It's official: Scientists with the Large Underground Xenon dark-matter detector have combed through 20 months of pristine data and found, buried deep in the measurements … nothing out of the ordinary. The findings were not unexpected — though they do highlight the challenge of finding the elusive stuff known as dark matter. The LUX detector lies nearly a mile underground in a former South Dakota gold mine. The device consists of one-third of a ton of ultrapure liquid xenon, which sits waiting for the exceedingly rare event when a dark matter particle might make contact with one of its atoms.

States show they can stop earthquakes

Kansas and Oklahoma, which acknowledge that humans are causing earthquakes, have shown they can stop them. After restricting oil and natural gas operations in certain hot spots, Oklahoma has an average of two earthquakes a day, compared with about six a say last summer. Kansas is getting about a quarter of the quakes it once did. The general cause of the quakes, scientists have found, is not drilling, but what happens after, when operators dispose of wastewater. The operators inject the wastewater into disposal wells that go thousands of feet underground, which can increase fluid pressures and sometimes cause faults underneath or nearby to move.

Shifting continent a problem for GPS

Australia's extensive road network would theoretically be perfect for self-driving cars. But there is one major problem: Tectonic movements have pushed the continent 5 feet from where it used to be, and where GPS systems assume it is still located. It's a problem that has created headaches for developers and scientists alike, with navigation systems telling drivers to go through walls or onto sidewalks. Consumer navigation systems are sometimes inaccurate on other continents as well, but the impact of Australia's tectonic shifts is unique. Last updated in 1994, the country's local coordinate system is long out of date, researchers say.

News services