(07.09.10) Awesome death spiral of a bizarre star is the title of an article on Discover magazine's Bad Astronomy blog (not to be confused with Ben Goldacre's Bad Science) and it sums everything up perfectly, it is an awesome image, it is a spiral and it is a bizarre star. Or more pedantically a bizarre pair of stars. Read and see more here. (Click on the image to enlarge)

(30.08.10) An exo-planet system as complex and "only" 127 light years away from our own, has been found by astronomers working on the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher. It measures with extreme accuracy a star's wobble, which is caused by bodies orbiting it and it's allowed them to detect five clear indications of planets with indications of two more. Read more here. 
  
(19.08.10) A caver has discovered and explored the deepest cave system ever found by a Britain and in doing so has connected two caves in Spains Picos de Europa mountains. The story is too long to sum up in a few words and it's really worth reading, do so here. 

(26.07.10) A scientist working on a collaborative project analysing data from the Kepler project has, in an unscheduled announcement, revealed that around 140 "Earth like" planets have been discovered within our galaxy, which means that there are undoubtedly a lot more out there. Earth like is defined as a planet smaller than twice Earth's size and at the right distance from it's star. Click here for more detail including a link to a video of the speech that spilled the beans. 

(22.07.10) Rare night-shining clouds can be seen this week all across the UK given a clear night sky, which it seems tonight will be. Created by the low sun bouncing light of clouds high in the atmosphere, the phenomena appears rarely and only at this time of year. So get out there after dark because it's going to be cloudy tomorrow. Read more here.

(20.07.10) German researchers have found that birds use their right eye to navigate migration paths which has the ability to see the earths magnetic field. It's long been known that they use the field but now we know that they can actually see it, which is almost like having a super power. Read more here.

Saadanius hijazensis is an excellent name for a fossil that fills a significant gap in the primate record. Found in Saudi Arabia, the remains sheds light on the time when old world primates split from their new world relatives. Click here for video and story. 

(13.07.10) HIV Breakthrough: Scientists in the US are claiming that they#ve identified two proteins that neatralize over 90% of HIV strains. They hope that this will lead to a vacinne and be a step towards eliminating the desease that effects 33 million people across the world. The proteins were found in samples taken from an unknown African male and bond to a stable component of the virus and common across most strains. Read more here.

(07.07.10) I decided I must be alergic to Aspartme because I found it so unpleasant, a long time ago and got a few sideways glances as a result, so it's with a sense of vindication that I read that it is now associated with a frightening number of deseases and conditions. Although still approved as an additive in Europe it has been withdrawn from sale by most major supermarket and the most common sweetner is once again Sacharin. Read more here and remember to always read the label.

(05.07.10) The Planck Telescope, the space telescope launched by the European Space Agency, has sent back a series of images of the cosmic microwave background radiation which have been put together to produce a picture of the early universe. The image contains remnants of the first light that appeared a "mere" 380 000 years after the big bang. I don't quite get this, nothing travels faster than light, how come we got here fast enough to see it? But then I don't know much about physics. Read more here. 

(28.06.10) NASA has found what appears to be a crack in the Milky Way which looks a lot like the crack that has been following Dr Who around during the recent series. Thankfully it wasn't another reality trying to break through into this one and swallowing up anything it comes into contact with. Rather it's a dense cloud of dust that is harbouring the formation of new galaxies. Click here for more.

(24.06.10) Hot news - A volcano went off in Iceland in the June 1783! OK, so it isn't news but the accounts of what happened are pretty interesting, not to say, horrifying. Flesh melting of animals from acid rain, thousands died in Iceland and beyond, it really is quite frightening. Read more here. Thanks to Steve for the link. 

(22.06.10) Neuroscientists at Dundee University are positing that chemicals in the environment are damaging the brains of bees, moths and hoverflies and are the cause of the decline in and extinction of, several species. If you live on the West Coast you might be wondering "what decline", this year several species, especially of hoverflies, seem to be doing very well but elsewhere things aren't as good. Perhaps the whole of the NW of Scotland will eventually be declared an SSI as it's low environmental chemical use results in it becoming a haven for insects. Read more here.

(17.06.10) A bright green comet can be seen low in the sky to the north north west all this week, just above the horizon near a bright yellow star. Read more here.

(15.06.10) A shoe, so well preserved that archaeologists thought it was about 600 years old, has been found buried in a cave in Armenia and has been dated to 3500 BC, making it the oldest shoe ever found. The preservation is remarkable, the laces have been preserved, the grain of the leather is visible and even the straw used to stuff them is in good condition. Read more here.

