Surprising Science

New research in quantum measurement could reveal ion flow through cell membranes in an important scientific discovery.

A meteor lit up the skies and was caught on CCTV as it zoomed over South Africa but experts are unable to work out where it landed.

Making a spacecraft powered by dark matter or a black hole would be a formidable task, but appears to be possible according to top physicists.

Writing about intelligence is like running a ferry service between two different planets. On one, everyone assumes that g, general intelligence, is a real and important trait, in which heredity […]

If you mix salt water with fresh water you create instant carbon-neutral energy – the process is called osmotic power and the world’s first osmotic power plant has just opened.

Stanford scholars are considering the legal implications of using robots – with issues extending beyond personal injury and property damage to criminal and civil rights.

The Large Hadron Collider has suddenly burst into life and started smashing proton beams together for the first time.

“You know what the greatest talent in the world is?” asks the Hollywood bigshot in John Guare’s terrific play The House of Blue Leaves. “To be an audience. Anybody can […]

There has been outrage at the revelation that British police have garnered the world’s biggest DNA database without proper regulation or debate.

Brain scans have been used in a murder trial for the first time ever to try to prove that the defendant is a psychopath.

A more intrusive iPhone worm than the recent “Rick Astley” hack is worrying Apple as it puts sensitive information under threat of exploitation.

A TV pay-per-view service is now available for the Nintendo Wii in Japan—but there’s no sign that it’s heading stateside just yet.

A host of diverse marine creatures have been discovered living in total darkness in the depths of the Atlantic – out of the reach of sunlight.

The Gamburtsev mountain range, buried beneath a kilometre of ice, has been mapped for the first time by an international team of experts.

A website that matches animals’ “personalities” with those of humans was just one of the many eye-opening ideas that UT Austin psychologist Sam Gosling shared in his second Big Think […]

New research has revealed how the extinction of mammoths and mastodons changed the landscape of the earth.

Footnote about the Pinker-Gladwell kerfuffle: To discredit Gladwell, Pinker takes advantage of a truly embarrassing mistake (the science-writer’s nightmare) in which Gladwell misspelled “eigenvalue” as “igon value.” (It seems a […]

Sufferers of the chromosomal disorder Downs syndrome could be helped by a new drug which increases the levels of message-carrying chemicals in the brain.

Some morbidly overweight people don’t realise they’re obese according to the findings of a new report.

We criminalize drug addicts in this country. To Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, that would be equivalent to putting someone with Parkinson’s in jail. Drug […]

The United States’ Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act takes effect on Saturday. Subsequently, it will be illegal for employers to use genetic test results to make decisions about their employees, or […]

The world is on course for a “catastrophic” 6 degrees centigrade rise in temperature, meaning that the worst-case predictions for climate change are coming true.

Young children who are insensitive to fear are more likely to go on to commit crimes, according to psychologists.

Conjoined twin girls joined at the head have been successfully separated after 29 hours of surgery.

Something big lies beyond the visible edge of our universe, according to the largest analysis to date of galaxy clusters.

According to a new study, a now-extinct breed of miniature goats had bones that resemble a crocodile’s.

For all of us, coping with the death of a loved one is intensely traumatic. For sufferers of “complicated” grief, however, the trauma itself never seems to die; rather than dissipating over time, it becomes a […]

Steven Pinker’s attack on Malcolm Gladwell in the New York Times Book Review was more lucid and entertaining than it was intellectually honest. Pinker’s take-away claim is that Gladwell’s work […]

An anti-depressant pill is being hailed as the “female Viagra” after the drug was proven to boost women’s flagging sexual drives.

The authorities in India’s Andrah Pradesh have launched an investigation after six new-born babies died in a hospital over the weekend.