Earth's cries recorded in space
Earth emits an ear-piercing series of chirps and whistles that could be heard by any aliens who might be listening, astronomers have discovered. The sound is awful, a new recording from space reveals. Scientists have known about the radiation since the 1970s. It is created high above the planet, whe...

Human-pig hybrid embryos given go ahead
A licence to create human-pig embryos to study heart disease has been issued by the fertility watchdog.This marks the third animal-human hybrid embryo licence to be issued by Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the first since the Commons voted in favour of this controversial research l...

Extinction risks vastly underestimated
Some endangered species may face an extinction risk that is up to a hundred times greater than previously thought, according to a study released Wednesday. By overlooking random differences between individuals in a given population, researchers may have badly underestimated the perils confronting th...

Navy engineer reports M5 UFO sighting
A Royal Navy aircraft engineer claims to have seen a "glowing" UFO hover over the M5 motorway. Michael Madden, 25, said he watched in disbelief as the disc-shaped object floated above his head before it "zoomed off at incredible speed". He said the unidentified flying object flew for up to three min...

The lunatic fringe: is moonlight the miracle cure ?
Jason Oddy: late one afternoon this February, I set off from Tucson, Arizona, to spend a night beneath the moon. It was rush hour and I found myself joining the stream of commuters on their way home from this sprawling town, the second largest in the state. Gradually the traffic thinned out until af...

Cosmic synchronicity
Anthony North: Many people believe in the existence of higher consciousness in the universe, yet we're often told that such concepts are unexplainable. I'm not sure this is true. Could we rationalize such a thing? In my essay, The Mystical Seven, I showed how the 'law of large numbers' could be appl...

Doubt over date for Brit invasion
Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Julius caesar's invasion of Britain in 55BC could not have occurred on the dates stated in most history books, a team of astronomers have claimed. The traditional view is that Caesar landed in Britain on 26-27 August, but researchers from Texas State University say thi...

Webcam set to snare 'Beast of Blairadam'
They see him here, they see him there but, unfortunately, they never have a camera to prove it. All that could be about to change, however, with plans to once and for all capture the legendary ‘Beast of Blairadam’ on camera. The Beast, described as a big black cat, has been spotted several times ove...

Ink may have poisoned medieval monks
Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red. The study, which will be published in the August issue of the Journal of...

The brains behind the image fulgurator
Charlie Sorrel: Julius von bismarck's 'Image Fulgurator' projects stealth images into the photographs of strangers, while keeping those images invisible to human eyes. Depending on whom you ask, it's either a clever hack or an obnoxious intrusion. Naturally, we had to find out more. Yesterday, von B...