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Fukushima ice wall
In March 2011, Japan was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the fifth largest in recorded history. The Fukushima nuclear plant automatically shut down its three working reactors and emergency generators kicked in to keep the cores cool. An hour later, a 40 metre tsunami followed, knocking out the generators which were preventing a meltdown. The result was the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The complexity of such a catastrophe has meant that fixing it is a colossal, bank-breaking problem. And it’s getting worse. In June, radioactive water began leaking from storage tanks, and in August the barrier to prevent it entering the sea was breached. This week, the Japanese government announced a £300 million fix for the latest leak - a bizarre sounding ‘ice wall’.

Early Egyptian timeline redefined
Egypt was the first territorial state to have one political ruler. New dating evidence suggests this unification happened faster than previously thought. Until now, scholars relied on archaeological evidence alone, to piece together the timings of key chronological events in the Predynastic period and the First Dynasty. Now, scientists have reset the chronology of Egypt between 4500 and 2800 BC using mathematical models that combine new radiocarbon dates with established archaeological evidence.

Bringing extinct animals back to life
Deep frozen remains of Arctic animals like the woolly mammoth or the Irish elk, have been shown to contain DNA - but is it in a good enough condition to rebuild the genome and attempt cloning these animals which became extinct nearly 4000 years ago? Some researchers think it could work. Experts in ancient DNA debate the feasibility and logistics of resurrecting animals such as the mammoth, the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the marsupial tiger, and the thylacine.

Image: An aerial view of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, March 2011. Credit: AFP/Getty Images