(07.06.10) Gladiator graveyard: For the last ten years the gardens of a row of terraced houses in York have been giving up the remains of Roman era skeletons. Until now the reason for burials has been a matter of debate but now forensic analysis has revealed that they were gladiators, many of whom appear to have died in the arena. Read more here.  

(20.05.10) The first lifeform that was built rather evolved has been created by a team led by leading US geneticist Craig Venter. Taking strings of "off the shelf" DNA, building them into an artificial genome and then inserting the result into an existing cell drawn, a new type of cell was created that then divided and reproduced. It's creator hopes that the technology will develop things like lifeforms that eat CO² and produce bio-fuels but recognises that that it also presents tremendous risks. Read more here. 

(17.05.10) You might have read of the Zombie satellite that was knocked out by a solar storm which left it drifting and out of contact with its controllers. It presents some threat to other satellites if it bumps into them and therefore got quite a lot coverage in the press. What interested me about the reports was the expectation that it would probably eventually end up at one of two "libration points", where it would join 160 other dead sats.

It turns out that a libration point is a sort gravitational Sargasso Sea (thanks to Steve for the analogy), a spot where the gravitational influence of two or more bodies finds equilibrium. Read more on the satellite here and libration points here (link goes to Lagrangian Point because it has better pictures). 

(13.05.10) Cold fusion, the production of nuclear energy at room tempreture, has long lived with the phrase "the energy of the future and always will be" but an experiment in California could see the dream of clean, limitless and cheap energy come true. The researchers will fire lasers at tiny pellets of hydrogen to liberate the thermonuclear energy without the dangerous side effects of traditional nuclear reactions. Read more here. (If this works it could be the most important thing that happens in our life times.) 

(26.04.10) In a week in which Steven Hawking recommended hiding from aliens (click here), it seemed a good moment to post a couple of galleries of images from space. The first, from the Hubble site is of huge zoomable pictures (click here), while the second is in 3d and created by an amateur. I'm not sure how accurate they are but they are beautiful and make a good eye exercise, click here. 

(08.04.10) Skeletons found in a South African cave could belong to a new species of human. The partial remains of an adult women and a 11 or 12 year old boy were found in sediment laid down 1.9 million years ago and they could belong to the transition that saw apes come down from the trees and become upright humans. Read more here. 

(29.03.10) US scientists monitoring the gulf stream have found that while there are fluctuations, there is no sign of it slowing down. A slowing down, caused by, if I recall correctly, iceburgs coming further south and cooling a vital part of system, is one of many scenarios predicted by global warming theory. However, what I've seen on the subject, admittedly a TV programme, predicted that there wouldn't be a slow down but a sudden switch off, resulting in the warm air and water that gives the UK it's temperate climate not reaching us and a sudden onset of Canadian winter conditions. Let's the Americans are right. Read more here.

(25.03.10) Scott Harrison, an English amateur who just thought it might be a good idea, has made the news by sending a helium balloon with a Canon Powershot camera attached to it 35000 meters above the Earth and collected images of space and Earth that look like they might have come from a NASA mission. He did his research with web searches, connected up with other interested souls and spent few hundred pounds on the project. Click here and here for more or listen to him on the Gabby Logan explain how it all came about here (1:43.00 in), he just wanted to take pictures of his house!

As he says, he isn't the first to do this, click here and here for other examples. Robert's website has crashed due to demand.  

(22.03.10) Stem cells drawn from the patients bone marrow have used to build a new wind pipe for a ten year old boy. Unlike previous operations in which an organ has been grown outside the body, the pipe was inserted while still in an early stage and the boys own body then acted the incubator to grow the cells. He is now talking and breathing more easily than he has for many years. Read more here. 

(16.03.10) Shrimps in water! But it's no ordinary water, it's the water under the Antartic ice and in a region that scientists thought would only support basic microbes. 600 feet beneath the ice sheet surface and cut off from open water they were stunned when the upward facing camera captured the image of a higher life form in it's first few minutes of operation, implying that there is a rich environment thriving in a harsh environment. The shrimp appears intrigued by the cable supporting the cable and well aware of the dimensions of the bore hole, so it must have a sophisticated method of navigation based on something other than sight, given that eyes are unlikely to have evolved in the dark (actually, is it dark? How far can light penetrate ice? I'm just guessing). Click here for the NASA video.

(04.03.02) The oldest ancestor of the dinosaurs has been discovered in Tanzania. Reconstructed from the remains of 14 individuals, the 240 million year old Asilisaurus ("ancient lizard ancestor") measured between 2 and 10 feet long and looked a bit like  a cross between a dog and a Tenontosaurus. Click here for more.

NASA has released some new images sent back by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbitor, celebrating over 100 terrabits of data coming from the probe. Click here for a gallery.

