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It couldn't have been planned better.

Researchers have developed a simple technique that adds evidence to the theory that the Universe is flat. Moreover, the method - developed by revisiting a 30-year-old idea - confirms that "dark energy" makes up nearly three-quarters of the Universe.

Unexplained "filaments" of radio-wave emission close to our galaxy's centre may hold proof of the existence of dark matter, researchers have said. Dark matter is believed to make up most of the mass of our Universe, but it has yet to be definitively spotted.

Instead of invoking dark matter, the Modified Newtonian Dynamics theory says that the effects of gravity change in places where its pull is very low. The new paper suggests that Mond better predicts the relationship between gassy galaxies' rotation speeds and masses.

The Fermi space telescope has yielded the most detailed gamma ray map of the sky - representing the Universe's most violent and extreme processes. The telescope's newest results, as well as the map, were described at the Third Fermi Symposium in Rome this week.

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are getting set to create the Big Bang on a miniature scale. Since 2009, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator has been smashing together protons, in a bid to shed light on the fundamental nature of matter.

A meteorite found in Antarctica could lend weight to the argument that life on Earth might have been kick-started from space, scientists are claiming.Chemical analysis of the meteorite shows it to be rich in the gas ammonia.

Scientists have made their most accurate measurement yet of the mass of a mysterious neutrino particle. Neutrinos are sometimes known as "ghost particles" because they interact so weakly with other forms of matter.

A pioneering technique using subatomic particles known as neutrons could give microscopic hints of extra dimensions or even dark matter, researchers say.The idea rests on probing any minuscule variations in gravity as it acts on slow-moving neutrons in a tiny cavity.

Scientists have detected the largest molecules ever seen in space, in a cloud of cosmic dust surrounding a distant star. The football-shaped carbon molecules are known as buckyballs, and were only discovered on Earth 25 years ago when they were made in a laboratory.

Back in 1878, shortly after he had invented the phonograph, Thomas Edison hit upon an idea. Leaning over his new machine one day he recited the words: “Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow.

A series of photographs, allegedly from a woman quitting her post by exposing her sexist boss, has been exposed as an elaborate hoax.The images showed a girl called Jenny holding up a whiteboard message to her former boss Spencer saying his "breath smells" and had demotivated staff.

The footage of the Apollo 11 crew's landing on the Moon is one of 20th Century's most important artefacts. The tapes are believed to be stored somewhere in the archive at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland.

The RSPCA have criticised a "sick prank" in which a cat had its fur dyed pink and was then thrown over a garden fence in Swindon. Officers are looking for the owner of the cat, which was found by a man in his garden in Wesley Street on 18 September.

Police in the US city of Boston are investigating a major American media corporation for causing a security alert that closed bridges and roads. Turner Broadcasting System placed electronic devices with blinking lights around the city as part of a campaign to market a late-night TV cartoon.

A British graffiti artist has managed to evade security and hang his work in four of New York's most prestigious and well-guarded museums. "Banksy", who has never disclosed his real identity, claims to have carried out the unusual smuggling operation on one day, during opening hours.

The impetus to locate the tape came from Kipp Teague, who runs an online resource of data on the Apollo Moon landings. 'Bad tape' It was found in the audio library at Nasa's space centre in Houston. The recording had been labelled "bad tape" because it was in a very poor condition.

A video of a golden eagle snatching a child in Canada that has gone viral online was an elaborate hoax aimed at testing the skills of the clipmakers.The video shows the bird briefly lifting the child in a Montreal park before dropping him unharmed.

Speeding down the slopes, a high-speed collision with a tree ends the life of comedian Eddie Murphy. Kung-fu acting legend Jackie Chan collapses and dies of a heart attack. Oh, and rapper Drake also "died" last weekend.

The Yes Men - or somebody suspiciously like them have struck again and this time the victim was Canada. And who better? The Canadians have emerged as the villain of the climate change negotiations for pumping out greenhouse gas emissions with the full-on exploitation of the Alberta tar sands.

Rumours circulating on Twitter that Osama Bin Laden was a fan of The IT Crowd sitcom were an elaborate new media hoax. Here comedian Graham Linehan explains how he organised the ruse.

A piece of graffiti by Bristol artist Banksy has been allowed to stay after what the city council described as "overwhelming support" from the public. The stencilled image shows a woman in her underwear standing behind a suited man leaning out of a window, and a naked man hanging onto the ledge.

This was the final public message recorded by the late Sir Arthur C Clarke, which closed the global launch of the International Year of Planet Earth, at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 13 February 2008. In his unique style, Sir Arthur connects the local with global, and traces the influence of space

Saturn's moon Phoebe is almost certainly a primordial object similar to those that served as the building blocks of planets in our Solar System. That is one of the findings of the Cassini space probe's recent flyby of the tiny impact-battered satellite.

Russia is sending a mini-submarine to explore the ocean floor below the North Pole and find evidence to support its claims to Arctic territory. Two parliamentarians, including veteran explorer Artur Chilingarov, are part of a team planning to dive 4,200m (14,000ft) below the Arctic Ocean on Sunday.