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A first step has been taken towards hearing imagined speech using a form of electronic telepathy, it has been claimed.

Scientists believe in future it may be possible to "decode" the thoughts of brain-damaged patients who cannot speak.

In a study described by one British expert as "remarkable", US researchers were able to reconstruct heard words from brain wave patterns.

A mysterious new property of graphene has been discovered by one of the British Nobel Prize-winning scientists who first created the "wonder material".

Graphene is an ultra-thin sheet of carbon just one atom thick.

In 2010, University of Manchester professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the physics Nobel prize for work that involved producing flakes of graphene using sticky tape. Both received knighthoods in the New Year Honours List.

Graphene is the thinnest material known and the strongest ever measured.

It also conducts electricity and heat better than any other material. Potential applications include fold-away mobile phones, wallpaper-thin lighting panels, and the next generation of aircraft.

Now a team led by Sir Andre has shown that graphene membranes shut out all gases and liquids except for water.

Crazy is as crazy does. Charles Claude Guthrie is a proper loon of the highest order.

Charlie was an American physiologist in the early 1900s and made such advances that you would wonder why he wasn't awarded the Nobel Prize.

He made huge contributions to the fields of resuscitation, transplants and surgery.

Transplants? Well, this is where the professor boards the Unhinged Express.

He sewed the head of one dog onto another dog. This wasn't a replacement. He wanted to create a two-headed dog.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Phillip von Hohenheim, known to his mates as Paracelsus.

Sure, he may have been doing his stuff way back in the 16th Century, when no-one knew what a scientist was, never mind a crackpot one, but then not many people have claimed to have created a 12" human.

Totally hat stand, I tells ya.

And how did he manage this marvelous feat? Now this is where we take a turning off Sanity Road right onto Bonkarooni Boulevard.

He made his little fella by placing a sack of bones, skin fragments, sperm and hair, in the center of a circle of horse manure, and letting it sit for 40 days. Hey presto!

To be fair he did almost stumble on the idea that a little of what kills you will cure you. But this must have been a fluke. I mean, once you've constructed your very own Mini Me, you've already proved you're a giant of science!

Weird Science Factoid: A day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days, yet a Venusian year lasts just 225 Earth days. So a day on Venus lasts longer that a year.

A game-changing study that showed how drugs can prevent the transmission of HIV has been named Science journal's Breakthrough of the 2011.

The HPTN 052 trial recruited 1,763 heterosexual couples from nine different countries, each of which included one partner infected by the HIV virus that triggers Aids.

Anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) were administered immediately to half the infected individuals.

Weird Science Hero Neil deGrasse Tyson puts us in our place.

All those adreneline junkies out there can't hold a candle to ol' Joe.

This crazy fella jumped out of a perfectly good hot air balloon at a height of 102,800ft in 1960 just to see if he could survive.

He has a claim to be the first man in space, but Joe is truly the fastest man alive. During the jump, which lasted for more than four-and-a-half minutes, he reached 614mph, just shy of the speed of sound.

He's also cheerfully crazy!

Footage exists and to this day I'm still amazed he actually jumped.

Weird Science Factoid: Polar Bears can run at 25 miles an hour and jump over six feet in the air. If you ever need to know this, you have my condolences.

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An original manuscript containing Sir Isaac Newton's famous laws of motion is among historic works of the great scientist being made publicly available online.

Cambridge University this week published more than 4,000 pages of Newton's most important works on a new digital library website.

They include the scientist's own annotated copy of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Why is the future in the future and the past in the past? If you get my drift...

Sixty Symbols discuss Ireland's only science Nobel Prize winner, Ernest Walton, known as ETS to his colleagues.

One of those colleagues, Iggy McGovern, penned a poem about Walton called Hammer and Spark.