REL managing director Alan Bond told the BBC: 'We can reduce the world to four hours - the maximum time it would take to go anywhere. And that it also gives us an aircraft that can go into space, replacing all the expendable rockets we use today.'
Range-Extending Gas Engine: A supercharged 1.5-liter gasoline engine backs up the electric system. A 23-gallon tank in the center fuselage holds enough unleaded gas to extend the GT4’s range up to 1,000 miles.
Simulations show how unleashing Earth's destructive arsenal into deep space could save the planet
Water can float on oil, suggest new findings defying conventional wisdom that could have important applications in cleaning up oil spills that endanger seashores and fisheries, researchers say.
A decades-old explanation for how tigers get their stripes has come into question as researchers challenge what’s called the morphogen theory. The research does not nix the theory, but science may now have a hypothetical tiger by the tail as they try
Around 2,900 years ago, an ancient Egyptian man, likely in his 20s, passed away after suffering from a rare, cancerlike disease that may also have left him with a type of diabetes.
Ardbeg, makers of extremely peaty Scotch whisky, has launched samples of its product into space. Not as a gift from Earth to extraterrestrial races, nor even as a refreshment for human astronauts -- no, the idea is to study how whisky ages in zero-gr
A new estimate of the number of habitable planets orbiting the most common type of stars in our galaxy could have huge consequences for the search for life.
Prayer means many different things to many different people.
Eating berries appears to reduce cognitive decline in older adults. In a new study published by the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society, the results suggest that cognitive decline can be delayed in the elderly by up to two a
Scientists running the Large Hadron Collider, aka the "big bang machine", announced Friday they've discovered a brand new particle during one of their experiments.
Dyes absorb photons from sunlight and generate a charge in the form of electrons, which are captured first by a semiconducting titanium oxide layer deposited on a current collector before flowing back to the counter electrode through another current
This compact material offers great design freedom for vehicle construction and can be used to make components with a Class A surface that are to be finished with a high-grade coating. It is processed using tried-and-tested RRIM technology. (Reinfor
Political power has a similar effect on the brain to cocaine - and it's not surprising that, as the Leveson Inquiry shows, our political leaders are hooked on it.
The team found for the first time that boron puts kinks and elbows into the nanotubes as they grow and promotes the formation of covalent bonds, which give the sponges their robust qualities.
he results beg the question - what is going on here? Is the life extension just for those lucky rats again, or is there a mechanism that might transfer over to humans? The study was aimed at discovering if a diet of buckyballs has any toxic effects,
o this end, Thomas Bein and his team at NIM first developed a network of porous carbon nanoparticles. The nanoparticles have 3- to 6-nanometer wide pores, allowing the sulfur to be evenly distributed. In this way, almost all of the sulfur atoms are a
This week our own Robert Johnson is headed north to investigate one of the most controversial energy projects in the world: the Canadian oil sands.
a process which harvests the part of the solar spectrum currently unused by solar cells, eliminates the need for costly redevelopment of solar cells.
But the momentum to restart Japan's reactors is losing ground as time passes, particularly if Japan and its economy emerge relatively unscathed from a nuclear power-free summer.
Regulators are proposing that food companies that want to use tiny engineered particles in their packaging may have to provide extra testing data to show the products are safe.
Forget the gold rushes of the Wild West, the next grab for natural riches could eclipse anything that has gone before it. Power players including Eric Schmidt, the Google chairman, and James Cameron, the film director, are planning to mine the final
Star Trek has been noted on many occasions throughout the series for seemingly predicting (or perhaps inspiring) the progression of technology.
The prospect of artificial life has just come one step closer, with the discovery that a synthetic version of DNA and RNA can evolve like the real thing.
"We were able to show that the salivary protein targets Xa and is a good inhibitor of clotting," he said about his recent research. "But, it is an even better inhibitor of some enzymes involved in very early immune response-elastase and cathepsin
As a 42-year-old man born in England, I can expect to live for about another 38 years. In other words, I can no longer claim to be young. I am, without doubt, middle-aged. To some people that is a depressing realization. We are used to dismissing
Fossilized “dinosaur eggs” have been excavated in southern Russia's Republic of Chechnya.
wants cores to communicate the same way computers hooked to the Internet do: by bundling the information they transmit into "packets." Each core would have its own router, which could send a packet down any of several paths, depending on the condi
SpaceX and NASA are moving ahead with the scheduled April 30 launch date of the Dragon spacecraft and its historic docking with the International Space Station after the flight readiness review was approved at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tex
