Just in case you were wondering what the universe is made of, whether ET exists and if something can be done about global warming, cancer and beating bacteria, here's what scientists know ...

The ozone hole over New Zealand is closing, but it may warm up Antarctica which could then affect the West Coast and Canterbury Plains, a university researcher says.

A sequence of quakes rattling the centre of the country appears to be shifting down the South Island and away from Wellington.

For a ship on a mission of worldwide importance, the Yong Sheng is a distinctly unimpressive sight.

There's mounting evidence that the pesticide bombardment of our crops and farms is having a devastating effect on wildlife, writes Sue Kedgley.

Scientists are debating whether the source of more than 2200 quakes in the Wellington region over the past fortnight is an underwater extension of a South Island fault.

Much of Wellington's CBD will be off limits this morning as streets and buildings remain closed following yesterday's big quakes and aftershocks.

The faultline causing earthquakes in Cook Strait has a history of producing "swarms" of quake.

A satellite has detected a rapid acceleration in the melting of glacier ice over the past decade.

For one of the harshest places on the planet, Antarctica in the winter does have its delights.

Nasa's Mars rover Curiosity finally caused some real curiosity last week with a photo of what appeared to be a "rat" on Mars, writes Rhys Darby.

Swept by winds reaching up to 320km/h, Antarctica's Dry Valleys rank among the most extreme and uninhabitable deserts on Earth.

Well, it was only a matter of time ... but yes, I'm pleased to announce there's been another sighting of the Agogwe in Africa.

The priorities are clearly badly wrong, writes Bryan Walker. NZ needs to turn its back on a prosperity resulting in severe threats to the human future and build an economy which flourishes on green energy sources.

Packing winds of up to 320km, the killer tornado that laid waste to Oklahoma on Monday grasped at the deadliest end of the Enhanced Fujita scale.

The first time I met palaeontologist Dan Fisher was in a hotel in the Arctic frontier town of Salekhard, in Siberia.

The National Science Challenges promised to be one of the most exciting experiments ever seen in our science and innovation sector.

A Canterbury astrophysicist will fly to Europe next week to be presented with the Einstein Medal from the Albert Einstein Society.

NZ authorities are only just waking up to the risks tsunamis pose to our coastlines but they don't know how bad a destructive one could be here, an Australian expert says.

Sweeping views of Auckland's volcanic cones risk being violated by new planning rules, critics say.

Scientists from across the world have come here to examine how to unlock secrets hidden within our offshore tectonic plate boundaries over the next decade.

Nine scientists are three days in to a two-week marine expedition to the Three Kings Islands and they've already discovered their first new (or previously undescribed) species - seaweeds. This video footage is from their first dive at the Cavalli Islands on the way to the Three Kings. You can follow more of the expedition through their blog http://threekings.aucklandmuseum.com/

Climate change is forecast to make huge tracts of land ripe for grape-growing in New Zealand while threatening vineyards in some of the world's most celebrated wine regions.

Tsunami warning sirens that sounded across Auckland in a test-run at the weekend are not favoured by our national emergency agency.

Every time Steve Morris takes his two young daughters to the local beach, signs of tsunami danger surround him.

As one of the world's most tsunami-threatened countries, New Zealand faces the triple menace of distant-source tsunami, regional tsunami and local-source tsunami.

The more we learn about the formation and evolution of our solar system, the more we realise it was far from a sedate, gentle process.

The moon. Our nearest neighbour. The main source of the ocean's tides, and a beacon that drives the lives of animals across the globe.