Cosmos

Eight years of Cassini photography has uncovered a strange region brightening and growing on Saturn’s largest moon.

When a satellite is built in France but launched in Russia, moving it can be a logistical nightmare. But European weather satellite Sentinel-3A made that trip, which involved planes, trains and automobiles … and, of course, a rocket. Belinda smith tracks its progress.

Europe’s replacement forests aren’t half as good at cooling the planet as the old broad-leafed variety.

These microscopic blooms could boost solar and sensor technologies.

A new formula seeks to define a planet. As Rick Lovett reports, 99% of the exoplanets found so far qualify, but Pluto does not.

Selenium shortages coincide with species collapse.

Most of the matter in the Universe consists of stuff we can’t see. It is dubbed “dark matter” and we know it must be out there. Without dark matter rapidly spinning galaxies (such as those circled, above) would not have sufficient gravitational glue to hold their stars and gas clouds together. These elements would fly off…

Atoms wriggle – they can’t help themselves. And the warmer they are, the faster they writhe. By using lasers to measure how fast atoms of the element caesium zip around a vacuum chamber, Australian scientists have shown they can calculate the sample’s temperature. The super-accurate technique could be adopted as the basis of a new…

As far back as Plato people imagined the power of invisibility. Now the fantasy is being made real.