(24.02.10) Excavations on Crete have led researchers to redate the earliest seafaring humans back by 100 000 years. The archaeologists were actually looking for the small stone tools used at sea 11000 years ago and they were amazed to discover a large hand axe similar to those used around mainland shores of the Mediterranean 175 000 years ago. It was thought that the people of the time weren't capable of travel across large stretches of water and this discovery means that much will have to be rethought. Read more here.

(11.02.10) The genome of a 4000 yr old man has been reconstructed from hair found in the Artic permafrost. Dark skinned, with brown eyes and of short stocky build, he was well adapted to the harsh climate dispite people living in the region for a few generations. Read more here and listen to an interesting interviewer with the leader of the research team here (about 20 minutes in).

(09.02.10) New research has confirmed the existance of water on Saturn's moon, Enceladus. In 2008 the Cassini spacecraft flew through a plume of ice emerging from it's surface which has been found to contain negatively charged water ions and hydrocarbons, so proving that beneath the surface is an ocean of some sort. Read more here.

(27.01.10) A UK/Chinese team of scientists have worked out that the feathers on a 125 million years ago Sinosauropteryx dinosaur were ginger and have been able to "colour it in" to reveal an animal with a sort mohican coat and babershop pole tail. They'll have to re-colour Jurrasic Park. Click here for more.

A Columbia University has been mapping the land underneath the Antartic icecap and have found a land of mountain and lakes with peaks reaching 8500 feet. Click here for more.

(18.01.10) The History of the World in 100 Objects started today on Radio 4. Presented by the British Museum's Neil MacGregor, the 15 minute programmes promise to be fascinating but without actually seeing the objects rather lacking in an essential element. happily the BBC has created a page where you can view them at your leisure. They're really well presented too, click here to see for yourself. 

(06.01.10) A trail of footprints left in a Polish quarry has put back the date that vertebrates appeared on land back by 18 million years. It means that's there's a big unfilled gap in the fossil record or, perhaps, that some things need to be redated. Read more here. 

The Kepler telescope has been looking for earth like planets for a while now, it hasn't quite suceeded but it has found some truly exotic environments. Planets with the density of styrofoam or with surfaces hotter than molten lava are odd enough but ones that actually hotter than the stars they orbit? Read more here.

(09.12.09) New research has modeled the way that the Mediterranean basin was refilled and became connected to the rest of the world's oceans.Previous estimates suggested that it may have taken as long as ten thousand years for the process to complete but the new theory that it might have taken as little as a few month and at most, 90% of the water would have passed through the straights of Gibraltor is two years. Read more here.

(07.12.09) The British Geological Survey has made it's maps available online at a scale of 1:50000 with the ability to turn street and place names on and off. It's been so popular that it currently unavailable but it's worth visiting just to bookmark for the future. Read more here and bookmark the site here.

Meanwhile Google has added the ancient city of Pompeii to Street View and unlike the Britains geology, it's available and works really well. Not every street has been photographed but enough have to give an impression of the size and nature of the place. Click here, then drag the little yellow man and drop him somewhere near the "A".

(03.12.09) A re-examination by NASA scientists of a meteorite that landed in Antartica 13000 years ago has found signs of microscopic bacteria that in all probability originated on Mars. it isn't the first time the meteorite has been the centre of such claims but findings made in 1996 were dismissed by some scientists as not signs of life but of thermal decomposition. Read more here.

(30.11.09) Dutch scientists have grown meat from cells taken from a live pig and put into a vat of nutrients. The result was a sort of soggy pork but they're confident that soon be able to add tone so that its more muscle like and the think that it could be on the market within five years. The development has been welcomed by vegetarian groups, who have no objections as no live animals are harmed. Read more here.

(17.09.11) Earth is going through the Leonid Meteor shower just now and although the UK isn't best placed to see the event, if you nip out after 10pm you might be lucky enough to see a few shooting stars, or the dusty debris of a meteor tail as they're properly called.

The Castiglioni brothers, archeologists who became famous for finding the 'city of gold' Berenike Panchrysos, have found what they think is the lost army of the Persian king Cambyses. Said to number 50000 it was sent out to destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun when it was destroyed by a huge dust storm in 525BC. It has taken the borthers 13 years and several expeditions to find what is certainly the remains of a large force, unearthed in the form of many bronze weapons, skeletons and pottery. Click here for more.  

(09.11.09) A month ago an asteroid exploded high in the atmosphere over Indonesia with the power of 50000 tons of TNT, about three times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. There wasn't any damage but the noise was picked up half way round the world. The article in New Scientist assumes that the object was simply missed by observers but I wonder if it was seen and kept quiet for fear of the panic generated by an event we still can't prevent. Maybe I've watched to many episodes of the X-Files. Read more here.

