Robert Matthews

Even before his latest best-seller hit the bookshops, the wheelchair-bound physicist had provoked worldwide debate about the deepest issues in science, philosophy and religion.

A maths trick known as capture-recapture allows researchers to estimate the extent of unobservable phenomena, which can help save endangered species, protect abused children and even chase spies.

Anyone who regularly reads research papers and the resulting media stories soon uncovers a shocking fact: that the journalists generally get the basic facts right. The concern often lies with the studies themselves.

Scientists used to scoff at the idea that planets could wander free from a fixed orbit. Now they have learnt more, and nobody is laughing.

As the discovery of X-rays changed the world, terahertz rays pose the same potential, with implications for fields from medicine to the military.

Hoaxers, aliens, spinning vortices of air caused by weather fronts, ball lightning: here are plenty of theories about what causes crop circles.

Economists are driven to quantify everything. But happiness frustrates their enduring effort to equate it with money.

A half-century since their creation, laser beams have shown dazzling versatility - and for their next trick they could bring rain to dry regions.

Volcanoes have immense power to disrupt our lives - yet without volcanoes, we might not have lives to disrupt.

A handful of astronomers believe something from beyond our universe is tugging at our galaxies - and new evidence supports their idea.

After years of disappointment, delay and mishap, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, is about to get down to business.

A century later, economists and statisticians are still arguing over how scattered opinions of ordinary people can produce amazingly accurate insights.

Scientists are trying to combat growing scepticism over their global-warming predictions with a new generation of climate simulation computer models.

Billions of dollars are being spent on the search for new and better medicines - to remarkably little effect. Now some number-crunching has indicated out-of-the-box thinking may be required.

under the microscope Scientists behind the huge National Ignition Facility laser in California believe it could provide a limitless source of safe energy.