Science

If we finally prove we’re not alone in the cosmos, will it happen because we’ve discovered flashing lights in the sky? A growing number of SETI researchers think this is possible

A new global map of Mars has revealed a host of valleys carved from otherwise smooth areas that might be signs of the Red Planet’s most recent ice age. The features also bolster the case for a vast reservoir of water ice just below the surface

Meat from transgenic pigs destined for destruction was turned into sausage and eaten by at least nine people in Florida. It may be the first time people in the US have eaten genetically modified meat

Scientists have developed a new type of clock that is accurate to one second in 100 million years, far more accurate than existing atomic clocks. It is based on the optical frequency of a single cooled mercury ion linked to a laser oscillator

Australia’s old, flat and salty landscape needs a revolution in land use, says Dr John Williams of CSIRO Land and Water. Dr Williams told the Queensland State Landcare and Catchment Management Conference that our current farming system, based on annual crops and pastures, is simply not right for our ancient flat dry continent

A form of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate, which first was created in a laboratory in 1995, has been tinkered with until it caused miniature explosions that resemble exploding stars called supernovae, according to a new study

An Australian scientist has won the concrete world’s most prestigious award for his work in turning industrial waste into a useful component of concrete for building and construction

A revealing study by psychologist James Bruning of Ohio University suggests that, with a handle like Bruno, you would have a lot better chance applying for a job as a truck driver than a hair dresser. That’s because the old human passion for stereotyping seems to be very much alive and well in this age of political correctness

Bacteria impregnated into every single fibre of a fabric, could live, breed and eat up the dirt, creating self-cleaning clothes

Comets and asteroids have been blamed for a lot of things before. Shaping Earth. Jumpstarting life. Wiping out dinosaurs. Even possibly altering human evolution

Robert Redford has called the retarded monkey boy ignorant on the environment and urged other nations to keep pressure on the United States at a global climate conference next week

Lene Vestergaard Hau, the scientist who managed to slow light right down to a stop in a cloud of super-cooled atoms, explains how she did it and its implications for new optical communications technology, tabletop black holes and quantum computers.

Finding such equal-opportunity critiques on the Net comes as a blessed relief. Too many women-centric sites — often decked out in feisty grrly graphics — are quagmires of enforced bonding for those who either think Sex in the City is the epitome of liberation or, conversely, celebrate excess body hair as an unassailable emblem of emancipation.

A team of Australian and Indonesian scientists may have witnessed the birth of a gold deposit on the flanks of a submerged volcano bubbling away in waters off northeastern Sulawesi

Pluto has suffered another demotion with scientists discovering a very bright, icy body possibly even larger than the tiny ice-planet’s moon Charon and orbiting the Sun in the same celestial neighbourhood

Scientists are puzzled by a CD-eating fungi discovered in Central America. The fungus burrows into the edge of the CD and thrives on the thin aluminium substrate and the data-storing polycarbonate resin. So far the metal-eating fungus is restricted to Belize