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The world's largest astronomical facility has opened its eyes, turning nearly two dozen antennae toward the heavens to study the building blocks of the cosmos. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array consists of 20 radio antennae for now, but will contain 66 by 2013, giving it a higher resolution than the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA has awarded the single largest prize handed down in aviation history to Team Pipistrel-USA.com for designing and demonstrating its Taurus G4 electric aircraft. Per the rules of the NASA- and Google-sponsored CAFE Green Flight Challenge, Pipistrel's Taurus G4 covered 320 kilometres in less than 2 hours and did so on the electricity equivalent of less than one gallon of fuel per passenger, scoring US$1.35 million for the effort.

The tedious, carpal-tunnel-inducing pipette work of cell biologists may soon be relegated to robots, thanks to a new cell factory developed in Germany. This could free humans to perform new studies and ask new questions, as automated equipment takes over the time-consuming task of growing, feeding and observing cells in the lab.

A pair of brain-inspired cognitive computer chips unveiled today could be a new leap forward - or at least a major fork in the road - in the world of computer architecture and artificial intelligence.

The offer came simply via the subject line of an email: "Want to fly a drone?" It was from Todd Backus of DATRON, a maker of--among other things--military grade radio communication systems and tactical data networking setups based in Vista, Calif. It was a question that didn't require a whole lot of consideration on my part--if there were drones to fly at AUVSI's massive unmanned systems show in Washington D.C. last week, I was going to fly them.

And that's how I end up on a soccer pitch far from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center piloting a small quadcopter drone and quietly praying that we won't be arrested. Not that we're up to anything criminal, but I have no idea how close or far we are from D.C.'s numerous "high-value" locations and the restricted airspace that surrounds them. What I do know is that if I'm jailed on suspicion of terrorism, my editors likely won't cover my expenses.

A German car nicknamed "heavy drinker" or "boozer" has set a new record for electric vehicle stamina: 1631.5 km on a single charge. The single-seat vehicle's aerodynamic shape, with the motors integrated into the wheel hubs, helped the car accomplish this feat.

With hackers, DIYers and the military using them for years, domestic police forces the world over are apparently itching to get some surveillance drones of their own. Now, it seems the ACT Government has been discussing using drones alongside a new license plate recognition system, autonomously tracking vehicles of interest.

Last week, DARPA's HTV-2 (Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2) Falcon vehicle launched to near-orbital speeds aboard a Minotaur rocket before beginning what was designed to be a Mach 20 glide back to earth, demonstrating the kind of hypersonic capability needed to deliver a payload anywhere in the world in an hour. Then, a few minutes into its flight, HTV-2's data transmitters went silent and so did the DARPA news stream feeding us the play-by-play.

From intestines to tracheas, tissue engineers are building a handful of new body parts - but progress on larger organs has been slow. This is mainly because tissues need nutrients to stay alive, and they need blood vessels to deliver those nutrients. It's difficult to build those vascular networks, but now a team from Germany may have a solution: Print some capillaries with a 3D printer.

Scientists have tracked down another goldilocks planet 31 light-years from Earth, and according to astronomers it has some strong points in its favor when it comes to the possibility of harboring the ingredients for life. HD85512b orbits an orange dwarf in the constellation Vela, and it's just the right distance from the sun--and just the right mass--to rank among the most Earth-like planets ever discovered.

The act of deception is probably as old as civilization - not long after humans began communicating, they began communicating lies. Shortly after that, they probably started trying to force others to tell the truth. Modern technology has given us a few options in this arena, from dubious polygraphs to powerful drugs - and now a new study suggests brain interference can work, too.

Behold, your galactic centre. This Hubble image, captured with the space telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), is the highest-resolution pic of the Milky Way's galactic center taken to date, taking in a newly discovered group of massive stars, lots of super-hot gas, and roughly 35,000 square light years of space in one sweeping mosaic.

The latest news from the Large Hadron Collider: scientists still cannot explain why we're all here. In the most detailed analysis of strange beauty particles - that's what they're really called - physicists cannot find supersymmetric particles, which are shadow partners for every known particle in the standard model of modern physics. This could mean that they don't exist, which would be very interesting news indeed.

A prolonged chill in the atmosphere high above the Arctic last winter led to a mobile, morphing hole in the ozone layer, scientists report in a new paper. It's just like the South Pole hole we all studied in school, but potentially more harmful to humans - more of us live at northern latitudes. Here are five things you need to know about it.

European researchers working at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, have trapped the largest number of neutrons ever held in place at one time. But while they've smashed the previous record (also held by the ILL), it's still not quite enough, the lead researcher tells BBC. Still, the new approach that got researchers this far may be able to trap far greater numbers of neutrons with a little finessing.

A variation in a part of the brain may explain why some people have a good memory, and why others are prone to brain disorders. Scientists from Cambridge University say the discovery could advance the understanding of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

An oft-repeated truism (and a much-loved one, especially on Fridays) holds that writing and drinking go hand in hand. Now this is literally true, with a lovely invention that displays letters via a QWERTY keyboard, and pumps out potent potables with every keystroke.

In the future, all your government mail - jury duty slips, election notices, those Social Security earnings statements - may not come in the mail at all. Here in Australia, federal politicians are debating ditching snail mail entirely, giving all citizens a state-sponsored inbox where we would receive all government communications.

Discovered during a dig through the FCC's experimental radio applications by Steven J. Crowley, it has come to light that North American Eagle is trying to install what will presumably be the fastest-moving Wi-Fi network on the ground--because it's being built inside a vehicle designed to break the world land speed record (and the sound barrier) at 1280 kilometres per hour.

Social media can be problematic for professionals who don't want their bosses to see unflattering uni party photos. But it's even worse for people whose livelihood literally depends on anonymity, like undercover cops. What happens if the gang you've infiltrated finds your grinning mug in Facebook photos from the police union annual picnic?

A little less than six months after the final space shuttle launch, a private space company will launch a rocket carrying a cargo capsule bound for the International Space Station. SpaceX said this week that it plans a Nov. 30 launch date for its first rendezvous with the ISS - an encounter that will mark a major milestone in private space exploration.

BAE Systems's Adaptiv technology enables objects as big as tanks to completely vanish from view--when seen at night with an infrared sensor, admittedly, but that's still a major advantage. An Adaptiv-outfitted tank can change its thermal signature to look like anything from a big rock to a truck to nothing at all, fading into the background and becoming invisible.

A defunct six tonne NASA satellite has crashed into Earth over the weekend, leaving a mystery as to where the space debris ended up. Last week we reported the satellite was headed for Earth after 20 years in orbit.

Over two dozen new free-floating brown dwarfs have been discovered in two young star clusters, Science Daily reports. A University of Toronto-led research team made the discovery - and found an unusual surplus of ‘failed stars’ in each constellation.