The system might someday be applied to prosthetics to mimic human skin’s ability to feel sensation.

More lightning strikes could trigger wildfires and change the chemistry of our atmosphere.

The observation of an elusive sub-atomic particle known as the Higgs boson has been heralded by the journal Science as the most important scientific discovery of 2012. This particle, which was first hypothesized to exist more than 40 years ago, holds the key to explaining how other elementary particles such as electrons and quarks (those that aren’t made up of smaller particles) get their mass.