An autonomous robot has found life in one of the most lifeless places on Earth: the Atacama desert in northern Chile, thought to be a close analogue of Mars's arid surface.
Phillip Ball questions technology guru Ray Kurzweil about his argument that future warfare will be dominated by cyberwarfare and military robots.
Scientists searching for waves of gravitational energy that stretch space and time will soon be seeking the public's help in analysing their data.
Claims of cold fusion are intriguing but not convincing, according to the findings an 18-member scientific panel tasked with reviewing research in the area.
Scientists have succeeded in cloning flies. The research may help to fine-tune the cloning process in other animals and even in humans, for therapeutic stem cells.
US researchers have made biologically based solar cells, which convert light into electrical energy, and should be efficient and cheap to manufacture.
Michael Levi of the Brookings Institute challenges the technical assumptions made by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board in their recent report, Future Strategic Strike Forces, which called for developing new low-yield nuclear weapons.
Scientists have witnessed an atom and a photon - a small packet of light - share the same information. This is an important milestone in the quest to create a 'quantum computer', which could operate much faster than conventional computers.
A new survey revises down the likelihood of a massive asteroid hitting the Earth by 20-30%. We're only due to collide with rocks larger than one kilometre across roughly once every 600,000 years, it concludes.
A new battery harvests electricity from flowing water. One of its creators, Larry Kostiuk, claims that it could make water "an alternative energy source to rival wind and solar power". But its lack of efficiency may stand in the way.