See that creepy long-necked green beast eating a little fish in the illustration above? It's called a Dinocephalosaurus, and it will haunt you like it now haunts me. But believe it or not, that serpentine silhouette isn't even the weirdest thing about this Triassic sea monster. That would be the ancient reptile's reproductive strategy.

For years, space poop has been handled by NASA the old-fashioned way — nappies. But as the agency gears up to send humans into deep space, it needs a new method that can handle an emergency situation in which an astronaut may have to go longer periods in a poop-filled suit. Today, the ingenious winners were announced.

After much anticipation, NASA has finally released a shortlist of landing sites for its Mars rover mission slated for July 2020. The three finalists are Northeast Syrtis, which may have been warmed by volcanic activity; the Jezero Crater, which could be the remnants of a Martian lake; and Columbia Hills, which NASA's Spirit lander explored in early-to-mid 2000s. Though Jezero is reportedly the favourite among NASA scientists, in this case, it's the underdog that could be our best shot at finding hints at past or present life on the Red Planet — which is exactly what the 2020 mission seeks to do.

For the past few months, scientists have watched with bated breath as a rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf grows longer by the day. Eventually, the rift will make a clean break, expelling a 5000 square km chunk of ice into the sea. It will be an epic sight to behold — but what happens after the ice is gone?

Who would have guessed a little slice of Westeros would make its way to the final frontier? On Saturday, February 18, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will carry NASA's "three-eyed" Raven technology module to its destination just outside the International Space Station (ISS). Once there, Raven will use its sensors to collect information about incoming and outgoing spacecrafts so that, ultimately, NASA can develop navigation technology for autonomous rendezvous in space — something that's a lot easier said than done.

The sun's UV-B radiation has less of a damaging effect on fish (yes, fish) who exercise (yes, exercise) more.

So, um, what does this mean for us? And why did this study occur in the first place?

We all know the Earth is warming because humans are emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We've also heard that the Arctic is doing horribly, hitting record sea ice lows for several of the past few months, thanks to recent hot weather that's connected to a longer-term warming trend. The polar bear populations are projected to decline 30 per cent by 2050. There might not be any late-summer sea ice by the 2030s.

Australian scientists are leading the team that could have found the future of communications, using magnets.

In the research, the team used a magnetic field to stimulate liquid crystals and steer light beams carrying data. The new method promises to be smaller, cheaper and more agile than fibre optics.

In a brief, one-sentence decision on Wednesday, the US patent office handed the patent for the gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 to the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, finding that UC Berkeley had not laid the groundwork for one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of this century.