(05.10.09) Studies of a giant rift that first appeared in Ethiopia in 2005 have determined that is almost certainly the first emergence of what will eventually turn into an ocean. 35 miles long but only 20 feet wide at most, the volcanic activity that created it is identical to that that occurs at the bottom of existing oceans. Read more here.

(27.10.09) A man who has spent the last 43 years studying and interacting with North American Black Bears, considered one of the most dangerous land predators and a great threat to humans who wander into their territory, says that contrary to popular opinion they are peaceful and playful. And A.A.Milne was right, they really do hum when they're content, at least the cubs do. Read more here.

Pliosaurs on the other hand were huge and vicious. The fossil of a complete jaw bone has emerged from a cliff on Dorset's Jurassic coast, giving a more accurate picture of just how big the creature was. Measuring 2.4m in length, the jaws were so big that they could easily have swallowed a man whole and were so powerful that they could have bitten a car in half, had either been around at the time. Read more here.   

(20,10.20) Archeologists diving in Greek waters have been exploring the oldest known submerged city. Called Laconia, it was first discovered 40 years ago and this is the first time the Greek government has given permission for it to be examined. It's 5000 years since it went under, read more here.

The human genome was first mapped out almost a decade ago but only now have scientists worked out how the various strands work together to produce a living thing. Understanding how they interact could be key to finding cures for complex problems like cancer and perhaps even mental disorders. Click here to read and hear more (the Guardian's science podcasts are really good).

(13.10.09) Dyson has reinvented the fan and it's bladeless, instead it looks like a big magnifying glass without the glass and the 10" version can shift 405 litres of air per second. Unfortunately one costs £200. Read more here. 

(07.10.09) Saturn has another ring, as if it didn't have enough already, a new one has been found between 3.7 million and 11 million miles from the planet. Made up of tiny dust and ice particles it is so faint that it has remained hidden until now and was only revealed by it's infra-red glow. It's existance explains one of the solar systems mysteries, why Saturn's moon Iapetus is dark on one side, now we know it's because impact from the ring which orbits in the opposite direction. Click here for more.

(05.10.09) Nightmares are more than just bad dreams, the proper name for them is night paralysis and they've played a huge part in human history, right up to today's belief in alien abduction. Click here for a summary of tonight's One Show, with lot's of fascinating little facts that somehow make the experience of them slightly more bearable.

(01.10.09) After 15 years of study researchers have identified fossils found in Ethiopia as our earliest known ancestor. The female was only 4 ft tall with a brain the size of chimps but she was capable of walking upright even if she did still spend a good deal of her life in the trees. Click here for lots more including audio from scientists discussing various aspects of the find and it's implications.

(24.09.09) A huge hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver has been found in South Staffordshire. Over 1500 pieces, in total weighed by the kilo, of coins, helmets, crosses, sword parts, some encrusted with jewels make by far the largest find ever made and is many times the amount found in the Sutton Ho burial. Read, with pictures and video, more here.

Huge amounts of water have been found in the soil on the Moon's surface, NASA estimates that each cubic metre could contain as much as litre. This means that one of the main barriers to establishing a permenant base there is surmountalbe giving the concept a huge boost. Read more here.

(14.09.09) NASA scientists have succeeded in levitating young mice using superconducting magnets. The poor little fellows found the experience that they had to be sedated for subsequent experiments. Read more here.

(09.09.09) Five skulls found in beneath a medival village in Georgia have been dated to around 1.8 millions years old making them by far the oldest human remains found outside Africa. Their existance suggests that humanoids migrated north and later returned south before finally moving out of Africa to colonize Europe.

Not only that but the tiny size of the brain coupled with relatively long legs on a 4'6" frame, suggests that bepedal movement proceeded the increase in brain size and not the other way round as generally thought. Read more here. 

(08.09.09) Researchers at the University of Utah have found that one in four prostate cancers contained the XMRV virus and that it was more likely to be found in the more aggressive forms. It hasn't been proved that the virus causes the cancer but if it is then there is hope that a vacine can be found which could save thousands of lives. Click here for more.

Tonight's BBC documentary, The Lost Land of the Volcano, promises to be a feast of fascinating new species. Amongst other things they've found a parrot not much bigger than a man's thumb and a rat the size of a very fat cat. Click here for a preview. (BBC1 @ 9pm)

In other telly news, tomorrow night on Channel 4 Derren Brown will attempt to predict the lottery numbers just before they are drawn and then explain how he did. It will be worth watching because Derren is remarkable illusionist and you will be convinced he managed the impossible. He's also a noted debunker of psychics etc, a subject he was interviewed on by Richard Dawkins. Click here for the interview in six short episodes on YouTube (part 3 doesn't seem to be working).

