was introduced. According to figures from Deloitte, the number…
There is no denying that humans think sex is important, but it also matters for microbes. Sex allows genes from two parents to be mixed, leading to new combinations of genes in the offspring. In the past…
My friend leaned forward over the table where we were having dinner. It was a loud, busy restaurant, but she lowered her voice conspiratorially and her eyes took on a sheen of excitement, tinged with fear…
An app on offer in the US says it can determine whether the person you are dating has anything to hide, using facial recognition to see if they are on the sex offenders register. This should make us question…
Worker ants are a funny old bunch, of many shapes and sizes. But they tend to get bigger and smaller much more often than evolving entirely new shapes, according to a new study. While most animals juggle…
Antarctica is a desolate place. That much we know, but nothing prepares you for it until you actually get there. It’s cold, windy and lonely. Everything about it is the exact opposite of my normal summer…
This week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has offered up a veritable smörgåsbord of wearable technology. We’ve seen devices of all kinds to tempt us into this new age. So now is the time to decide…
There has been a lot of hype and misinformation in the press over the last few weeks about the future of television. At the CES Electronics Showin Las Vegas, curved screens and 4K TV are being touted as…
Deep Blue gained world-wide attention in 1997 when it defeated the then chess world champion Garry Kasparov. But playing chess was all that Deep Blue could do. Ask it to play another game, even a simpler…
People tend to see their own lifestyle as being the ideal lifestyle. A single person may question why anyone would choose to shackle themselves to one partner rather than live it up with the single life…
Europeans fall prey to skin cancer because of their lighter skin, while Africans’ dark skin protects them. But East Asians, whose skin colour resembles that of Europeans, are similar to Africans in their…
For 20 privileged Victorians, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins held a lavish New Year’s dinner party in 1853 inside a model of a dinosaur that was created for the Great Exhibition held two years earlier. Hawkins’s…