For centuries, scientists on expeditionary voyages have made fascinating discoveries about the natural world. The deep sea remains one of the last unexplored frontiers – what secrets does it keep?

What can a humble fish tell us about our brains? Quite a lot, as it turns out

We manipulate bacteria to produce all kinds of exquisite flavours and fragrances. Does that make them natural, or synthetic? And why bother, when they already grow on trees?

Humans have been piecing together an atlas of the heavens for millennia. The advent of gravitational wave astronomy means we can now listen to the rhythms of the cosmos and map uncharted territory.

A new kind of nerd waits for a perfect snow day to study one of the feedback mechanisms driving climate change

Solar flares have gained a reputation as troublemakers, but when looking at their beauty, it’s possible to see their light side

Dams have a lifetime just like everything else, and the dam-building mania of the early 20th century has left us with several damning problems dotted across the landscape.

Waves are extending the long reach of climate change, and the effects are closer to home than you think.

We've only just discovered that they're in our blood, but tiny strands of nucleic acid might hold the key to early disease detection.

Issues with renewables have been touted for years, but how far have we come in providing solutions — and can the grid cope?

Emotionless physics data can be transformed through a process called sonification. Chris Henschke uses this to tease the music out of light.

Forty years ago we launched the Voyager spacecraft. Now over 20 billion km from Earth, Voyager holds the golden record: our message in a bottle to any E.T. who would find it.

Technology is always being improved and replaced. How does this affect immense, international, collaborative projects like the Large Hadron Collider?

With heart disease on the rise and a chronic shortage of donor organs for transplant, can technology come to the rescue to build an artificial replacement heart?

Virtual reality is the next big thing in the pornography industry, but will it be able to progress beyond novelty?

Have you ever had a personal experience that made you palpably feel the effects of climate change? Perhaps a trip to a glacier is in order.

Human space exploration has languished in recent years while robots lead the charge into the final frontier. Will humans ever venture beyond our pale blue dot?

Our interpretation of the universe and our place in it has slowly evolved over time. From hollow wheels of mist to fiery gas bodies, we’ve come a long way in 2,600 years.

Tsunamis have horrified us for millennia. From early Japanese lore to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, we’ve come a long way in understanding how they work.

When we look at things move, we intuitively gauge their direction. But what if our intuition is wrong?

To find the universal measurement of a metre, French scientists struggled through seven years of trials and tribulations during the French Revolution.

Professional eSports players have a lot more in common with traditional athletes than you might think.

In the search for better, faster, stronger drugs, animal venom could be the answer, as toxins are harnessed to create target-specific treatments.

From wandering star to Earth-orbiter, the word ‘planet’ has changed its meaning many times. Pluto’s exile is only the most recent.

Do you always learn from your experiences? Google has designed AI that learned to play the Chinese board game Go by making mistakes — and it beat the world champion earlier this month.

A rainbow is a many-splendoured thing. Over the centuries, rainbows have baffled scientists, ensorcelled storytellers, and even inspired social change.

LIGO’s groundbreaking discovery vindicates Einstein and lets us tune in to the rhythm of the universe.

When it comes to constructing tiny, next-generation technology, carbon’s many forms give it an edge over the competition.

Some biologists studying photosynthesis are starting to think the weird world of quantum physics may be needed to understand how this crucial process works.

A new approach to artificial intelligence, called deep learning, is drawing insights and identifying patterns in huge numbers of data.