Visitors will be able to view specimens which inspired breakthroughs in the fields of botany, mineralogy, zoology and palaeontology, and delve deep into the backgrounds of the world’s most famous naturalists. Charles Darwin, Hans Sloane, Alfred Russel Wallace and Richard Owen are among the celebrated characters that have populated the Museum with some of its 70million treasures.

Sandy Island, which appears on satellite images as an dark blob in the Coral Sea, sparked interest worldwide yesterday it wasn't actually there. The Australian team who made the 'un-discovery' are now investigating how the error could have been made, but a UK-based cartography expert said it could merely be the result of our over-reliance on satellites. It has also emerged that the latest non-finding was the SECOND time Sandy Island had been 'un-discovered'

The failure occurred as Toshiba presented the four-legged device, forcing embarrassed technicians to meekly carry it away. Although it is a world leader in robotics, Japan did not have a device capable of entering the damaged Fukushima nuclear facility after last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami. Instead, authorities were forced to bring in U.S. robots.

The devices are designed to prevent 'legally blind' individuals with a small degree of residual vision from bumping into objects. Using tiny stereoscopic cameras within the frames, they project simplified images onto the lenses which shine more brightly the closer the wearer gets to obstacles. The glasses will be tested in a series of trials starting in January next year involving 160 people with severely impaired sight in Oxford and London.

These incredible pictures could be derelict industrial complexes pictured from above. But in fact they show the vital components that make our digital devices work. Open up your computer and all you will see are a bunch of black boxes, but these chips have had their protective casings dissolved with hot acid to reveal their working parts. The hard work to reveal the insides of these microchips has been done by ZeptoBars, a privately held research and development company based in Moscow, Russia.