The key to getting to Mars could be in recycling astronaut pee into food supplements
Researchers have shown how astronaut urine, poop and even exhaled breath could be turned into 3D-printed plastics and nutrients, the kind of smart waste recycling we’re going to need if…
Why people believe in conspiracy theories – and how to change their minds
I’m sitting on a train when a group of football fans streams on. Fresh from the game – their team has clearly won – they occupy the empty seats around…
NASA has a $3.5bn plan to save the planet from the Yellowstone supervolcano
Scientists at NASA have developed a hugely ambitious strategy to counter the looming threat of an apocalyptic supereruption from the Yellowstone Caldera. Yellowstone is one of about 20 known supervolcanoes…
From next month, Turkey will stop teaching evolution in the school curriculum
Changes to the Turkish secondary school science curriculum that has been expected to take effect by 2019 will be in place next month, according to recent updates on the controversial…
New recipe for heating nuclear fusion plasma boosts ion energy output 10 times
Extracting useful amounts of energy from the merging of atoms is tricky business, not least thanks to the challenges of controlling squirming clouds of ultra-hot plasma. Our clean power fusion…
Cyborg bacteria covered in tiny solar panels are changing the future of clean fuel
In an effort to improve the efficiency of natural photosynthesis, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, has created cyborg bacteria. These bacteria were trained to grow and cover…
Confirmed: Electrons flowing like liquid in graphene are insanely superconductive
Electrons have been caught flowing through graphene like a liquid, reaching limits physicists thought were fundamentally impossible. This type of conductance is known as ‘superballistic’ flow, and this new experiment…
How did animals react to the solar eclipse? Here’s some reports on their weird behaviour
I watched the solar eclipse on my parents’ farm in Wisconsin and got a front row seat to wacky animal behaviour during the celestial event of the century. At the…
It rains diamonds on Neptune and we’ve now re-created that effect here on Earth
If you think the weather’s bad on our planet, consider the ice giants Neptune and Uranus, where intense pressures and super-hot temperatures are thought to cause cascading showers of diamonds.…
Disney is developing an AI that can judge what makes for a truly great story
Disney’s cuddly toys of the future could be smart enough to pick out the perfect bedtime story, thanks to a clever new artificial intelligence engine that’s been trained to judge…
New analysis of this Moon rock says our satellite doesn’t actually have water inside
Scientists have re-analysed fragments of a Moon rock brought back in 1972, and say that its composition reveals our planet’s satellite really doesn’t have water inside. Figuring out the wetness…
We have first-ever evidence that Mars gets intense snowstorms in the dead of night
Mars may seem to resemble a cold, dusty, and dry landscape, but it looks like the atmosphere can also produce violent, unexpected bouts of snowy weather – particularly after nightfall.…