LATEST HEADLINES
Impact reveals lunar water by the bucketful
19:38 13 November 2009 | 47 comments
NASA's LCROSS mission has confirmed an icy store of water at the moon's south pole
Paradox lost: molecular collisions kept early Earth warm
18:00 15 November 2009 | 6 comments
2.5 billion years ago, the sun was so faint, the oceans should have been ice. They weren't, and now a modelling study suggests the greenhouse effect, and nitrogen explain why
First universal programmable quantum computer unveiled
18:00 15 November 2009 | 6 comments
Ion-trap two-qubit device put through its paces
Meteor shower this week as we cut through comet trails
18:00 15 November 2009 | 1 comment
Hundreds of Leonid meteors an hour will stream across the sky on Tuesday when the Earth passes through old comet streams
How reputation could save the Earth
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS: 10:00 15 November 2009 | 47 comments
The power of reputation should be harnessed to stop selfish people from wrecking the planet, say David Rand and Martin Nowak
Ray Mears: We'll struggle to survive climate change
INTERVIEW: 10:00 14 November 2009 | 44 comments
Ray Mears is Mr Bushcraft. He wants people to be confident about surviving in the wild, but reckons most of us won't make it through a global climate crisis
Philip Rosedale: The web needs to be more lifelike
INTERVIEW: 15:24 13 November 2009 | 11 comments
Residents of Second Life have spent one billion hours in this digital world. Now its founder has plans to push the concept much further in a new virtual venture
Failed stellar bombs hint at supernova tipping point
13:57 13 November 2009 | 11 comments
Two peculiar white dwarfs with more oxygen than carbon are like nothing anybody has seen before
Trees in far north provide biggest climate benefit
UPFRONT: 13:51 13 November 2009 | 23 comments
Planting forests in the tropics could be a waste of time and money, compared with planting them at high latitudes
Cocaine and pepper spray – a lethal mix?
THIS WEEK: 12:02 13 November 2009 | 25 comments
A mouse experiment suggests deaths in US police custody may have been the result of an interaction between capsaicin and psychostimulant drugs
A joyride through the nanoworld
11:00 13 November 2009
George Whitesides and Felice Frankel take you on a whirlwind tour of the tiny in No Small Matter: Science on the nanoscale
FAVOURITE COMMENT
Giant crack in Earth's crust
"You're a real crack-up." lame_guy (continues)
FEEDBACK
Sports jocks library goes digital
The athletic benefits of digital books, the randomising effects of being really drunk, and some excellent news (not really) from Microsoft
CULTURELAB
How to mix an ancient cocktail
13:05 13 November 2009 - updated 14:47 13 November 2009
Mix drinks like a Neolithic bartender
Drink culture: it's as old as the hills
13:00 13 November 2009 - updated 17:11 13 November 2009
Alcohol is central to human history, argues Patrick McGovern in Uncorking the past: The quest for wine, beer and other alcoholic beverages
CLIMATE
Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months
Detailed studies of ancient climate have revealed that the onset of Europe's "Big Freeze", 13,000 years ago, was anything but glacial
SPACEFLIGHT
Propelled by light: the promise and perils of solar sailing
Despite earlier failures, the Planetary Society is gearing up to test another solar sail in space in a year – executive director Louis Friedman explains why