(01.09.09) The Institute of Mechanical Engineers has released a report on methods for removing CO² from the atmosphere. The idea that has made most of the headlines is the creation of millions of artificial trees, which if the BBC is to be believed, will look like giant fly swats. Based on older carbon scrubbing techniques but requiring far less energy to process the air, they are thought to be able to capture 1000 times the amount of carbon than real trees occupying the same space would. Read more here and here.  

It would take a lot of them to capture the carbon released by the Californian fires. The news reports haven't really captured just how big they are but this article in the Daily Mail does give quite a graphic impression.  

(27.08.09) St. Andrews Uni astronomy dept. has set the world alight with the discovery of a planet that either defies the laws of physics or is an incredibly lucky find. Its a bit hard to explain in a space like this but basically it's a very big planet, 10 X Jupiter and really close to it's sun, within 1.4mil miles of it's surface. This is an impossible set of circumstances to sustain, so the astronomers must have found it in its last years of decline, just before it falls into it's star. Read more here and here. 

Fake trees better than the real ones, at least when it comes to absorbing CO², at least they could theoretically. Which seems a good thing, theoretically. Read more here. Theoretically. 

(19.08.09) Glycine, an amino acid vital for the formation of life, has been detected in material ejected from a comet known as Wild-2. It strengthens the theory that life was brought to earth from space rather than developing here independently, click here for more.

(18.08.09) Botanists exploring a remote mountain in the Philippines have discovered a giant pitcher plant and named it in honour of David Attenborough. it's so big it's capable of digesting a rat and is really quite spectacular, if rather ugly. Click here for more.

It must be August because there's lots of UFO stories about sparked off by the release of government documents. Lot's of details if you do a search or you can download the original files here.  

(12.08.09) This week sees the height of the Perseids meteor shower and if skys stay clear we could be in for a great show. For details click here and to follow or report it on Twitter as part of the Astronomical Society project click here.

(03.08.09) The traces of a large town have been unearthed near Basingstoke, Hampshire, dating back to a century before the Romans arrived. It has all the features associated with the settlements created by the invaders, streets in a grid pattern, alleys dividing individual plots and water supplied from springs and wells. Housing 10000 people, it minted it's own coins and was a thriving trading centre and it could be Britains oldest town. Read more here.

(27.07.09) Spanish researchers have discovered a protein that increases the brain's capacity to recall what it sees. A study found that mice given boost of the RGS-14 protein could recall objects up to two months after they were last seen rather than the usual one hour (life must never be dull for a mouse). It only effect visual memory, so you'll remember what you were told to get at the shop only if you can lip read. More here.

(21.07.09) An Australian amateur astronamer spotted a huge impact on surface of Jupiter exactly 15 years since the famous Comet Shoemaker struck the planet. He relayed his observation to NASA who then tracked it using the infrared telescope in Hawaii. Click here for more info and images.

(06.07.09) A laser technique that "cleans" the eye of dead cells that build up as people get older is offering the possibility of sufferers of age related macular degeneration regaining sight. Read more here. 

(24.06.09) NASA has a wonderful exhibition of images from Saturn, its moons and rings taken by the Cassini spacecraft and the BBC has an introductry slideshow and commentary on them. Click here to be entranced.

The earliest musical instruments have been found in a German cave. Dating back 35000 years to some of Europe's earliest settlers, they produce a beautiful sound and prove that early humans had a strong creative urge. Click here for more including an audio link.

(17.06.09) New drug MabThera offers hope for rheumatoid arthitis sufferers after a study found that almost half of those tested showed improvement after a year. The drug could be approved in as little as 18 months and be of use to a quarter of a million people. Click here for more. 

Bacteria brought up from two miles below a Greenland glacier have been brought back to life after 120 000 years. The cells will provide clues to how life might survive in hostil environments such as distant planets and comets. Read more here. If Sci-Fi has taught me anything it's that the bacteria will now mutate or evolve into either deadly virus or ravenous alian life form and we only have weeks to live. 

(19.05.09) Many experts and commentators, including David Attenborough, are hailing the discovery of a 47 million year old fossil as the missing link between humans and other primates. The fossil, dubbed Ida, is remarkably intact and even has traces of the creatures last meal. Read more here and hear Attenborough's thoughts here.   

(06.05.09) Remember the Flores "hobbits"? They're the group of small people, or rather the remains of, discovered on an Indonesian island that have been alternately described as a new species of human or one just suffering from a shrinking desease. Now London's Natural History  Museum has declared that they are indeed a new species based on a study of the size of their brains and feet. What I found most interesting about the story when it initially broke was that people living on Flores claimed to have seen them in the not to distant past, in which case much more recent remains should be out there. Read more here.   

