Science News

One of the best prosthetic hands we've seen. We've covered our share of prosthetic hands here, but we don't always get to see them in action. This hand, the bebionic3, actually shows it doing some of the stuff you'd thin...

Facebook gleans a huge amount of information from your "likes" on the site – from your ethnicity and sexuality to your personality and politics

Because your biggest worry about death is how it will affect your follower count. There are a few eternal questions that haunt humanity: Is there a point to life? Who are we? Are we alone in the universe? And of course, ...

Before it's even released, the world's best virtual reality headset--the Oculus Rift--gets a porn game. It was only a matter of time, really. We tried the Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality headset meant for gaming, at this ...

Now neuroscientists are practicing telepathy. In a recent study, the brain signals of a rat performing a task were transmitted to another rat to help it perform the same task.

Plugging leaks as the Papal conclave confers Back in 2005, before it was announced that Joseph Ratzinger would be pope, a leak helped the German media break the story. The conclave, the group of cardinals that elects the...

All the latest on newscientist.com, including: people who don't feel fear, irreversible melting in Canada, SpaceX SF rocket, China's internet, and more

A NASA visualisation shows how plants now cover parts of the globe that were once icy tundras

Some people really are not scared of anything. Understanding why reveals the way the rest of us process terror (full text available to subscribers)

One differentiator that’s always separated humans from robots is our ability to touch and feel, but advances in haptic technology are rapidly closing the mechanical gap. There are surgeons operating on patients ri...

Mario save the princess? Pfft. Mike Mika says in the YouTube description for this video that his 3-year-old daughter wanted to be able to save Mario while playing Donkey Kong. Why not? She could play as Princess Toadstoo...

There’s a robotic arms race on. Aerospace firms in concert with defense agencies are upping the ante on airborne attack drones. Not to be outdone by its ally across the Atlantic, the UK’s Ministry of Defens...

What cost would humanity be willing to pay to make contact with intelligent life in the universe? It's a question at the interface of technology and ethics, an area that a new film called 'Project Kronos' looks to explor...

Inside the construction of the Shanghai Tower. When it opens in 2014, the Shanghai Tower won’t just be the world’s second-tallest building. The 2,073-foot-high skyscraper, designed by the architecture firm ...

I have been reading a book called "Regenesis" where in one part the authors propose a way to re-engineer the human race so all people are resistant to all viruses, known and unknown. This will theoretically be possible i...

Which is a bargain, actually. The ocean covers nearly three quarters of our planet, yet humans have probed a mere 5 percent of it. To better explore its greatest depths, scientists will soon board the revamped Alvin, the...

Heart disease is commonly thought to be a modern ailment, but evidence from ancient mummies suggests humans have had heart problems for thousands of years

Crowdsourced. Open sourced. Global. This rocket design contest has all the buzz words – but will the subject matter be exportable under US munitions law?

-- Newfound Particle Still Looks Like a Higgs Boson--'Cern particle looking more and more like Higgs boson'--Hangout with CERN: Latest news on the new boson--Rumour points to completely boring Higgs boson--Birth of a new...

Ex-Tepco executive Eiju Hangai has created a self-sustaining agriculture project just 25 kilometres from the stricken nuclear power plant

Paul Murdin investigates the possibilities of nearby alien life in Are We Being Watched?, but neglects to cover more thrilling aspects of the quest

Lacking sensors or computing capability, some very simple robots have nonetheless exhibited the ability to swarm