One dead in SpaceShipTwo test crash

At least one person is dead and another injured after Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space tourism craft crashed in a California desert, the California Highway Patrol has said. This is clearly a massive setback to a company hoping to pioneer a new industry of space tourism.

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Spacey Geek (fromquarkstoquasars: Would Aliens Spot Our...)

fromquarkstoquasars: “ Would Aliens Spot Our Planet from the Star System Nearby? NASA Answers on Reddit If we were aliens, would we be able to detect Earth using the technology we have now? This was...

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Can Sucking CO2 Out of the Atmosphere Really Work?

A Columbia scientist and his startup think they have a plan to save the world. Now they have to convince the rest of us.

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Five steps to colonising Mars

If setting up home on another planet sounds a daunting prospect, then our space correspondent Richard Hollingham is here to help.

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Understanding quantum tunnelling

Jon Butterworth: Quantum tunnelling sounds like science fiction, and does indeed feature there quite often. But it is real, and plays a role in nuclear fusion, chemical reactions and the fate of the universe. Here’s how it works

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700-year-old ‘zombie’ virus shows climate change could unleash ancient diseases

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco were able to reanimate a virus found in a 700-year-old sample of frozen caribou feces and infect a living plant with it.

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Decades-old scientific paper may hold clues to dark matter

Data originally taken for another reason weaken the case for "dark photons"

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The Man Who Writes His Dissenting Opinion in ALL CAPS

Terence Faulkner wrote 1/3 of the opposing arguments in this year's SF voter guide. And large chunks of them read like he's yelling at you.

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Parallel Universes Colliding Could Explain Quantum Weirdness

The notion that our universe may be just one in a series of endless parallel universes—some very similar, some wildly different—has captivated the hearts and minds of many science fiction fans. A branching multiverse, objects that exist in two places at once, light that behaves as both particles and waves—these are but a few of the weird facets of reality brought to us by quantum mechanics.

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'Ghost Light' of Long-Dead Stars Haunt NASA's Hubble Telescope

NASA is adding a cosmic twist to Halloween with an unexpected find by the Hubble Space Telescope: eerie 'ghost light' from the remains of a multi-galaxy massacre. See the photo here.

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Is Capturing Carbon from the Air Practical?

A Columbia scientist and his startup think they have a plan to save the world. Now they have to convince the rest of us.

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What is antimatter?

R. Michael Barnett of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Helen Quinn of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center offer this answer, portions of which are paraphrased from their book The Charm of Strange Quarks

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Unexpected Ways to Wake Up Your Brain

Tea or coffee is often the favoured brew for those who are tired and in need of a caffeine boost. But is this really the best way to make ourselves more alert? Michael Mosley tested caffeine against some unlikely alternatives - sage, fudge, chewing gum and electric shocks.

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The rise of human-like robots, cars and drones

Should we add more humour and humanity to robots, cars and drones? David Robson reports on a new breed of machine designed to make us love them.

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Scientists grow ‘miniature stomachs’ from stem cells, which could patch up ulcers one day

Scientists have used human stem cells to create functional, 3-D stomach tissue - in effect, little miniature versions of the organ in its earliest stages of development. This is a first, and the grown tissue will allow researchers to better study illnesses of the stomach, like those that cause ulcers and even cancer. The tissue may even be used as a treatment in and of itself by way of tiny grated patches that would grow over ulcerated stomachs.

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Interesting Facts About Brown Dwarfs | CosmosUp

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Magic Mushrooms Create a Hyperconnected Brain

Magic mushrooms may give users trippy experiences by creating a hyperconnected brain.

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Antares rocket explosion: Orbital Sciences Corp. looks for cause of blast

Crews searched for scorched wreckage along the Virginia coast Wednesday in hopes of figuring out why an unmanned commercial rocket exploded in a blow to NASA's strategy of using private companies to fly supplies and, eventually, astronauts to the International Space Station.

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The ambulance drone that could save your life

A Dutch student has revealed a prototype ‘ambulance drone’, a flying defibrillator able to reach heart attack victims within precious life-saving minutes. Developed by engineering graduate Alec Momont, it can fly at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour (60 miles per hour). Painted in emergency services yellow and driven by six propellers, the drone can carry a four kilogramme load – in this case a defibrillator.

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The Rare Psychological Disorder That Only Affects Death Row Inmates

Imagine being told you are going to die in a month. Then it's a few hours. Then another month. You may be set free or you may be killed, and it all depends on events that are completely out of your control. How long could you stand it?

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Space Station astronauts now enduring orbital equivalent of a council strike

No deliveries... and no garbage collection or sewage treatment.

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Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are real and God isn't 'a magician with a magic wand'

The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared.

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Newest Entrant in Tablet Wars: AARP (Yes, AARP)

After being snubbed by mainstream tablet makers (AARP wouldn't say which) "not interested" in its aged 50-and-older core demographic, the nonprofit decided to tackle the void it sees in the market.

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Big City, Big Surprise: New York City's Newest Species Is a Frog

A frog species escaped notice for decades, only to be discovered on Staten Island.

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Met Office supercomputer confirmed

Funding has been confirmed for a £97m supercomputer to improve the Met Office's weather forecasting and climate modelling. The facility will work 13 times faster than the current system, enabling detailed, UK-wide forecast models with a resolution of 1.5km to be run every single hour, rather than every three.

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Chefs and scientists team up to make Japanese food even more delicious

In a university laboratory in Kyoto, a city known for producing the most exquisite food in a country known for its exquisite food, a group of renowned chefs in white coats has been conducting experiments with one question in mind: Can science make their perfect dishes even more perfect?

