Science News

Fresh from the icy reservoir called the Oort cloud, comet ISON could be on track to skim the sun and become spectacularly bright next November

Black holes have been the stuff of science fiction since their discovery in the late sixties. But now a new, nimble NASA telescope is using its powerful x-ray vision to hunt for these abundant yet invisible, massive spac...

Motion-activated cameras at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve provide scientists a window into the secret lives of the animals there. This short video by the Stanford News Service reveals how these "...

Two video-gaming software bots have managed to convince human judges that they are human too – mainly by copying how we act

All today's stories on newscientist.com, including: the half-life of facts, IBM's new solar power tech, bad news for Romney, good news for eunuchs, and more

The new law treats private spaceflight more like sky-diving than air travel, but there are no statistics on the safety of commercial trips

Analysis of records of court eunuchs in Korea suggest that castration prolongs life. Does it really, or are there other explanations?

Is the new coronavirus that has killed a man in Saudi Arabia the next SARS? How worried should we be about this threat?

The Republican party's scepticism about climate change could play badly with undecided voters as a poll suggests 65 per cent believe it is caused by humans

The National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago has released an iPad app containing digital images of Einstein's preserved brain

The first sniffles of flu season are upon us: a friend of mine was struck down, and couldn't join me in attending a science dialogue on Sunday night. This was darkly humorous, as the topic of the evening was pandemics.

The world's failure to tackle climate change is costing 1 per cent of global GDP every year, boosting the case for urgent action on emissions

Eunuchs in the Korean Choson dynasty lived around 17 years longer than their non-castrated peers, hinting at testosterone's influence on lifespan

A play about emergence draws parallels between ant colonies and human behaviour, but fails to portray the big picture of the Game of Life

IBM is turning its water-cooled microprocessor technology to a solar power application that could bring clean drinking water to arid regions

Iconic pictures from the latest mission to the Red Planet are coming courtesy of space imaging expert Michael Malin

Much of what we believe to be factual has an expiration date, but the good news is that we can see it coming (full text available to subscribers)

Homo sapiens is not a particularly violent species – we just have more worth fighting for than other animals (full text available to subscribers)