Science News

The argument over when our lineage split from chimps is about to be settled, with colossal consequences for prehistory, finds Catherine Brahic (full text available to subscribers)

A new report takes an in-depth dive into citizen science. Enlisting non-scientists, the researchers say, could revolutionize how we collect data. Scientists often spread themselves too thin trying to gather and monitor v...

The discovery of strange, plentiful bacteria in a lake sealed beneath ice boosts the chance that extraterrestrial life might exist

How do we know the sun is moving into the most active part of its 11-year cycle? For starters, we can plainly see it. Every time the sun lashes out with another beautiful but potentially threatening solar flare or corona...

The patient didn't touch a thing, but could read Braille letters downloaded into his brain. A new eye prosthetic can download electrical data right into a blind person’s retina, bypassing a camera and placing digi...

All the latest stories on newscientist.com, including: life on Mars, pregnant males, acid ocean, the truth about human origins, and more

If the former Palestinian leader was poisoned, enough radioactive material would remain in his bones to prove it eight years on from his death

Technological hazards that could wipe out the human race will be studied by a proposed research centre at the University of Cambridge

In a world of rising energy costs and consumer alarm, UK energy policy continues to lack focus

Now that Wall-Ye V.I.N. has been built we can rest assured that there are no jobs too sacred to be handed over to the automated expertise of robots. Wall-Ye is a robot that takes the human touch out of caring for those g...

Watch how white trainers can stay clean on the mean streets, thanks to a superhydrophobic coating

From the world's largest semisubmersible vessel to a carbon-neutral office building that might be the most sustainable workplace ever In 2012, buildings, bridges and ocean vessels got bigger, greener, stronger and longer...

A wild gorilla capers through a cloud of butterflies. A week before she had given birth to a stillborn fetus – is she over the death now?

Online currency Bitcoin is maturing rapidly, so much so that it might soon be taken seriously by businesses - and become regulated by banks in the process (full text available to subscribers)