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DNA Can Carry Current, a Promising Step Toward Molecular Electronics

For first time researchers have been able to reliably measure current through a DNA molecule

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What's Up With That: People Feel the Weather in Their Bones

When I was younger, my grandma would occasionally issue solemn prophesies for rain. These declarations would come after she’d spent a few minutes rubbing her arthritic wrists. With a pensive gaze, she’d credit the prediction to her aching joints. Could science have an answer for why some people seem to feel the weather in their bones?

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NASA Identifies Ice Cloud Above Cruising Altitude on Titan

Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 29, 2014 - NASA scientists have identified an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud on Saturn's moon Titan that is similar to exotic clouds found far above Earth's poles. This lofty cloud, imaged by

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What It Will Take to Become an Interstellar Civilization

The new movie “Interstellar” is set in a not-so-distant future, but distant enough that they’ve managed to build something still elusive in 2014: a spaceship that can travel between solar systems. Such starships have been a technological mainstay in science fiction for decades, but they remain a crazily complicated proposition in everything from propulsion to human reproduction.

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Ganymede may harbor life

NASA scientists says that the largest moon in the solar system may harbor life in its inner oceans. Previously, scientists thought Ganymede only had one ocean between two ice layers, but data reveals that its structure is “ice and oceans stacked up in several layers like a club sandwich.”

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How to Mine an Asteroid

This year a group of aerospace veterans and investors—including Google's Larry Page, filmmaker James Cameron, and X-Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis—announced an audacious venture: a company, Planetary Resources, dedicated to mining asteroids. Here's the full story on their futuristic quest.

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Unmanned Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes on liftoff

The Orbital Sciences Antares rocket attempted to take off this evening (yesterday's attempt was scrubbed due to a boat that wandered into a restricted area), but it exploded just six seconds after launching. In a tweet Orbital Sciences confirmed a "vehicle anomaly", and NASA says the company is evaluating the mission.

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From Brain To Computer: Helping 'Locked-In' Patient Get His Thoughts Out

In 2009, a man named Barry Beck suffered a series of strokes, which caused extensive damage to his right occipital lobe and to the brain stem. The geologist and author of several books was left completely unable to communicate, in a state known as locked-in syndrome.

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Gender-neutral pronouns: When ‘they’ doesn’t identify as either male or female

When people call themselves “genderqueer,” does identity trump grammar?

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Two genes Linked With Violent Crime

A genetic analysis of almost 900 offenders in Finland has revealed two genes associated with violent crime.

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Happy Birthday Dr. Salk!

Salk is the discoverer of the first polio vaccine. He would've been 100 years old if he were still alive today.

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Ghostly Physics, why quantum entanglement spooked Einstein his entire life.

‘Tis the season of ghouls, goblins, witches, demons, and things that go bump in the night. We thrill to embrace the unexpected and unexplained. Science, cloaked in its lab coat of authority and explicability, would seem to be the last thing on our minds.

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Brent Sims' Grave Shivers

"Brent Sims' Grave Shivers" is a short sci-fi/horror anthology that weaves three tales of monsters, killers, and things that go bump in the night. Recent winner of the audience award at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Los Angeles, New Orleans Film Festival award, and the upcoming Hollyshorts screening at the Mann's Chinese Theater on Oct. 30th.

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Plants Know When They’re Being Eaten and They Don’t Appreciate it

Vegetarians and vegans pay heed, new research shows plants know when they’re being eaten. And they don’t like it. That plants possess an intelligence is not new knowledge, but according to Modern Farmer, a new study from the University of Missouri shows plants can sense when they are being eaten and send out defense mechanisms to try and stop it from happening.

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What are we learning about the size of galaxies? | CosmosUp

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Europeans were allergic to cheese for 4,000 years

As a continent, Europe has got cheesemaking down to a fine art. Whether it's aged Comte from France, Burrata from Italy or Cheddar from our very own gorge in Somerset, pretty much every country has something special and delicious to offer.

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What To Eat Now: chocolate, to boost memory

While studies reveal that cocoa derivatives may boost our memory, it's worth remembering that not all chocolate bars are made equal

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I've Got The Ingredients. What Should I Cook? Ask IBM's Watson

IBM's supercomputer plays a mean game of chess and has crushed Jeopardy! Now chefs are using Watson to come up with new kinds of recipes that work around dietary restrictions and other limitations.

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A galaxy on the edge

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A Retired Clorox Chemist Has Come up With a Laundry Product That Could Revolutionize Washing Your Clothes

The pre-treating, soaking, scrubbing and hoping that those stains are gone before you put your favorite shirt into the dryer could be a thing of the past if the clothing repelled the stain in the first place. That's what a new laundry product hopes to achieve.

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The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally Unleashed AI on the World

The AI on the horizon looks more like Amazon Web Services—cheap, reliable, industrial-grade digital smartness running behind everything, and almost invisible except when it blinks off. This is a big deal, and now it's here.

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BP Oil Spill Left a "Bathtub Ring" the Size of Rhode Island, Study Says

BP has already questioned the results of the new study.

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Engineering A Better Tomorrow (90 sec video)

Helping the future arrive is what we do. We solve the great problems of our times. We create the innovative technologies that define eras. While no one knows what's going to change the world next, we're probably already working on it.

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The Physics of the Hendo Hoverboard

This hoverboard looks like the real deal – unlike the recent fake hoverboard. Although I’m not exactly sure how the Hendo Hoverboard works, I have a pretty good guess. Let’s look at electromagnetic repulsion physics that it might use.

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