Science News

Chengdu Tianfu District Great City is supposed to be a prototype that can be replicated elsewhere throughout China. A tiny pocket city built from scratch next to a crowded urban center could alleviate some of China�...

Seemingly killed by doubt over its existence, the exoplanet Fomalhaut b could be revived as a world shrouded in murky dust

NASA's chief of Mars exploration suggests that a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s or 2040s could return the robotic relic to Earth. Mars Rover Curiosity’s mission is slated to run for just two Earth years, but ...

New research shows that sand can sing by itself, but if so, then why are singing sand dunes so rare?

Fossils of ostrich-like dinosaurs hint that vaned feathers, like those that birds use to fly, evolved for courtship in beasts that never got airborne

One-third of phytoplankton species could be driven out of warming tropics by the end of the century, transforming ecosystems and threatening fisheries

Following deaths with alleged links to energy drinks, New Scientist looks in detail at these caffeinated "dietary supplements"

All today's stories on newscientist.com, including: was Mars dry after all? "freeze ray" powder, dinosaur revelations, robots mimic primates, and more

A postcard that went to the moon and back with Apollo 11 is up for auction – see its retro vision of the lunar surface here for free

With radiation levels in fish around Fukushima not dropping as expected, scientists are seeking an explanation

They were educators frustrated by the lack of flexible, easily accessible tools for teaching robotics. So they created the Multiplo Robot Building Kit, an open source robot building system meant to help people “lea...

Here comes yet another tool for lifeloggers to catalogue those priceless moments of getting a cup of coffee or commuting to work. Memoto, a small, clip-on device that takes pictures while you live your life, is part of a...

Robots that visualise their surroundings like primates do can step out into uncharted territory

The world's largest embryonic stem cell research programme could be given a new lease of life, as a bid is made for Geron's stem cell assets

Testing the technology that might bring humans to Mars When it's done, the concept for a ship that'll take astronauts to deep space won't look like much. Actually, it kind of sounds like a mess: the "Deep Space Habitat" ...

Dino sex chromosomes give men reason to smile, why four wings were good but two are better, and how T. rex dined on Triceratops (full text available to subscribers)

Spotting the gaps common to all known genomes leads to molecules that kill cancer but not healthy cells

Controversial dumping of iron into the Pacific was done to boost salmon populations, not to hack the climate, says the project's chief scientist

A new design for grid-scale energy storage could help back up unpredictable sources of renewable energy

Watch how a new technique can preserve the deformed shape of a liquid as it bounces

The world around us has evolved more quickly than our instincts, argues biologist Glenn Croston in The Real Story of Risk

The Red Planet was once warm, wet and life-friendly – or so we thought. The closer we look, the muddier the water becomes (full text available to subscribers)