Steve Jobs’ billionaire widow, Laurene, who now spends summers sailing the high seas from the Mediterranean to Australia on her $120 million superyacht The early life of billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs was very different from the immense wealth she enjoys today. While she now spends her summers travelling from the Mediterranean to Australia aboard…

Roger Federer built an entire reputation on staying calm when everyone around him expected him to crack. Off the court, raising four children including two sets of twins, he admitted the calm has limits. “I’m as patient a father as I am on the tennis court,” he said. “It takes a lot for me to…

For decades, solar power has largely meant one thing: rigid silicon panels fixed to rooftops or spread across vast solar farms. Japan is pursuing a very different idea. Instead of heavy glass modules, researchers and manufacturers are developing ultra-thin, flexible solar cells that can be produced using high-speed printing techniques similar to those used for…

By day, many of New Zealand’s forest tracks appear unremarkable. Ferns crowd the undergrowth, damp rock faces line narrow paths and streams cut through thick vegetation. Yet after sunset, some of these same places take on an entirely different appearance. Tiny blue-green points of light begin to emerge from banks, cliffs and overhanging roots until…

A lake often appears permanent, as though it has always occupied the same stretch of landscape. Yet some lakes are surprisingly young. A river changes course, a mountainside collapses, lava blocks a valley, or a dam reshapes an entire region. When water arrives where woodland once stood, the trees do not always disappear immediately. In…

Life on Earth has an expiry date, but it is probably not the dramatic disaster movie ending many people imagine. Instead of a sudden asteroid strike or a single catastrophic event, scientists think the planet’s final chapter will unfold slowly, quietly and over an almost unimaginable stretch of time. Trees, flowers, grass and eventually nearly…