Cosmic collision sparks blinding x-ray light show
As a pair of colliding galaxies merges, a flurry of forming stars produce ultra-bright x-ray bursts
How to think about… Quantum reality
To get to grips with quantum physics, you need to retrain your intuition, or possibly just give up any sense of reality at all
Bacterial waste makes you feel fuller for longer
Doughnuts? No thank you. An edible powder made from stuff our gut bacteria excrete can stop people gaining weight when taken daily
Fungal fighters: Cruel weapons of the forest floor
From body invasion Alien-style to hallucinogenic poisons and limpet mines, fungi have astonishingly creative ways of dispatching their foes
The fight back against rape and death threats online
Twitter, police and law courts are waking up to the ugly abuse that women endure online, with systems, algorithms and trials closing in on perpetrators
The sites that know your dream job before you do
We use algorithms to connect to people and things we'll love, like suggestions on Netflix – soon they might connect us to jobs we'll love too
Feedback: Weight of evidence of error
Reviewers' proofread fail, plucky little lander plot, they took rockets for a walk and more
Your telltale video camera shake can identify you
Footage captured on wearable cameras contains a motion signature unique to you – protestors and police alike should beware
Stamping out online abuse is a job for all of us
Governments, tech giants and individuals must act together if we are to clamp down on threats and abuse in the digital world
How to think about… Space-time
It has often been described as a rubber sheet, but Einstein's twisted space-time is more intangible than that
Great wall of trees keeps China's deserts at bay
Millions of trees planted in northern China are taming dust storms, but critics wonder whether the Great Green Wall is a long-term solution
Peer inside the head of a giant prehistoric groundhog
A virtual replica of the first complete skull of a mysterious mammal is revealing the structure of its bizarre bones
This means spore: The brutal world of fighting fungi
Single combat, assassination, chemical warfare, even mind control: the Geneva conventions don't apply when fungi go to war
Humans and birds share the same singing genes
An intriguing evolutionary similarity might mean that songbirds will make good models for studying the genetics of speech disorders
Warming won't give emperor penguins happy feet
Genome analysis of the two Antarctic-breeding penguins reveal the differing fate global warming might have on the iconic emperors and Adélies
Loops and folds of our DNA to shed light on disease
Stretched out, our DNA is almost 2 metres long. The way it folds in on itself to fit into our cells is now being mapped – and has been dubbed the loopome
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