Physicists routinely baffle reporters, but for once things went the other way. Alexander Gaeta was sitting in his Cornell University office in the fall of 2010 when a reporter called to ask his opinion of a strange new paper in the Journal of Optics: What did he think about the claim that it might be possible to create a time cloak, a device that would render events undetectable?

Gaeta was caught off guard. He was still grappling with the invisibility cloak, a wild idea that turned into reality in 2006, when physicists demonstrated that a class of synthetic materials could bend light completely around an object. (Think of water in a stream flowing around a rock.) Without light bouncing off the object, it would essentially disappear.

In May 2010, the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull reached the Iberian Peninsula and brought airports to a halt all over Europe. At the time, scientists followed its paths using satellites, laser detectors, sun photometers and other instruments. Two years later they have now presented the results and models that will help to prevent the consequences of such natural phenomena.

For centuries, Native Americans have been on the receiving end of some of the worst atrocities committed on U.S. soil, driven from their homes and isolated on impoverished reservations. How can the U.S. government begin to repair the damage done to Native American communities, and compensate in some small way for the injuries done to them?

Well, giving back Mount Rushmore would be a start.

Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin Professor of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, announced May 8 the discovery of objects that for the first time shed light on how a cult was organized in Judah at the time of King David. During recent archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city in Judah adjacent to the Valley of Elah, Garfinkel and colleagues uncovered rich assemblages of pottery, stone and metal tools, and many art and cult objects. These include three large rooms that served as cultic shrines, which in their architecture and finds correspond to the biblical description of a cult at the time of King David.

Scientists have used DNA analysis to gain important new insights into how human beings repopulated Europe as the Ice Age relaxed its grip.

Dr Maria Pala, who is based at the University of Huddersfield -- now a key centre for archaeo-genetics research -- is the lead author of an article in the latest issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics which shows how the Near East was a major source of replenishment when huge areas of European territory became habitable again, up to 19,000 years ago.

The curtain of secrecy is being raised by Blue Origin, a private entrepreneurial space group designing both suborbital and orbital vehicles.

Backed by Amazon.com mogul Jeff Bezos, the Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin group has completed wind tunnel testing of its next-generation craft, simply called the "Space Vehicle." It would transport up to seven astronauts to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station. Though the company has been stingy on public information in the past, new details of the recent work have been released.

It's slightly macabre but our fascination with the mummified bodies of men, women and children from ancient civilisations continues to draw captivated audiences to exhibitions here and around the world.

Numbers of visitors to the Queensland Museum are expected to swell significantly when a new exhibition from the British Museums Egyptology collection opens to the public on Thursday.

Could the future of cleaner fossil fuel really be frozen crystals now trapped in ocean sediments and under permafrost?

Backed by an oil industry giant, the Obama administration recently tested a drilling technique in Alaska's Arctic that it says might eventually unlock "a vast, entirely untapped resource that holds enormous potential for U.S. economic and energy security." Some experts believe the reserves could provide domestic fuel for hundreds of years to come.

Northern Israel, a region with multiple border zones, has seen its share of modern conflict. But a picture of what life was like on this border in antiquity, especially during the period from Alexander the Great through the revolt against Rome (ca. 330 B.C.–A.D. 70), also years of political and religious unrest, remained undrawn. In the mid-1990s, as we were each finishing long-term projects in Israel, we realized that Tel Kedesh was the perfect place to investigate this question. Ancient sources repeatedly describe it as a border site—between Canaanites and Israelites in biblical times and between Phoenicians and Jews in the classical period. Today it lies along the Israeli-Lebanese border, a location that saw several dramatic battles during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents have discovered two sets of archaeological artifacts in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument since February, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Tuesday.

In late February, Ajo Station agents patrolling on foot came across what they believed to be an ancient bowl hidden in a shady outcropping of rock, the Border Patrol said.

WASHINGTON -George Washington University Professor Jeffrey P. Blomster’s latest research explores the importance of the ballgame to ancient Mesoamerican societies. Dr. Blomster’s findings show how the discovery of a ballplayer figurine in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca demonstrates the early participation of the region in the iconography and ideology of the game, a point that had not been previously documented by other researchers. Dr. Blomster’s paper, Early evidence of the ballgame in Oaxaca, Mexico, is featured in the latest issue of Proceedings in the National Academies of Science (PNAS).

Smoking marijuana may help relieve the muscle tightness and pain of multiple sclerosis, a small U.S. study suggests.

Many people with MS often suffer from spasticity, an uncomfortable and disabling condition in which the muscles become tight and difficult to control. Spasticity can be controlled with medications but the symptoms may continue or the anti-spasticity drugs may carry adverse effects such as drowsiness, sedation, and muscle weakness.