As motoring years go, 2011 was arguably one of the busiest – at least as far as new model launches are concerned. While we covered almost 50 new cars in the 12 months, the list of 2011 debutants is a lot longer. For DEON SCHOEMAN it all boiled down to a handful of finalists.

Care to take a guess at what the most dangerous occupation in the world is? If you’re thinking “Iranian nuclear scientist”, you’ve won a free trip to Tehran and a tour of the Natanz uranium enrichment plant. For another young man working on Iran’s nuclear program has been killed. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. By RICHARD POPLAK.

On Sunday, 8 January, a birthday celebration at the University of Cambridge unfolded without the famous celebrant. He was too ill to attend. The wheelchair-bound theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, despite almost half a century of infirmity, just turned 70. Where would we be without him? By RICHARD POPLAK.

Among physicists, there is now a largely worked out, generally internally consistent theory for how the universe works. However, there is a whopping hole in the model as it does not explain how it is that particles have mass – the answer to which lies with the elusive Higgs boson.  By J BROOKS SPECTOR.

Call of Duty 3: Modern Warfare is the fastest-selling video game of all time and the biggest entertainment story of the year. $1-billion in 16 days, it has Hollywood execs slobbering in envy and wonder. But the Internet is in its own lather over the sheer “sequel-ness” of the sequel, which has inadvertently caused a crisis of confidence in the gaming industry. What does all that dough actually amount to, if the fans aren’t happy? By RICHARD POPLAK

The Norwegians have long known what the English-speaking world has for most of the last 100 years refused to admit – in terms of achievements alone, Roald Amundsen was the greatest of the polar explorers. On this day, a century after he claimed the South Pole for the first time, we look at some of the other “firsts” that Amundsen has been denied by popular history. By KEVIN BLOOM.

It was a year which saw awards given, and awards returned. REBECCA DAVIS reviews some of South Africa’s major happenings on the arts scene over the course of 2011.

The Foreign Policy website is generally hailed as an expert voice in international affairs. It’s just released its predictions on what the top foreign-policy stories of 2012 will be. By REBECCA DAVIS.

From sublimely graceful to daringly acrobatic, the show brings a touch of magic to the stage this festive season. By LESLEY STONES.

For men of the early twentieth century, the polar caps were the last real geographic extremities remaining to be conquered and explored. The goal of reaching the South Pole first set up a classic competition between British and Norwegian explorers, Robert F Scott and Roald Amundsen. J BROOKS SPECTOR looks back on the race into nothingness.

Last week’s discovery of a potentially-habitable planet, Kepler-22b, might have been the most exciting space-related story of the year. But 2011 has been a big one for astronomical discoveries. REBECCA DAVIS takes a look at some of the hits of the year.

A great irony of the cyber age is the way it connects seemingly incongruous and anachronistic opposites in bizarre and unexpected ways. Now the ragtag though powerful Islamist terror group, Al Shabaab, is taking on the Kenyan army on the battlefields of … Twitter. By SIMON ALLISON.

Domain names using the suffix “.xxx” went on sale for the first time last week. The idea is purportedly to attempt to restrict pornography online to one domain area. Yet elements of the project sound like one big scam. By REBECCA DAVIS.

Justice has come slowly for Zoliswa Nkonyana, the 19-year-old woman murdered in Khayelitsha for being a lesbian. Sentencing is set for 19 December in a trail plagued by justice system flaws and failures. But this is the norm in a South Africa where brutalising or killing someone because of their sexual orientation is no hate crime, where rape’s under reported and most offenders get away scot-free. By MANDY DE WAAL.

When Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic on 1 June 2009, its causes became one of the greatest mysteries of aviation. Now Popular Mechanics has published the transcript of the pilots’ conversation in the final moments before the plane went down, and it makes for chilling reading. By REBECCA DAVIS.

In 1987 in a dog fight over Angola, Arthur Piercy’s Mirage F1 was damaged by a Cuban pilot who deployed a missile at Piercy’s fighter craft. Piercy made it back to base, but on landing had a crash that left him permanently in a wheelchair. These days, Piercy’s flying again, and has launched a global quest of possibility and reconciliation, a journey that will see him reunite with the Cuban pilot who fired that missile. By MANDY DE WAAL.

The idea that the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt had advanced knowledge of the Pearl Harbour attack, on 7 December 1941, has long been a favourite trope of conspiracy theorists. But, as history shows, a far more dangerous and authentic conspiracy was being hatched by US Republicans and men like Charles Lindbergh. By KEVIN BLOOM.

Strap yourself in, space cowboy. If you aren’t about to get sucked into a black hole with the mass of 21-billion suns, you’re about to get fried by aliens who live on a habitable planet only 22-billion light years away. It’s been a good week for astronomers, but a bad week for Earthlings. By RICHARD POPLAK.

It’s hard to make sense of all the medical jargon, but the conclusion is clear and potentially life-saving. Researchers in America have released a report saying they might just have found a cure for one of the world’s most dangerous diseases, the dreaded Ebola virus. Testing is still in its initial phases, but results are promising – and we have the US government to thank. By SIMON ALLISON.

UK newspaper the Guardian has been carrying out a study into the cause of the London riots in collaboration with the London School of Economics. The results paint a picture of a city with stark racial divisions. By REBECCA DAVIS.

Negotiations at the UN Climate Change conference, COP17, have so far focused on the politics of the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Equally important, however, are the negotiations on adapting to the effects of climate change in embattled parts of the developing world like Africa’s Sahel. By KHADIJA PATEL.

Helen Zille’s comparison of a sector of Aids experts to the Gestapo has caused little bit of an outcry in some circles. But she’s not the first public figure to apply a Nazi analogy to a group of which she disapproves. By REBECCA DAVIS.

On the sidelines of the diplomatic wrangling at the COP17 in Durban this week, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has unveiled a fascinating initiative to build as many as 20 “environmental zero impact” schools in the Gaza Strip. By KHADIJA PATEL.

There was a time when you could buy yourself a big shiny rock with a clean conscience. Thanks to the Kimberley Process, you were confident it would not fund child soldiers or murderous African warlords. But that time is no more, according to Global Witness, which has withdrawn from the process in a move that shocked the industry and should make consumers think twice before buying any more of a girl’s best friends. By SIMON ALLISON.

What happens when another earth appears in the night sky? In an indie movie, not much. Which turns out to be a good thing. By RICHARD POPLAK.

Can you conceive of meat produced in giant factories that feed nutrients to the stem cells of dead animals? Given that a scientist in the Netherlands looks set to produce the world’s first lab-grown hamburger on a planet that’s fast running out of land for livestock – the time may not be too far off. By KEVIN BLOOM.

Mischa Glenny, author of McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, has written a follow-up about cyber crime. It’s a book that will keep you awake at night. By RICHARD POPLAK.

The first group of students to matriculate from Oprah’s Leadership Academy for Girls have just written their final exams. While prospects for the 72 girls matriculating look rosy, the past five years haven’t all been plain sailing for the school. By REBECCA DAVIS.

The Zuma government says it’s winning the war against the spread of HIV/Aids. But what of South Africa’s “Marshall Plan” for a society and economy living with the aftermath? By PAUL BERKOWITZ.