NASA is certainly not in the business of spreading panic over asteroid strikes - every time one comes close, we see yet another press release telling us that all known 'potentially hazardous asteroids' have less than a 0.01 percent chance of impacting Earth…

When most people think about the hardest naturally occurring material on Earth, they think of diamonds - those pretty stones in our engagement rings that can cut steel and rock.

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Keeping women alive to further the spread. One of the most persistent mysteries in medical science is why certain infections appear to cause more severe symptoms in men than they do in women.  Men infected with tuberculosis are 1.5 times more likely to die…

@science Brace yourself, North America. Stay warm, guys: newly released NASA images show the brutal polar vortex that's descended upon North America this week, and is predicted to bring record low temperatures to the US and Canada. The data was captured by…

This is happening. Once 2016 comes to a close, the Arctic will have experienced its hottest year on record, and researchers have found that it’s now warming twice as fast as any other place on Earth. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration…

And how to survive. When we think about the prospect of an asteroid impact on Earth, it's easy to imagine the cataclysmic death and destruction that would result if a space rock smashed into a large city or urban area. But given that more than 70 percent of…

We're getting closer. Scientists working to make nuclear fusion a viable reality have smashed another record, after the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) reactor in South Korea maintained 'high performance' plasma in a stable statefor…

A Barred Galaxy! In 1900, astronomer Joseph Lunt made a discovery: Peering through a telescope at Cape Town Observatory, the British-South African scientist spotted this beautiful sight in the southern constellation of Grus (The Crane): a barred spiral galaxy.…

Almost as hot as the surface of the Sun. A fast-flowing river of molten iron has been found surging under Alaska and Siberia, some 3,000 km (1,864 miles) below the surface - and it appears to be speeding up. This colossal jet stream, which is estimated to…

Gabriela Gonzalez: Gravity spy | Demis Hassabis: Mind crafter | Terry Hughes: Reef sentinel | Guus Velders: Cooling agent | Celina M. Turchi: Zika detective | Alexandra Elbakyan: Paper pirate | John Zhang: Fertility rebel | Kevin Esvelt: CRISPR cautionary…

Putting Einstein's special relativity to the test. After two decades of trying, physicists at CERN have reported the first ever measurement of the light emitted by an antimatter atom, revealing that antihydrogen is the exact mirror image of regular hydrogen.…

Crash course! It may look as though Saturn's moon Mimas is crashing through the rings in this image taken by out Cassini spacecraft, but Mimas is actually 28,000 miles (45,000 kilometers) away from the rings. There is a strong connection between the icy moon…

New observations confirm an 80-year-old quantum theory. For the first time, MIT physicists have observed a highly ordered crystal of electrons in a semiconducting material and documented its melting, much like ice thawing into water. The observations confirm…

Wtf We like to say we know less about the ocean here on Earth than we do about the surface of Mars, because while we have a vague idea of its overall structure, we’ve only properly seen less than 0.05 percent of it. Imagine we discover an alien planet that’s…

"A huge leap forward." Scientists just completed a trial of a new, non-surgical prostate cancer treatment that uses a tumour-killing drug based on ocean bacteria, and the procedure saw almost half the patients go into complete remission. The treatment is…

This is where clouds come from. For the first time, researchers have observed the creation of ice crystals on individual atmospheric particles, giving an unprecedented glimpse at the way ice clouds form in our atmosphere. The process, called ice nucleation…

It's dangerously close to hitting a critical pressure point. A 12-km wide cauldron that forms a vast supervolcano on the coast of Italy is showing signs of reawakening after almost 500 years of inactivity. Not only is this site rumoured to be responsible…

Festive Nebulas Light Up Milky Way Galaxy Satellite: Our HubblLight Up Milky Way Galaxy Satellitee Space Telescope captured two festive-looking nebulas, situated so as to appear as one. They reside in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is a satellite…