Mobile charging units that respond to in-car sensors could ensure that electric car owners never need fear getting stranded

Being social could drive the evolution of personality differences

You'll light up the room in a skirt coated with LEDs that illuminate as you move

Normally, black holes evaporate over time, a process that probably releases information about their contents – but there may be a way to create black holes that stand the test of time

Molecular cages for storing hydrogen fuel have been made from cheap, natural ingredients – and they taste like crackers

The stalled weather pattern behind floods in Pakistan and a heatwave in Russia may have delayed the start of the Atlantic hurricane season

The sizes of asteroids near Jupiter spell trouble for the leading theory of how our solar system evolved

Young drivers who played car-based computer games in their mid-teens are more likely to say they drive fast and dangerously in the real world

A 20-fold jump in the number of humans with a smallpox-related virus in Congo has provoked a call to assess its global threat

What happens in your brain when you view illusions in which two separate images can be seen?

Cotton impregnated with silver nanowires and carbon nanotubes could provide a cheap and effective method of purifying water in remote locations

The fallout from the current mass extinction of life on Earth will be far from simple to predict

Theory says the Earth's magnetic field can't flip in just a few years, yet for the second time evidence has been found of it happening in the past

Less than five months after the largest oil spill in US history, another fire has occurred on an oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico

A panel of physicists recommends keeping Fermilab's Tevatron collider alive for an extra three years, but others worry about collateral damage

Cyanobacteria survived strong UV exposure for a billion years – the secret to their success could be key to new sunscreens and "anti-ageing" products

There is much more to the cosmos than meets the eye. Astrophysicist Michael Rowan-Robinson explores what invisible rays from radio to gamma have shown us

Future spacecraft could change their orbits simply by unfurling electrically conducting tethers – Japan has now tested one in a suborbital mission

All today's stories on NewScientist.com including: the flaws in criminal profiling, a birds-eye view of hurricane Earl and weird water inside planets

An astronaut on the International Space Station has captured a serene-looking view of hurricane Earl – but things aren't so calm down below

By storing power for when it's needed most, speakers that plug into a USB port can produce high-quality sound without the need for mains power

Stephen Hawking's new book is the biggest science news story of the day. Has he suddenly given up a religious belief, asks Roger Highfield

Congress could find a way around the shock court ruling that has frozen US government support for work on human embryonic stem cells

In his new book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking argues that there is no single theory of reality because there is no single reality

A form of water deep within Uranus and Neptune may behave like a liquid and a solid simultaneously, explaining the planets' bizarre magnetic fields