While it might sound like a dumb idea, designing a computer processor that can make mistakes could be a good thing—especially where energy use is a concern. Read More >

You might have heard the story of Phineas Gage, the 19th century construction foreman who was impaled through the brain with a tampering rod, but lived a relatively normal life. Researchers at UCLA have a new twist: Gage's brain was damaged far more severely than we thought. Read More >

The Sun's rays power virtually all vegetative growth on the face of the Earth, or at least they used to. A new discovery by a team at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany will coerce plants into growing in total darkness. Read More >

Millions of us start the morning with a coffee and think nothing of it. But new medical research suggests that it could be helping you live longer—if you drink enough of it. Read More >

You might think of tapeworms as awful parasites that find their way into your intestine; grow as big as 50 feet long, and cause horrible gastrointestinal issues. But that's only one step of a larger infectious chain the tapeworm is a part of. The alien life-form doesn't only cause crippling stomach pain; it could also debilitate mental capacities if they find their way to the brain. Read More >

After decades of urban evolution, the world's major subway systems appear to be converging on an ideal form. Read More >

In 1990, an amateur inventor called Maurice Ward appeared on British TV demonstrating a super-material he'd invented without any scientific training. Called Starlite, it could withstand temperatures of 1000 °C; was hard enough to drill holes in walls, and could easily be painted on to surfaces. In 2011 Ward sadly passed away—without ever having explained to a single scientist how it worked. Read More >

If you're never content with Wi-Fi speeds, rest assured that scientists are trying to help. In fact, a team of Japanese researchers has just broken the record for wireless data transmission in the terahertz range—with a data rate 20 times higher than most current Wi-Fi connections. Read More >

Hey you angsty little jerk, listen up! If you can stop rolling your eyes and cut the whole brooding thing for like 10 seconds, I have something very important to tell you: CUT YOUR HAIR. I don't say this as some out-of-touch baby boomer threatened by the slightest tinge of change, but rather someone concerned with preventing a lazy eye epidemic. Read More >

Who among us hasn't quickly reclaimed a floor cookie when no one was looking? If nobody's seen: it didn't happen and it's not dirty. Well, not quite. Read More >

Ask a bunch of the world's best economists—including four Nobel laureates—how to make the world a better place, and they don't just blurt out an answer. They take their time, weigh up impact-per-dollar and make careful decisions. And this is what they came up with. Read More >

Electronic implants which restore sight to the blind aren't anything new, but one of their major stumbling blocks has been the need for an external power source. Now, that's about to change, because a team of researchers has built a digital implant out of infra-red-slurping photovoltaic pixels—so it can power itself. Read More >

You might think the trippy animated visualizations in your media player are the best way to see your music. But astronaut Don Pettit has found a better way—and all it requires is a small set of speakers, a blob of water, and a space station 250 miles above the Earth. Read More >

Infinity is a pretty difficult concept for us to grasp. The world we live in is full of limitations, so the idea that something can go on and on, forever and ever, doesn't come naturally to us. And to make things even more confusing, some infinities can actually be bigger than others. Read More >

Finnish researchers are living up to their hard-drinking national image by working out how to revive a 170-year-old type of beer not yet tasted by modern man. Read More >