With online socialising and alternative realities like Second Life it may seem as if reality has become a whole lot bigger over the last few years. In one branch of theoretical physics, though, things seem to be going the other way. String theorists have been developing the idea that the space and time we inhabit, including ourselves, might be nothing more than an illusion, a hologram conjured up by a reality which lacks a crucial feature of the world as we perceive it: the third dimension. Plus talks to Juan Maldacena to find out more.

Two of the most fundamental questions asked by people are how life emerged on the Earth, and whether we are alone in the cosmos. These deeply important questions form the core of a new kind of science, one that recently has been rapidly gathering momentum: astrobiology. Lewis Dartnell explains.

On May 19 2009 the Space Shuttle Atlantis released the Hubble Space Telescope back into orbit after a hugely successful servicing mission. To mark the occasion, Mario Livio, one of the scientists involved in the mission and intimately acquainted with Hubble, takes stock of its scientific legacy.

It's hard to avoid CERN these days. Last year's successful switch-on of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, followed by a blow-out which is currently being fixed, sparked wide-spread media coverage, and currently CERN stars in the Tom Hanks movie Angels and Demons. So what goes on at CERN and why the hubbub about the Large Hadron Collider, known as the LHC? Ben Allanach investigates.

The mathematical maps in theoretical physics have been highly successful in guiding our understanding of the universe at the largest and smallest scales. Linking these two scales together is one of the golden goals of theoretical physics. But, at the very edges of our understanding of these fields, one of the most controversial areas of physics lies where these maps merge: the cosmological constant problem.

Surein Aziz explores one of the most beautiful equations in mathematics

Horatio Boedihardjo explains the credit crunch

Sonia Buckley travels through higher dimensions

Sophie Butchart finds mysterious patterns in the solar system

Lucinda Mathews visualises tricky surfaces