News

Studying Earth is built into the world’s space agencies’ directives. After all, Earth is a planet in the Solar System, and, unusually, it harbors life. It is, in fact, the only place in the entire cosmos that humans can live, so the more we know about it and try and secure its future, the better.  […]

But equally striking is the flourishing wildlife. Flora and fauna abound, harkening back to an America not yet touched by colonialist hands: bison roam wild (indeed, sometimes they’re positively livid); grizzly bears are born and live in safety; cougars are… well, the cougars aren’t doing too hot, to be honest, but they’re trying their best. […]

Imagine a beautiful vase filled with roses on a spring day, by an open window. A sudden gust of wind enters the room, the roses act as a sail, and the vase tumbles from its perch and onto the floor. The shards of that vase are, of course, a chaos of sizes and shapes. However, […]

On Friday, several thousand Airbus planes had to be grounded to make sure that their onboard computers would not suffer from unusual but potentially very serious interference. The source of the interference was not even of this Earth – the French company was concerned about the effect of an increase in solar radiation on the […]

Parks and Rec fans rejoice – L’il Sebastian might be gone (always in our hearts), but we bring to you an even tinier horse to obsess over, with an equally glorious mane and a lovable personality: Pumuckel, the world’s shortest living horse. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

Whether or not you believe in the Bible, it’s undeniable that it affects you today. That’s true even for the most ardent atheist out there – and according to a new study from Nathan MacDonald, Professor of the Interpretation of the Old Testament at the University of Cambridge, that’s because of one frankly slightly janky […]

Imagine having a blood type so rare that only two other people in the entire world could match it. That’s the reality for three individuals uncovered in a recent study based in Thailand – and they were discovered almost by accident. “We conducted a retrospective review of 285,450 donor and 258,780 patient samples for ABO […]

Issue 41 (December 2025) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the […]

The ancient landmass known as Sahul – which includes Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea – was home to groups of humans as early as 60,000 years ago, according to genetic data. This finding suggests that our ancestors may have made it Down Under just ten millennia or so after first setting foot outside of Africa, […]

Each of us has grown out of a tiny group of cells that at one time had the capacity to turn into any component of the body. As we grew, these cells divided and became specialized, but how does a cell know that it needs to become a piece of brain, bone or liver cell, […]

About 76 percent of all non-visually impaired people experience something known as “floaters”. These appear as moving structures, like little worms, that sometimes appear in your field of vision if you are staring at something bright and uniform, such as the sky, snow, or a white screen. The rest of this article is behind a […]

This week, a total of 175 generations of painters created rock art spanning 4,000 years, depicting cyclical time and multiple dimensions. A world-first study has identified five brain “ages”, and we may finally know where pet cats come from – spoiler, it’s not where we thought. Finally, we explore a new vaccine that’s 34.5 percent […]

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of contaminated ocean split between two regions, one off the coast of California and another near Japan. The Patch is not a mountain of tin cans and old tires sitting on the ocean’s surface, but more like a thick soup of millions of plastic particles, trapped in […]

The Earth’s magnetosphere is a protective shroud that blocks charged particles and cosmic rays blasted out by the Sun. The four unmanned spacecraft that make up NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) have spent nearly a decade studying how the magnetosphere interacts with the Sun’s magnetic field. Now, they have discovered an unusual zigzag in our […]

Whether you sleep alone, with someone else, or buried under a cat or dog, you will also share your sleep space with a world of tiny creatures, from bacteria to bed mites. A dirty bed could worsen our health when we’re sick, keep us from having a good night’s sleep, and is also just a […]

Many users of the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT) report intense experiences. One of the feelings they most commonly go through is a loss of their sense of self, or “ego death”. Researchers interested in these drugs’ potential medical benefits, as well as those studying consciousness, have tried to pinpoint exactly what is happening in the […]

The world we live in today is a far cry from the one our ancient ancestors evolved in, and while modern life obviously has its advantages, some researchers think that our bodies are not designed to operate in industrialized habitats. Intuitively, this is something most of us probably agree with, as pollution and urban strife […]

Did you know the tallest mammal in North America is also the largest species of deer in the entire world? Moose all fall under one species known as Alces alces, but there are several subspecies within the group. The largest of them is the Alaska moose (Alces alces gigas), which can be 1.8 meters (6 feet) […]

Yet another barrage of bad luck has struck the last remaining Spix’s macaw in the wild. A significant number of the super-rare, sky-blue parrots have tested positive for a highly contagious and fatal viral disease, marking a heartbreaking setback for the species’ rehabilitation. The infected birds are part of the Spix’s Macaw Reintroduction Program, a […]

Colorful creatures are all over planet Earth, from those with incredible coats that blend into the surroundings to bright feathers and even feet. In the world of arachnids, the jumping spiders get a lot of credit for being the colorful ones, but the rose hair tarantula can hold its own. It’s not just Wednesdays that […]