23:48 05 January 2009  | 6 comments

The sharpest infrared picture yet taken of the roiling furnace at the galaxy's centre reveals a new population of massive stars

IN BRIEF:  11:46 05 January 2009  | 14 comments

Newts aren't normally fazed by having their tails chopped off – they just grow a new one – but microgravity plays havoc with the process

FEATURE:  10:50 05 January 2009  | 10 comments

The next generation of particle smashers might be considerably smaller than the Large Hadron Collider – and made almost literally out of thin air

IN BRIEF:  22:12 02 January 2009  | 34 comments

Circles of rocky material sorted by size suggest that the local Martian climate was once much warmer than thought

11:01 02 January 2009  | 6 comments

The most popular space stories of the year include a gallery of spooky cosmic images and an exploration of whether the universe existed before the big bang

23:03 01 January 2009  | 1 comment

Astronomers observed the most powerful explosion ever recorded, detected what may be dark matter and found hints of a fractal universe

18:57 31 December 2008  | 3 comments

Astronomers glimpsed unseen swathes of Mercury, found a space rock heading for Earth and landed a probe squarely on a patch of Martian ice

03:45 31 December 2008  | 25 comments

The shift from what appeared to be a normal descent on 1 Feb 2003 into disaster happened so fast that the crew didn't have time to close their visors

COMMENTARY:  00:01 31 December 2008  | 3 comments

After a year in which the much-anticipated Large Hadron Collider has been delayed, you might think particle physicists don't have much to be jolly about – not so...

11:07 28 December 2008  | 6 comments

Explore the limits of science and technology from the past year, from the deepest living fish to the roundest spheres

01:00 28 December 2008

China performed its first spacewalk and India sent a probe to the Moon, while NASA faced the space shuttle's looming retirement

NEWS REVIEW 2008:  11:30 27 December 2008  | 75 comments

Barack Obama may have an impossible burden of expectation on his shoulders, but one fervent wish of many US scientists should be easy to fulfil: lead the nation back into the "reality-based community"

COVER STORY:  10:00 27 December 2008  | 18 comments

Will we ever see the like of MACHOs and WIMPs, cheap date and Sonic hedgehog again? New Scientist investigates

NEWS REVIEW 2008:  12:15 26 December 2008  | 1 comment

China carried out its first space walk, while India's launch of its first moon probe heralded a new era in space

08:00 26 December 2008  | 9 comments

From a nano-sized Barack Obama, to calls for a 'Gaian dictator' to save the world, the blogs have been buzzing this year – here we round up a few of our favourites

NEWS REVIEW 2008:  14:12 25 December 2008  | 6 comments

It's been a turbulent 50th anniversary year for the space agency, with its successes marred by uncertainty over the shuttle's replacement, problems with Hubble, and serious budget woes

14:09 24 December 2008  | 8 comments

The agency has awarded $3.5 billion in contracts to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to ship cargo to and from the space station beginning in 2010

NEWS REVIEW 2008:  13:00 24 December 2008

It was a year when everything seemed to fall apart. Fuel, food, finance all had their crises &ndash but it wasn't all doom and gloom...

15:52 23 December 2008  | 1 comment

A new device will monitor electrical charges that may have caused Soyuz space capsules returning from the station to land off course

00:37 23 December 2008  | 9 comments

Forget spacesuits, solid rocket boosters and robot arms – more sentimental and whimsical objects have reached escape velocity

THIS WEEK:  18:05 19 December 2008  | 86 comments

The digested end-product of this cosmic feast could be the ancestors of the supermassive black holes that sit at the centre of galaxies like the Milky Way

13:19 19 December 2008  | 87 comments

Physicists are surprised to find that military intelligence has been investigating whether elusive gravitational waves could pose a threat to US security

10:24 19 December 2008  | 2 comments

The Earth's protective magnetosphere often develops two large holes that let in the largest leaks of solar wind

19:35 18 December 2008  | 10 comments

Carbonate minerals, which form in the presence of water, have only been found in trace amounts on Mars – until now

FEATURE:  18:00 17 December 2008  | 10 comments

A design flaw probably caused the Mars probe to spin out of control as it descended, says a team of hypersonics engineers

18:00 17 December 2008  | 13 comments

A steamy galaxy at the edge of the visible universe reveals that water was plentiful just 2.5 billion years after the big bang

22:59 16 December 2008  | 44 comments

Dark energy's repulsive effect on space has slowed the development of galaxy clusters over the past 5.5 billion years, astronomers report

00:03 16 December 2008  | 62 comments

The Obama administration should set a concrete schedule for human Mars missions, says a group of space experts

23:08 15 December 2008  | 5 comments

Astronomers have excellent maps of the northern sky; now a project called SkyMapper will survey the sky 'down under'

NEWS:  12:24 15 December 2008

A company that launched the first privately built rocket to go into orbit has firm interest in its DragonLab mini space station