Building our own copy of Mars in the laboratory was hard work. We had to shift 15 tonnes of sand to create a swimming-pool-sized model of the red planet. But the effort was well worth it as our experiments shed light on a much-debated issue: the origin of ancient water on...

But it never needed to come to this. Back in 2006, the High Court gave a signal to the parliament that they could simply pass a law allowing gay marriage. Instead, Ireland’s politicians dropped the ball.

In the 2006 case, a lesbian couple sought to have their Canadian same-sex marriage...

Vancouver-based architect Michael Green was unequivocal at a conference at which I heard him speak a while ago: “We grow trees in British Columbia that are 35 storeys tall, so why do our building codes restrict timber buildings to only five storeys?”

True...