Perseverance’s pick-up point

Mars once had vast oceans on its surface. Then its magnetic field weakened, its atmosphere thinned, and its water vanished. But the numbers don’t add up. For the Red Planet to have transformed from a

Where did life on Earth begin? That sounds like a relatively straightforward question. Surely life on Earth began… well, on Earth, right? We know this planet had the right conditions for life to arise

Ten years ago, Pluto emerged from the gloom at the Solar System’s ragged edge – and a new world came in from the cold. Five billion kilometres (3 billion miles) from Earth, on 14 July 2015, NASA’s pia

For 5000 years a boulder stood unremarked in a Dorset valley, until one summer day an archaeologist noticed something curious about it...

The best discoveries, inventions and surprises

A 3D illustration of China’s Tiangong space station ...