(20.01.09) There's hope for sufferers of age related macular degeneration with the announcement that a technique involving the replacement of damaged cells with stem cells from Moorfileds Eye Hospital. Read more here.

A network of UK radio telescopes has "gone live" today. Centred of Jodrell Bank, telescopes across the country have been linked by fibre optic cable, enabling them to work in unison and so carry more work far more effectively. I heard one of the project leaders talking about this on the radio today, he was really excited, find out why here. 

(08.04.09) Researchers at MIT have manipulated two genes of a virus so that it now builds highly efficient batteries. Read more here.

(06.04.09) An ice bridge in Antartica has collapsed raising fears that ice could be lost more rapidly grom the same area, read more here.

The Turin Shroad's mysterious wilderness years, when it disappeared for a century, have been explained by the Vatican which claims that it was spirited away by the Knights Templar. Read more here. 

(18.03.09) Google Earth has added "live" images of Mars to the applications many, many layers. If you've got the latest version all you have to do is active it in the layers section and give it a while to load. Even without it the Mars content is fascinating, apart from the complete planet being "flyable", every probe and lander is available and there's lots of information to be clicked on. Highly recommended and well done NASA and Google.

(05.03.09) Ben-Gurion University has developed a method of producing denatured plutonium which can be used in reactors but is useless for nuclear weapons. I sense a big question for Iran appearing on the horizon. Read more here.

(03.03.09) The Times has a wonderful article listing 13 great unsolved scientific mysteries, starting with the search for the missing 96% of the universe and a couple of drifting space craft and ending with the persisting popularity of homeopathy. Click here.  

(17.92.09) The MMR scare has led to literally millions of parents agonising over whether or not to immunise their children with a single jab that one doctor had called into question. Many didn't, leaving their child at risk of catching, in particular, measles, while others worried that they'd done the wrong thing by doing so. Now documents made available by GMC has revealed just how shabby and dishonest that original claim of risk was and everyone who is interested in the subject should read about them, click here to do so.

(12.02.09) DNA extracted from Neanderthal fossils found in Croatia has revealed the presence of a gene associated with speech. It's another indication that are ancient cousins were more sophisticated than previously thought and makes the question of they died out more intriguing. Read more here.

(11.02.09) An undisturbed chamber containing 30 mummies has been discovered in Egypt, including one possibly as much as 4000 years old. New finds are not uncommon but completely untouched tombs are rare and so there is much excitement amongst the archaeological community. Read and see more here.

(08.02.09) Molecules found in rocks 635 million years old have revealed chemical traces of what were once very simple life forms, probably sponges, making them the first multi-cellular animal to exist and proving Darwin's hypothesis that all life evolved from a simple ancestor. Read more here. 

(08.02.09)(Same story but better link) The remnants of a giant snake that lived in northern Columbia 58-60 million years ago have been found. It was around 45 feet long, about twice the length of today's biggest snake and weighed as much as 2500 lbs. Read more here (great images)

(19.01.09) Cure for Corneal blindness pioneered in Scotland - A stem-cell therapy has restored sight to patients and will now move into full clinical trial, giving hope to millions of people around the world who suffer from corneal blindness. Read more here.

(15.01.09) Methane has been found on Mars and it's thought that microbes living just below surface are responsible for it. Read more in the Sun in article by their spaceman, Paul Sutherland, here.

(18.12.08) The Boston Globe has a rather unusual advent calendar featuring shots taken by the Hubble telescope and each day they publish a new one. I wish I'd known about it 18 days ago but here it is anyway, the images are truly amazing.

(16.12.08) A huge and very strange sea creature has washed up on Guinea's shore. it's bigger than a humvee car, very blubbery and has a tail and four paws. Scientists say they have seen similar things before but have yet to identify what it or they are. Click here for more and pictures.

(15.12.08) First the presence of water vapour was confirmed on a planet outside our solar system (click here), giving rise to the possibility of life out there, now carbon dioxide has been discovered on another one, possibly evidence has existed in the past. I say in the past because the planet's current temperature is 1000°C, which means it will have had to develop some pretty impressive sun screen to have survived. Click here.  

(01.12.08) Have you noticed two incredibly bright stars off to the south west over the last couple of nights? Well it turns out they're not stars but Venus and Jupiter coming into close alignment and later in the night the Moon was passing by too. Tonight is the last that they're going to be this close, which is a pity because it's cloudy but hopefully there'll still be something to see tomorrow when it should be clearer. Read more here and click here for a live feed of the night sky from Cornwall.

