Science

In many countries, long, dark winters limit the amount of solar energy that can be generated for much of the year. That's where the Underground Sun Conversion system comes in, as it's intended to use sunlight to help produce natural gas underground.

Batteries that use organic materials in place of rare metals are seen as a promising way to tackle their environmental footprint, and new research demonstrates how their performance might be brought up to speed.

Scientists have put forward a solution to a major problem plaguing lithium metal batteries, demonstrating how a finely tuned carbon membrane can prevent these types of battery form failure and enable them to be safely charged over hundreds of cycles.

Presently, orthopedic surgeons use screwed-in metal plates to hold unstable broken bones together. There may soon be a less problematic, more customizable alternative, though, which incorporates a light-cured composite material.

A new study has produced first-of-a-kind scientific evidence of the connection between stress and graying hair, identifying proteins that seem to drive this process while also demonstrating how it might even be reversed.

Scientists have uncovered some surprising news ways ultrasound can improve cognition in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, something they believe could have wider implications for restoring cognition in the elderly.

Lockheed Martin has been selected by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to design and build the aeroshell and heat shield for the space agency's Mars Sample Retrieval Lander, which will help return the first Martian samples to Earth.

A new study shows that tectonic activity may have caused sections of Venus’ planetary crust to become fragmented into smaller bodies that barge past each other like chunks of ice on water. The planet may still be capable of hosting tectonic activity.

Masten Space Systems is developing a robotic rover that could one day mine water on the Moon using rocket blasts. The Rocket M rover uses rocket pulses to break up ice-bearing lunar soil and collect up to 100 kg of ice particles per day.

A new method converts carbon from a variety of sources straight into useful forms such as graphene or diamond. The technique uses a “flash” of electricity to heat the carbon, converting it into a final form determined by the length of the flash.

As the world's strongest artificial material, graphene may have a lot to offer the world of construction, and scientists have offered another example of this by using it to create a novel form of cement that is highly resistant to water and cracks.

Scientists in China have developed an artificial skin for prosthetic devices and robotics that changes color in response to force, mimicking the bruising process to offer a visual sign that damage has taken place.

Most fish utilize a mouthful of water to swallow their prey. According to a new study, however, moray eels are unique in not doing so, allowing them to feed while out of the water … with some help from a second set of jaws in their throat.

Although spiders do help us by eating pests such as mosquitos, many people still aren't wild about having the things in their homes. Such folks may be interested in new research which suggests that ant chemicals could be used to harmlessly keep spiders away.

A browsable 3D map of just one millionth of the cerebral cortex has been created using 225 million images and a whopping 1.4 petabytes of data, illustrating the immense complexity of the human brain.

Even with today's various sewage-treatment technologies, a great deal of municipal wastewater is still released back into waterways either partially or completely untreated. According to a new study, however, plots of willow trees could be used to clean it up – while also producing useful materials.

When restoring former industrial or agricultural land back to its natural state, it's vitally important to reestablish ground cover plants such as native grasses. According to a new study, the addition of aspirin helps those grasses grow.

Researchers have put forward an interesting way of preventing some of this damage brought by ocean acidification, through a study demonstrating how releasing an alkalinizing agent from shipping lanes could help protect much of the Great Barrier Reef.

“Stationary” has very different meanings in quantum scales – an object that looks perfectly still to us is made up of bouncing atoms. Now, scientists have managed to slow down the atoms almost to a complete stop in the largest macro-scale object yet.

A subatomic particle has been found switching between matter and antimatter, in Large Hadron Collider data. It turns out an unfathomably tiny weight difference between two particles could have saved the universe from annihilation soon after it began.

Why is the expansion of the universe accelerating? The leading hypothesis is a repellent force that astrophysicists refer to as “dark energy." But how does it work? What does it mean for our future? And how sure are we that it even exists?

Researchers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology have developed a wearable health-monitoring system that's attached to a user's wrist, and can stretch by as much as 30 percent without affecting display or monitoring performance.

Researchers have demonstrated a new approach to harnessing the power of ambient radio waves, developing a novel chip that can convert Wi-Fi signals into power for a small LED, and possibly other small electronics and sensors.

Engineers at Columbia University have developed the smallest single-chip system ever created, which can be implanted with a hypodermic needle to measure temperature inside the body, and possibly much more.

A quantum internet could one day allow quantum computers to team up and tackle some gigantic problems. Researchers at Toshiba are a step closer, demonstrating quantum communications sent over a record-breaking 600 km (373 miles) of optic fiber.

Progress on quantum computers may soon stall. Cosmic rays streaming to Earth can interfere with the integrity of information in quantum computers, and now an MIT team has shown just how vulnerable they are and what it might take to protect them.

Current-gen quantum computing "qubits" need to be kept incredibly cold – below 0.1 Kelvin (-273.05 °C/-459.5 °F). But new "hot qubits" developed at UNSW can work 15 times hotter, opening the door to radically smaller, cheaper quantum computers.