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WILDLIFE

International garden photographer of the year See beautiful shots from the finalists, including a close-up of a tiger moth, the sharp spines of an agave, and a butterfly caught in a rain shower…

SPACE

CSI: Red Planet? In what is planned to be the first DNA analysis to be done on another planet, Harvard researchers hope to send a DNA sequencer to Mars in the next decade to hunt for signs of alien life.

SOCIETY

More scientists who put their lives on the line Our recent article on researchers who became their own test subjects obviously piqued people’s imagination – we had a flood of responses naming others who took their science well beyond the realms of personal safety.

ENVIRONMENT

Bug eats electricity, farts biogas Wind and solar energy output is variable and doesn’t match peak demand. Feeding extra electricity to a microorganism that uses the energy to convert carbon dioxide into methane offers a carbon-neutral way to turn the surplus power into a valuable fuel.

COSMOLOGY

What would it look like to fall into a black hole? Plunging into a black hole might not be good for your health, but at least the view would be spectacular. A new simulation not only shows what you might see on your way towards the black hole’s crushing central singularity – it could also help physicists understand the apparently paradoxical fate of matter and energy in a black hole.

BLOG

Make the world a better place by uninventing something If you had a time machine and could visit the past to extinguish a technology before it caught on, which invention would you get rid of?