Oh, to catch a rainbow. Well, it's been done for the first time ever - and with just a simple lens and a plate of glass at that. The technique could be used to store information using light, a boon for optical computing and telecommunications.

All-optical computing devices promise to be faster and more efficient than current technology, but they suffer from the drawback that signals have to be converted back and forth from optical to electrical. The ability to "slow" light to a crawl or even trap it helps, as information in the light can then be manipulated directly.

In 2007, Ortwin Hess of the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK, and colleagues proposed a technique to trap light inside a tapering waveguide, which is a structure that guides light waves down its length. The waveguide in question would use metamaterials - exotic materials that can bend light sharply.

After decades of searching, astronomers have confirmed that a gluttonous stellar remnant that glows brightly in X-rays can create high-energy gamma rays as well. The tiny powerhouse could serve as a nearby laboratory to study how particles are accelerated in the universe's biggest black holes.

Cygnus X-3, a pair of objects that sit some 30,000 light years from Earth, has long been a puzzle. The system is thought to contain the dense remnant of a star - either a black hole or a neutron star - that is feeding on a disc of material stolen from a companion star.

The pair orbit each other once every 4.8 hours, shining in X-rays and occasionally sending jets of material, or flares, outwards at close to the speed of light. Because of these flares, Cygnus X-3 has been dubbed a "microquasar", since it resembles quasars, the flaring supermassive black holes at the centres of some galaxies.

Interest in Cygnus X-3 has grown since the flares were first discovered by radio telescopes in 1972. In the following decades, astronomers have found hints that gamma rays - the universe's highest-energy photons - could be coming from Cygnus X-3 with energies as high as trillions or even quadrillions of electronvolts (eV).

It is well known that some animal species use camouflage to hide from predators. Individuals that are able to blend in to their surroundings and avoid being eaten are able to survive longer, reproduce, and thus increase their fitness (pass along their genes to the next generation) compared to those who stand out more. This may seem like a good strategy, and fairly common in the animal kingdom, but who ever heard of a plant doing the same thing?

She was probably 16 years old and had a wide, flat Asian face, a long neck and a slim figure. The girl died 1,500 years ago. But now she's reborn - well, partially, at least.

At the National Palace Museum of Korea yesterday officials from the Gaya National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage in Korea unveiled the restored model of the girl from the Gaya confederacy era (42-562)

A team of South Korean scientists have produced the polymers used for everyday plastics through bioengineering, rather than through the use of fossil fuel-based chemicals.

It is believed that the technique may now allow for the production of environmentally-friendly plastic that is biodegradable and low in toxicity.

The research focused on Polylactic Acid (PLA), a bio-based polymer which holds the key to producing plastics through natural and renewable resources. Polymers are molecules found in everyday life in the form of plastics and rubbers.

Joining Tom Philpott on the anti-BPA bandwagon, the New York Times columnist Nick Kristof had an op-ed Sunday detailing the mounting evidence against the hormone disrupting chemical. One comment in particular summed up the debate nicely:

"When you have 92 percent of the American population exposed to a chemical, this is not one where you want to be wrong," said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. "Are we going to quibble over individual rodent studies, or are we going to act?"

One of the problems we face when it comes to regulating toxic substances is that the EPA and the FDA aren't generally able to apply a strong "precautionary principle" the way regulators do in Europe. In essence, a strong precautionary principle would allow our government to act even when, as stated in a European Commission document, "scientific evidence is insufficient, inconclusive, or uncertain." In those cases, advocates for a particular substance would need to demonstrate unequivocally the substance's safety. Instead, we require almost total scientific consensus regarding a substance's danger before the EPA or the FDA will act.

It was one of the internet's most ambitious, radical and ultimately successful ideas.

Eight years ago Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia that allows anyone to write and edit articles, declared that it would provide access to "the sum of all human knowledge". It soon became one of world's most popular websites.

The site assumed that facts and information could be provided by all. Anyone was allowed to log on, write and change articles. Any subject - from Barack Obama's election to characters in the Star Wars films - was considered worthy of inclusion. The pages have been updated and improved upon thousands of times and they are used more than 300 million times a month by everyone from primary school pupils to speechwriters - even if they should know better.

Surprisingly to sceptics, who have long warned that inaccuracies abound on the website and that they can come to be regarded as fact, the project seems to have proven the wisdom of crowds. A recent study suggested that its pieces were just as accurate as those in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The latest studies have shown Mars once had an enormous ocean in its northern hemisphere that caused a humid and rainy climate like earth.

Scientists from Northern Illinois University (NIU) and the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston used an advanced computer program to draw a map of the Red Planet.

"All the evidence gathered by analyzing the valley network on the new map points to a particular climate scenario on early Mars," NIU Geography Professor Wei Luo, said.

The scientists' newly designed map shows the Martian valley networks are more than twice as extensive as had previously been thought.

"It would have included rainfall and the existence of an ocean covering most of the northern hemisphere, or about one-third of the planet's surface," Luo said.

The discovery of Native American artifacts dating back thousands of years - - plus the likelihood that there are many more beneath the streets of neighborhoods off Tidewater Drive - - have stalled an effort to bring sewers to the coastal area.

Archaeologists retained by the Warwick Sewer Authority have been unearthing a variety of artifacts in test trenches for more than three years and recently issued a report stating that the Mill Cove area was probably home to generations of Native Americans, with artifacts from about 3,000 years ago through the 1600s.

Given those findings and the need for far more extensive archaeological study before any sewer construction could begin, the WSA is exploring less-disruptive engineering methods while other city officials say that sewers may be out of the question for the neighborhoods just north of Warwick Neck.

Where will astronomers stop in their love affair with the enigmatic substance called dark matter? First we were told it was essential to allow a galaxy to spin without falling apart. Then it was the glue that held clusters of galaxies together. Later it was said to have catalysed the formation of the galaxies in the first place. Now, surely, they have gone too far. If the latest theories pan out, dark matter has also given us some of the world's most enduring astrological myths.

In this rational age, we have come to recognise constellations as chance alignments of groups of stars. No longer do we think of Orion as a mighty hunter, brought down by the sting of a fateful encounter with the scorpion Scorpius. Yet it seems that an unseen hand may after all have been responsible for placing these stars in the sky.

Hints are emerging that around 30 million years ago, a giant clump of dark matter struck our part of the Milky Way, creating a rippling disc of star formation that eventually produced Orion's belt, the bright ruby jewel of Antares in Scorpius, and many more of the sky's most notable stars. If the scenario is correct, it could guide us in the search for a solution to one of the abiding mysteries of physics: what exactly is dark matter made of?

In the middle of the 19th century, the English astronomer John Herschel noticed that we are surrounded by a ring of bright stars. But it was Boston-born Benjamin Gould who brought this to wider attention in 1874. Gould's belt, as it is now known, supplies bright stars for many famous constellations including Orion, Scorpius and Crux, the Southern Cross, which appears on the official flags of five countries and several territories. Perseus and Canis Major in the north, along with Vela and Centaurus in the south, also contain stars in Gould's belt.