As featured in one of our top features of 2008 a strange fungus is thriving in the Chernobyl reactor.
Credit: Nigel Buchanan
SYDNEY: From a massive explosion deep within the Earth, to a curious lifeform thriving in the Chernobyl reactor, these are the stories that floated your boat in 2008.
SILENT SPRING
Deep in the radioactive bowels of the smashed Chernobyl reactor, a strange new lifeform is blooming.
THE BIRTH OF THE MOON
How the Moon arose has long stumped scientists. Now Dutch geophysicists argue that it was created not by a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago, but by a runaway nuclear reaction deep inside the young Earth.
SATELLITES BUILD A PICTURE OF THE PAST
Gone are the days of a fearless Indiana Jones battling through the jungle in search of ancient treasures. Today's archaeologists are using high-tech tools - from NASA satellites to Google Earth - to do the hard work for them.
THE REAL JURASSIC PARK
A new $1-billion theme park in Dubai – featuring over 100 animatronic dinosaurs of 40 different species – promises to take you closer to a prehistoric world than you've ever been before.
FUSION 2.0
Fusion could one day generate limitless cheap energy from little more than water, while emitting no greenhouse gases. We look at its promise as the ultimate power panacea for a warming world.
THE FINAL FRONTIER
In the 1960s the space race created a fascination with science and great technological advances. To find alien life we need to take back up that mantle, says astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, and send people further into space.
HARD-WIRED FOR LOVE
Are robots the sex partners of the future? Though it sounds like a bleak nightmare to some, one academic thinks we will overcome the technological and psychological obstacles by 2050.
BECOMING IMMORTAL
Within a few decades, we might reasonably expect to have extended life to 150 years or more – the first human to live to 1,000 may have already been born. But, does death give meaning to our lives? Where do we go from here?
VERGING ON ABSOLUTE ZERO
We've gone to space, split the atom, and created devices small enough to travel through our blood. But it seems that in science, as in nature, there are some places we still can't reach.
THE HEAT BENEATH OUR FEET
For far too long it's been overlooked, but geothermal energy from naturally radioactive hot rocks represents an abundant energy source right in our backyard.