Stories about wonder drugs should always be greeted with scepticism but research into mitochondrial medicine really might lead to cures for cancer, Parkinsons, Alzheimers and other major deseases. Essentially every cell in our bodies contain mitochondria which converts glucose into reusable energy and enables to regenerate. Over time mitochondria ceases to function which leads to cells degenerating and hence to many deseases, stopping or reversing the break down in mitochndria could prevent or cure them. Read more here.

(25.11.08) Nick Davies, of Tobermory, caught a wonderful image of bottle nose dolphins leaping in the bay, so good it made the Daily Telegraph.

What's your idea of a giant Jellyfish? Dinner plate sized? Big as a dustbin lid? Well click here.

(19.11.08) A Spanish women has benefitted from the impantation of a new windpipe grown form her own stem cells, click here for Channel 4's excellent report.

Remember those well preserved wooly mammoths discovered in Siberia? Well scientists in the the US and Russia have succeeded in piecing together 80% of their DNA by analyising hair that had been kept in good condition by the cold conditions. Click here for more.

The Hubble telescope has recorded the first images of planets outside our solar system. The huge planets orbit a young star in the Pegasus constellation a 130 light years from Earth and gaseus like our Jupiter. Click here for more.

Archeologists working in Israel have unearthed the grave a female shaman (shawoman surely?) who died 12000 years ago. Buried with various objects and with great care, she was clearly held in high regard by her community, part of the Natufian people who lived in the area between 13000 and 11500 B.C.. Read more here.

(12.11.08) A new pyramid has been discovered in Saqqara, near Cairo. It's a satellite tomb of the tomb of Teti and probably belongs to Queen Sesheshet. The base was discovered under 16 feet of sand and archaeologists estimate that it was originaly 46 feet high. Sadly it seems to have been well known to tomb robbers who dug a shaft to the funerary chambers, so it's unlikely to house much in the way of artifacts. Read more here. 

(11.11.08) Contact lens with embedded circuity have been developed in the USA. The circuit, which will be powered by solar cells or radio signal, doesn't impair sight but it's hoped it will enable information to be presented to the wearer and intrigingly, for them to zoom in on distant objects. Read more here.

(06.11.08) A strange looking range of light bulbs is set to hit the market in the next year as the major manufacturers start produce energy saving LED lamps. They look so strange because they require a lot of cooling and so are encased in a sheath of fins that disperse the heat. Click here to see one and here to be surprised at the current price.

(04.11.08) Shields up! British scientists think they have come up with a way of protecting space travellers from cosmic radiation using a magnetic "umbrella." This would make missions to Mars much safer, reducing the risk of the astronauts receiving a lethal dose radiation and protecting vital equipment from damage. Read more here.

Researchers from Montana have discovered a tree fungus in the Patagonian rain forest that produces a hydrocarbon gas almost identical to oil based fuels. How "green" this is I'm not sure but presumably the fungus is absorbing high levels of harmful chemicals in order to do this so it might have applications beyond a mere fuel source. Read more here.

(29.10.08) Virtually the same circuits within the brain control both love and hate researchers have found. Using a brain scanner subjects were shown pictures of people they loved or hated and the results showed almost exactly the same areas being stimulated. Read more here. Have you noticed how self-explanitory newspaper links are getting? The end bit of this one is "science/scientists-prove-it-really-is-a-thin-line-between-love-and-hate-976901.html"

(27.10.08) A Golden Orb spider has been photographed eating a bird caught in it's web in a Melbourne garden. The spider makes a very strong web because its normal prey is large insects but it's amazing that it's strong enough to hold Finch sized bird. The spider isn't small either and looks like something from a Sci-fi horror movie. Click here for pictures and story.

(14.10.08) Some truly amazing images and video from the TRACE Sun study have been published and they really take your breath away. Click here for the best rendition of them I could find.

(13.10.08) It's Turing time again and once again the prize for creating an artificial intelligence that can fool enough people into thinking it's a human hasn't been awarded. The winning piece of software did manage fool 25% of those who tested it though, you can try it for yourself here. This article on the competition is also worth a read.

(08.10.08) Steve Jones, one of Britain's leading geneticists, is saying that human evolution is coming to a halt because of changes in our reproduction. It's due to the average age of fatherhood falling and it's older fathers who stand more chance of producing a mutation. I have my doubts, I think it's always risky to look at today and assume that trends will continue into the future but what do I know? Read more here.

(07,10.08) NERC (what a great acronym that is) have filmed fish nearly five miles down in one of the deep Pacific Ocean trenches. Called the Hadal Snailfish, they live in total darkness, in near freezing conditions, yet the video shows several swarming around around the researchers bait. Click here.  

(06.10.08) The Red List of endangered species is the most respected index of it's sort and it's claiming that a quarter of all land mammals are at risk of dying out in the next few decades. On top of that one third of reptiles are either endangered or extinct. The data was made up from reports from 1700 experts in 130 countries, read more here.

