Caltech

If a Mars rover ever were to find signs of life on the Red Planet, chances are that it would be in the form of compounds detected in the soil. A newly designed device could better help it do so, as compared to existing technologies.

Astronomers have identified an asteroid that made the closest pass to Earth ever recorded, and it was only spotted after it had passed. The object skimmed Earth’s atmosphere over the weekend, close enough to have its orbit changed by the gravity.

Astronomers have observed a bright flash of light from space, which appears to have come from a collision between two black holes. And that’s surprising, considering that black holes are famously dark objects.

The LIGO-Virgo collaboration has reported a very strange gravitational wave signal. This signal appears to have come from a black hole swallowing some unknown object, with a mass that sits in a range thought to be empty.

Using polarized light, astronomers have detected signs of cloud bands in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf far beyond the solar system. It turns out that these gassy giants have a similar appearance to Jupiter, and the same kind of wild weather.

All previous records absolutely pale in comparison to the new record holder for the world’s fastest camera, boasting a mind-boggling rate of 70 trillion frames per second. That’s fast enough to capture light waves in movement.

Many of us now keep tabs on how we're doing by wearing health and fitness trackers, which run on batteries. Researchers from Caltech have developed an electronic skin that can be packed with sensors, and that's powered by the sweat of its wearer.

Blind readers will likely be familiar with refreshable braille displays, in which raised dots rise and fall from a flat surface in order to form braille characters. A new material, however, could make such displays cheaper and more useful than ever.

A paper is adding weight to the growing hypothesis suggesting the toxic protein clusters that cause Parkinson’s disease first aggregate in the gut before moving to the brain, and deficiency in a certain enzyme may help this mechanism.

A team of researchers is proposing a radical new technique for killing cancer cells using low-intensity ultrasound waves. The work is still at an early stage but cell tests have shown sound waves can destroy cancer while leaving healthy cells intact.

Scientists at Caltech and Stanford University have developed a tiny prosthetic that gives jellyfish an ability to swim faster while using less energy, all with the aim of one day using them to monitor the ocean environment.

The LIGO collaboration has announced the detection of gravitational waves from a pair of neutron stars colliding. This marks just the second time ever that this kind of event has been spotted, as the smash-up sent ripples through spacetime itself.