Science

The 'HD audio' marketing push is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of how digital audio works. Here's what the numbers actually mean — and why 16 bit/44.1 kHz is all you'll ever need.

The world's most patient science experiment finally gets a webcam, a very stylish argument for USB cufflinks, and the case for a 3D printer that outputs cupcakes.

Audiophiles swear speakers and headphones need 'burning in' before they sound their best. A skeptical look at the engineering data behind the claim.

A London club installs pee-controlled gaming urinals, Philips creates a lamp powered by living bacteria, and a Skyrim enthusiast liberates every book in Tamriel for your commute.

Two new elements join the periodic table, a Minecraft-themed wedding complete with Mojang-designed drinks labels, and how Chinese gamers outsmarted government censorship with a large tropical fruit.

Scientists confirm a real-life Tatooine orbiting two suns, Super Mario Bros shrunk to 64 pixels, and an 82-kilogram LEGO Star Destroyer built entirely from photographs.

Tetris played on a scale measured in microns, a LEGO model of the Large Hadron Collider built from 9500 pieces, and Isaac Newton's notebooks digitised for the internet.

Disney turns houseplants into touch controllers, NASA captures the highest-resolution images ever taken of the sun's corona, and Twitter predicts personal illness eight days in advance.

Ten apps for scientists and science enthusiasts — from an interactive periodic table and 3D molecule viewer to journal readers and a scientific calculator.

IBM creates a chip from 10,000 carbon nanotube transistors, a programmer recreates the Myst linking book with a real PC inside, and a rocking chair that charges your iPad via kinetic energy.

UNSW researchers achieve a crucial milestone in quantum computing, a man spends US$3 million to save every book ever published, and Lego meets Minecraft.

The first year of 2600 magazine released as a DRM-free e-book, the Las Vegas Star Trek attraction that nearly happened, and the computing challenge of processing an exabyte of data per day.

A robot lawnmower you control from your iPhone, a neural network that develops schizophrenia and confesses to terrorism, and a miniaturised Atari drive for the retro-computing faithful.

NASA starts work on a real tractor beam, a lovingly recreated NES-themed cake that puts home bakers to shame, and why 3D printers could be printing circuit boards within two years.