(30.09.08) The Mars Rover has detected snow falling above it, it didn't reach the ground but it's pretty exciting none the less. A boffin described the situation as "it's really kind of up in the air", he was talking about all the information of evidence of a wet planet though. Read more here.

(27.09.08) China's space programme took a giant leap yesterday when Col. Zhai Zhigang (what a great name) became the first from his nation to make a space walk and the first from a non-Russian or American craft. The video of the event is interesting, the sight is familier yet subtly different, with no US flag and Zhigang in his Chinese space suit. Read more with video here.

(19.08.09) A global survey of fush stocks has concluded that fisheries in which individual fishermen have a personal share of the maximum annual catch are half as likely to collapse as those in which the commoner overall quota system is used. Read more here.

(16.09.08) The Cern Collider will start it's real work next week when the first particles will be sent round in opposite directions. This week they've been sorting teething problems with the massive system but those were resolved today. Read more here (there may be some disruption to the usual flow of news stories should the world end).

(09.09.08) Buried Beneath the Swizz/French border lies the most eagerly awaited scientific experiment since man went to the moon and it's due to start work tomorrow. The 27 mile long loops will fire two beams of particles in opposite directions and then record what happens when the collide in an attempt to answer some of the most fundemental questions in physics and move the science beyond the incomplete Standard Model. The best website that I've found to explain the basics, and frankly anything more is beyond me, is the BBC's, which you can find here.

(02.09.08) Arizona researchers have developed a mathmatical technique that can extract a single DNA sample from mixture of several. Their intention is to use it in the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer’s but if it works it has obvious implications in other applications. Read more here.

Hubble celebrates it's 18th birthday (really? it seems so, um, modern), click here for slideshow courtesy of the Timesonline.

(25.08.08) Have you noticed that there seems to be fewer butterflies around this year? Specifically Peacocks and Admirals? Well if so you're not the only one who's noticed and global warming may be to blame. The commonest explanation is a fly that has moved north as temperatures have risen, the Sturmia Bella, which looks like a blue bottle without the blue and lays its eggs within the butterfly's caterpillars. Another explanation, aired on Radio 4's PM today is that two very heavy rain falls this year literally washed the caterpillars away and again global warming is thought to be causing the extreme weather we've experienced in the last few years. Next year I'm going to look out for the caterpillars and try raising some in a farm. Read more here and here. Picture of the fly here.

Nasa has released some amazing pictures of a star forming area in the Cassiopeia constellation, which remind me of the fantasy art of seventies science fiction, except they're far more fantastic. See one here and more here.

(21.08.08) A heath fire on Fylingdales Moor (the one with the golf balls) in Yorkshire has laid bare a landscape unseen for 3000 years. Carved stones, some with cup and ring marks, field boundaries and the outlines of dwellings have been revealed in what one archaeologist described as "the most exciting development in archaeology in my experience." Read the news story here and the English Heritage page here.

Some incredibly clever people have explained how the "spaghetti monster" black hole retains it's integrity and doesn't just suck in the fronds of gas that surround it. It's all to do with the interaction of magnetic fields apparently. Boggle your mind here.

(01.08.08) They've absolutely proved that the white crystals found by the Mars probe are water ice, click here for a video with a very happy scientist.

(31.07.08) The world's oldest know computer, dating back to 150BC Greece, was used to plot the movement of celestial bodies and to set the timing for the Olympics. Consisting of 37 interlocking dials and about the size of a dictionary, it was made with similar precision to a 19th century Swiss clock and was perhaps worthy of being calledthe eigth wonder of the world (IMO). Read more here with lots of really good illustrations and diagrams.

(29.07.08) The Science Museum has an exhibition of what it calls "emotibots", robots that appear to respond  emotionally to how they are treated. The strangest of which looks like a humanoid alien with a heart beat, moving diaphragm and a range of physical reactions to stimuli which makes it look either scared or very content. Read more here.

Most of us, especially Qi viewers, will have heard the "fact" that glass isn't a solid but liquid, just a very slowly moving one and that's why medieval windows panes are thicker at the bottom. Except they aren't and it's not, glass is a lot more complicated than that. It exists somewhere between a solid and liquid state, with properties of both once it has cooled and become hard. Unlike most liquids which freeze at the same point, 37 degrees in the case of water for instance, the point at which glass becomes solid varies depending on how slowly it cools. Read much more about this basic substance that is still baffling scientists here.

(08.07.08) A stone tablet with eighty lines of text has caused a stir amongst biblical scholars because one possible translation tells of the resurrection after three days of someone other than Jesus. It has been dated to just before his life and refers to a rebel called Simon who was executed by the authorities only to revive. Read more here.