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By >Josephine Lethbridge , The Conversation  Human foetuses begin to hear sounds outside the womb at about 27 weeks. But whether foetuses can learn from these sounds in ways that shape speech perception and development during infancy has remained unclear. >New research from the University of Helsinki suggests that humans begin to distinguish between sounds...

If you’ve ever been frustrated by erratic memories, spare a thought for the mice involved in a study published in the journal >Science . Researchers have been able to consistently create a “false memory”, making a mouse fearful of a place it has no reason to fear. The memory was implanted by shining blue light...

By >Daniel Zadik , Leicester University  The DNA of Albert Perry may change the story of human origins. Perry, an African-American, approached a DNA testing company to find out more about his ancestry. >The results would have come as quite a surprise (had he lived to see them), and have raised questions >for geneticists around...

Astronomers have been searching for a mysterious substance called “dark matter” since the 1930s. Most scientists still believe it exists, despite many fruitless decades. Now we propose a new theory of general relativity that may ultimately get rid of the need for dark matter, and perhaps get physicists to think in terms of things we...

A previously unknown canyon has been discovered in Greenland, hidden beneath the ice. It is at least 750 kilometres long. To put that in perspective, imagine a ten kilometre wide gorge, up to 800 metres deep, running from the Southern coast of England and into Scotland. This is on the same scale as parts of...

By >Simon Redfern , University of Cambridge  On the morning of June 30 in 1908, a gigantic fireball devastated hundreds of square kilometres of uninhabited Siberian forest around the Tunguska river. The first scientists to investigate the impact site expected to find a meteorite, but they found nothing. Because no traces of a meteorite were...