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Chance to sneak ahead while US and Russia squabble
A Chinese state media agency has reported today that the country will launch a three-man spaceflight this month and all systems are already in final preparation.…
Chinese cardiac crypto
Interfering with wireless medical implants sounds like a movie threat plot rather than a real risk - but if there is a threat, Chinese boffins have come up with an ingenious solution for combating it.…
No 'strangelet soup' for you
Boffins preparing to fire up the most powerful particle-smasher ever built have released another reassuring report which says that their machine will definitely not destroy the universe - nor even the planet Earth.…
Saving the planet, one space shuttle launch at a time
The marketing robots at the UK tentacle of remorseless Teutonic engineering firm Bosch haven't quite mastered the art of eco-friendly promotion guff.…
Nasty chill provoked reduced fuel flow
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has concluded that the 17 January crash-landing of a Boeing 777 at Heathrow was probably caused by "ice within the fuel feed system" which restricted flow to the engines.…
They will go like a bomb
Members of the European Parliament have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a plan to bring in common standards for hydrogen cars and hydrogen filling stations across the EU.…
EU premiers were in the dark: now we all will be
A former chief scientific advisor to the government has said that EU renewable-energy quotas will cause widespread fuel poverty. Sir David King believes that European heads of state, in agreeing the targets, may have mistaken electricity usage for total energy consumption - leading to overly ambitious and expensive goals being set.…
The fluffier face of tracking
As a report from the US Computing Technology Industry Association shows the number of companies adopting chipping for one or more projects up by a third on 2007, it is nice to think that just occasionally, chips and other tracking devices can be put to uses that are relatively benign – or even green.…
Unscrewing the inscrutable
Everyone, one hopes, is well aware by now of metamaterial - remarkable conceptual stuff which might be used in coming years to make invisibility cloaks; or more realistically, invisible sheds. Few, however, have spotted the critical flaw in a metamaterial cloak, shed or cladding - people so concealed would no more be able to see out than those outside could see in.…
Weapons grade fry-ray to debut 'this year'
US war-tech behemoth Northrop Grumman announced yesterday that it had achieved another milestone in its battlefield raygun programme - ahead of schedule. Company blaster cannon execs believe that the first tests at combat power - 100 kilowatts - will take place as planned by the end of this year.…
Bringing Fuzziness to the Believers
Spare a thought for anyone on the Environment beat at the Guardian newspaper. It must be like working for Pravda during the Breznhev era. There, as the economy became ever more dysfunctional, reporters were obliged to pump out ever more absurd stories saluting record productivity and efficiency records. The triumph over capitalism was imminent!…
Man, this refill cartridge weighs a ton
Most readers will be aware of so-called "3D printing" techniques, in which solid objects can be constructed automatically from computer models. Researchers in California intend to scale the process up radically, using "contour crafting" concrete extrusion to erect buildings in a matter of hours.…
Terrorism fears lead to 'perfect storm'
A "looming crisis" faces the world of nuclear medicine, as unexpected shutdowns at nuclear reactors producing vital medical isotopes are seriously affecting world supplies, according to reports. Experts in the field are calling for concerted international action to stop such events happening again.…
Move over 232,582,657-1. Your day has ended
Distributed computing hasn't folded us a cure for cancer yet, but these projects in which PC users donate their spare processing power to solve scientific problems have unquestionably made major strides in uncovering ridiculously large prime numbers.…
Private space couriers vie for NASA deliveries
A high-efficiency plasma drive designed for faster interplanetary journeys may be lifted into space by a privately-developed launcher. The candidates for the job include PayPal zillionaire Elon Musk's Falcon 9 rocket.…
Is it supposed to make that rattling noise?
Space shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour, the next two planned to fly, may have technical problems with their external fuel tanks. Both spacecraft are due to roll out to launch pads at the Kennedy Space Centre.…
Talk about a spin machine
The X2 prototype superhelicopter had a successful first flight yesterday, according to its makers Sikorsky. The revolutionary (cough) aircraft hovered and manoeuvred using its twin main rotors without problems, but trials of its tail propulsor will take place on a future flight.…
British-built model gets full fat transmission
Tesla Motors, darling of the electric vehicle industry, has confirmed that it will produce a European "special edition" of the famous Roadster sports car. European buyers will be the first to get Roadsters with full-performance transmissions - early US cars now being delivered have "intermediate" lower-performance machinery which will need to be replaced.…
Peterborough Attacks
A small British company developing a unique form of hovering aircraft says it will soon demonstrate a new and much more serious version of its technology.…
Gore-Tex killer?
UK company Plasma Product Innovations (P2i) today demonstrated a chemical process it claims can render any material 100 per cent waterproof.…
Show us the money, says NASA
Presidential contender John McCain and two other bigshot Republican senators have written to George Bush urging that NASA keep the Space Shuttle fleet alive beyond 2010. The politicians are concerned about US reliance on Russia for manned space transport in the early years of the next decade.…
Scientists issue incense fug health warning
Researchers have warned that burning joss-sticks and incense is associated with "an increase in some types of lung cancer, and cancers of the upper respiratory tract, such as throat and mouth cancer", the Guardian reports.…
Scientists probe barotrauma fatalities
A research team from the University of Calgary has found that a large percentage of bat fatalities at wind turbine sites are caused by a sudden drop in air pressure around the turbine blades, the BBC reports.…
Bodies align to north-south axis
Researchers have explained why cattle will tend to face the same direction when grazing - a behaviour long known to herdsmen and hunters but previously attributed to either prevailing winds or the sun's position.…
Proposed plan to protect planet with plastic film
An PhD student with the University of Queensland's School of Engineering has won top prize in an international competition for her plan to wrap a giant asteroid with reflective sheeting to prevent a collision with the Earth.…
Crash, bang at the Wallops
A NASA rocket carrying two hypersonic experiments this morning exploded shortly after take-off from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the agency reports.…
When the end comes, it'll be wearing a bunny suit
IDF Intel sent sane journalists screaming for the exits this morning when it unveiled a nightmarish future vision where robots are more intelligent than humans, computers can change shape, electronic devices are recharged remotely, and humans are probably going to be ruled by an x86-based server farm.…
Chemical nanobrains 'clever as kids'
The Royal Society of Chemistry has awarded a Belfast-based boffin a prize for developing "intelligent supermolecules" which are on an intellectual level with (some) human children - able to win games of noughts and crosses.…
Heavy lifter too heavy for road to the stars?
