Early rocks to reveal their ages

A new technique has been helping scientists piece together how the Earth’s continents were arranged 2.5 billion years ago. The novel method allows scientists to recover rare minerals from rocks.
By analysing the composition of these minerals, researchers can precisely date ancient volcanic rocks for the first time. By aligning rocks that have a [...]

Space storm’s ‘epicentre’ found

The precise spot at which a space storm struck the Earth’s outer atmosphere has been pinpointed for the first time. These storms are caused by the bending and stretching of the Earth’s magnetic field by material from the Sun.
Observations like this may one day lead to better forecasting of these events, a meeting of [...]

Space rock yields carbon bounty

Formic acid, a molecule implicated in the origins of life, has been found at record levels on a meteorite that fell into a Canadian lake in 2000. Cold temperatures on Tagish Lake prevented the volatile chemical from dissipating quickly.
An analysis showed four times more formic acid in the fragments than has been recorded on [...]

A Musical Memory Tour

For many of us, songs by the Beatles trigger vivid and specific memories. What’s going on in our brains when this happens and what makes a tune ‘catchy’? In this show, we go on a musical memory tour to the famous Cavern Club, successor to the Beatles’ first venue, to find the links between memory and music.

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Facial Recognition

How do we recognise faces and are there different ways of doing it in different parts of the World? I researched a piece for BBC Radio Four’s Material World.

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Sound Masking

How has the brain evolved to cope in a noisy world? I investigate how the brain overcomes the problem of sound masking for BBC World Service’s Science in Action.

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Canadian dig yields tiny dinosaur

The smallest meat-eating dinosaur yet to be found in North America has been identified from six tiny pelvic bones. Hesperonychus was the size of a small chicken, and used its rows of serrated teeth to feed on insects, experts say.
The bird-like creature is closely related to Microraptor – a tiny feathered dinosaur discovered in [...]

Beatles’ tunes aid memory recall

The world’s largest catalogue of Beatles-related recollections will be unveiled in Liverpool this week. The 3,000 memories, from 69 nations, could help scientists better understand how music can help humans tap into the long forgotten events of their lives.
A link between positive feelings and music could explain why tunes trigger memories, suggests the UK-based [...]

Magic ‘boosts pupils’ confidence’

Children taught how to do magic tricks instead of attending standard personal and social education lessons perform better socially, a psychologist says. Magic requires self-discipline and an ability to empathise with your audience, Prof Richard Wiseman told the British Association Science Festival.
His team thinks it could help with bullying and aggressive behaviour. He [...]

Bees join hunt for serial killers

The way bumblebees search for food could help detectives hunt down serial killers, scientists believe. Just as bees forage some distance away from their hives, so murderers avoid killing near their homes, says the University of London team.
This “geographic profiling” works so well in bees, the scientists say future experiments on the animals could [...]

Stroking reveals pleasure nerve

A new touch-sensitive nerve fibre responsible for the sense of pleasure experienced during stroking has been described at a UK conference today. The nerves tap into a human’s reward pathways, and could help explain why we enjoy grooming and a good hug, a neuroscientist has explained.
His team used a stroking machine to reveal the [...]

Fusion power seeks super steels

Scientists say an understanding of how the Twin Towers collapsed will help them develop the materials needed to build fusion reactors. New research shows how steel will fail at high temperatures because of the magnetic properties of the metal.
The New York buildings fell when their steel backbones lost strength in the fires that followed [...]

Foods ’should label up eco-costs’

Food packaging could be embedded with computer chips that instantly link your phone to an on-line sustainable food guide, a UK conference has heard. The guides would help consumers navigate their way through the ethical and ecological decisions about what they eat, the proponents argue.
The UK should lead Europe on this approach, food policy [...]

Ocean mission delivers first maps

Less than a month after it was put in orbit, the ocean-mapper Jason-2 has returned its first pictures to Earth. From an altitude of more than 1,300km, the spacecraft is now feeding back data covering nearly the entire globe.
Jason-2 is set to become the primary means of measuring the shape of the world’s oceans, [...]

Geological mapping gets joined up

The world’s geologists have dug out their maps and are sticking them together to produce the first truly global resource of the world’s rocks. The OneGeology project pools existing data about what lies under our feet and has made it available on the web.
Led by the British Geological Survey (BGS), the project involved geologists [...]

Hungry seals ’steer by the stars’

Seals can identify a single star in the night sky and navigate by it, scientists have discovered. Navigating in the open ocean is essential for seals to move between foraging grounds that may be hundreds of kilometres apart.
This is the first evidence that marine mammals, like humans, use stars to navigate in open water, [...]

World’s smallest snake discovered

The world’s smallest snake, averaging just 10cm (4 inches) and as thin as a spaghetti noodle, has been discovered on the Caribbean island of Barbados. The snake, found beneath a rock in a tiny fragment of threatened forest, is thought to be at the very limit of how small a snake can evolve to [...]

Elastic electronics see better

A new camera designed with a curved detection surface allows imaging devices to see as animals do. The camera, inspired by the human eye, relies on the ability to construct silicon electronics on a stretchable membrane.
In the future, these electronic membranes could be wrapped around human organs to act as health monitoring devices, say [...]

Ancient shark had colossal bite

The great white shark may have awesome jaws but they are nothing compared with those of megalodon, its gigantic, whale-eating ancestor. A new study of the extinct creature’s skull shows it had an almighty bite, making the prehistoric fish one of the most fearsome predators of all time.
All the more remarkable, scientists say, because [...]

Pet dogs can ‘catch’ human yawns

Yawning is known to be contagious in humans but now scientists have shown that pet dogs can catch a yawn, too. The copying activity suggests that canines are capable of empathising with people, say the researchers who recorded dogs’ behaviour in lab tests.
Until now, only humans and their close primate relatives were thought to [...]