The budget for NASA's Constellation programme - comprising the Orion and Ares vehicles - looks like it may have run to a few billion cubic metres of road surfacing after the agency admitted the Kennedy Space Center crawlerway over which spacecraft are trundled to their launchpads could collapse under the weight of the Ares V heavy lifter.…
Magnetism maintains his noodly appendages
Scientists believe they have deduced what sustains the noodly appendages of a galactic "spaghetti monster" - actually Galaxy NGC 1275 in Perseus - which displays "a mammoth network of spaghetti-like gas filaments around a black hole", as New Scientist puts it.…
Deep hot wet cracks = green dreams
Google, the company which has conscripted everyone on the internet to be its Web 2.0 free-content providers, has decided to give something back. The firm will spend $10m - almost a thousandth of a year's ad revenues - to kickstart geothermal power.…
Stop picking on householders
The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has said the government should do more to encourage businesses to recycle and reduce waste and take the focus away from householders.…
Shuttle/Soyuz replacement looking peaky?
NASA will map the future of manned spacecraft later today, following long-running rumours of possible delays to the programme and increasing worries of over-reliance on Russian technology to support the International Space Station.…
There's something rotten north of Denmark
Just a few weeks ago, predictions of Arctic ice collapse were buzzing all over the internet. Some scientists were predicting that the "North Pole may be ice-free for first time this summer". Others predicted that the entire "polar ice cap would disappear this summer".…
Big-boned deserve 42 days without cake
Government health adviser Professor David Hunter believes obesity in the UK is now a greater threat than terrorism.…
Neuroscientists, anthropologists take to the trenches
The US needs to draft in psychopharmacologists, neuroscientists and even goateed cultural studies experts to fight 21 century wars that will be largely in the mind.…
Astronauts could be benched till 2015
Russia’s invasion of Georgia is sending ripples right out into space, with NASA facing the possibility of no longer being able to hitch a ride to the International Space Station on Soyuz flights.…
Yes, the Bible is fallible
A federal judge has told the University of California that when considering applicants, it has the constitutional right to ignore high school course work grounded in the notion that the Bible is infallible.…
This is why a former astronaut should run for president
NASA has put back the planned launch of its Orion spacecraft for a year, meaning the first test launch won't be until 2014 at the earliest.…
What's that Skippy? You go with horseradish and mint sauce?
Australian scientists have recommended their beef-loving compatriots switch to kangaroo meat to clamp down on the methane emissions that bovine burger precursors pump out into the atmosphere.…
Finally, the formula for invisibility is ours. Mwahahaha...
Scientists at the University of California in Berkeley have engineered a material that can bend visible light around objects. This development could soon result in technology that can render tanks, ships and troops invisible to the eye.…
Interactive nano-Spandex iPants for all
Japanese boffins have developed a material which they believe could be used to make stretchy, highly flexible electronic circuitry. It goes almost without saying that their elasto-conductor miracle sheet is based on fashionable carbon nanotubes.…
Hadron headbanger machine chilled to ramming speed
Scientists operating from a hollowed-out lair deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border have announced that their enormous, unprecedentedly powerful 27-kilometre proton cannon will shortly be ready to open fire. To be precise, "first beam" is scheduled for 10 September.…
Nothing must interfere with Heathrow
The University of Reading is to scale back a planned wind farm just off the M4 because of fears it could interfere with air traffic control radar at Heathrow Airport.…
Doesn't matter though, we aren't using much
The British government has released its first monthly report into biofuels used in the UK. It says that not much biofuel is used, and that in general it has very little idea if Blighty's biofuel is sustainably produced, what kind of land was used to make it or indeed where it comes from.…
Perhaps we should stop subsidising them
Analysis Rooftop wind turbines are actually net carbon emitters for most British properties, according to new research. Worse still, it appears that even if small turbines became common they could produce only a tiny fraction of the UK's energy requirements.…
Strong but circumstantial - is there still room for doubt?
Yesterday the FBI published its search warrants and affidavits pertaining to the case of Bruce Ivins, the Ft. Detrick scientist fingered by the agency as the perpetrator of the 'Amerithrax anthrax mailings..…
Nuclear-powered Mars ships on drawing board
In non-Mars-lander NASA news, it has been reported that the space agency will soon set out concrete plans to test a revolutionary new drive system aboard the International Space Station. The propulsion tech in question is a plasma engine known as Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR).…
That's the gist, anyway
In a development which may untwist a few knickers around the internet, NASA scientists have now explained just what their Phoenix robot lander has found in the soil of Mars - and what the implications are for possible discovery of life on the Red Planet.…
Do stand so close to me, if so inclined
Researchers from Ohio and Kentucky looking into sex education in schools have discovered that "teacher-student relationships are key" to making sure that kids achieve a healthy sex life.…