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Of the more 6,000 planets that have so far been discovered, most are deeply unsuited to life – at least life of the forms we are familiar with or can plausibly imagine. A substantial minority look like they might be able to support something limited, a planet of bacteria or slime molds. A handful hold […]

We hope you enjoyed the Supermoon last night. The last full Moon of the year was quite splendid from our location, and it’s just one of the lovely things that will be visible in the sky this month. The next big thing is happening just this weekend. Not all of you will be early risers, […]

Imagine you were able to stand on the surface of Mars, Venus, or even Titan without the need for protective gear. Now, imagine you were speaking. Do you think you’d sound the same as on Earth? The answer is no. Sound is a mechanical wave, which means that it doesn’t travel through a pure vacuum, […]

The giraffe with the wonky neck sounds like a whimsical children’s book, but the story of Gemina is very much the real deal.  On July 16, 1986, a giraffe was born at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. By age 1, she had traveled across the state to the Santa Barbara Zoo, where she would […]

Evolution really popped off the day it made a seal. The playfulness of a dog with the attitude of a fat happy cat who occasionally gets dolphinesque zoomies. What’s not to love? Seal finger, that’s what. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. […]

Nature, as majestic as it is, can be extremely cruel – especially to stepchildren. Lions that take over an existing pride make infanticide the first order of business; dolphins kill off unrelated calves specifically so they can mate with the mother; heck, even in humans, a new partner is more likely than the biological parent […]

Currently, there are 100 trillion neutrinos flowing through you. Don’t worry though; they hardly interact with matter. In those occasional interactions, captured by some of the most sophisticated experiments on Earth, there are insights into some of the most complex events in the universe. As a new paper reports, we could be getting insights into […]

We’ve just survived the barrage of Black Friday emails only to jump straight into the chaos of the Christmas countdown – but alas! Something’s coming to rain on your winter parade, and it’s seasonal flu. Yes, the Northern Hemisphere respiratory virus season is well underway, with flu cases across parts of Asia and Europe peaking […]

It has been just over two years since NASA’s OSIRIS-REx brought back to Earth 121 grams of precious samples collected from Asteroid Bennu. The material has already delivered incredible insights into what this space rock is made of, including all but one of the molecules needed to kickstart life as we know it on Earth. […]

Scientists with the British Geological Survey (BGS) have been given a unique opportunity to study rock core samples taken from deep inside the Great Glen Fault – the United Kingdom’s largest fault zone that slices through Scotland. At around 1,000 kilometers (62.1 miles) long and 40 kilometers (24.9 miles) deep, it runs from Ireland through […]

NASA and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) have both landed exploratory rovers on Mars, with the aim to understand if life could, or ever has, existed on the Red Planet, our second closest neighbor.  While these missions focus on interesting areas of the planet, which may once or still be host to alien life, […]

It’s got to be a great day as a scientist when you’re called upon to perform magic tricks for monkeys. That’s what the authors of a 2023 study found themselves doing when they used “The French Drop” as a tool for studying an animal’s capacity to anticipate another’s actions. “Magicians use intricate techniques to mislead […]

In early November, Google announced Project Suncatcher, a moonshot project that aims to create satellite constellations that work as a data center in space. The plan itself has merit, and the tech giant is not the first to have thought of it. What raised quite a few eyebrows was a comment Google CEO Sundar Pichai […]

It’s no secret the deep sea is home to some strange-looking animals, so might we introduce you to yet another weirdo: the seven-arm octopus, AKA “the blob octopus”. This ocean giant can weigh up to 75 kilograms (165 pounds), but despite its huge size, it’s rarely been seen alive. The rest of this article is […]

A new study may help to solve a 39-year-old mystery, suggesting that Uranus is not so bizarre after all; Voyager 2 just imaged it during an unusual gust of solar “wind”. The iconic Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, launched in 1977 and still going to this day, were sent with the primary objective of studying […]

A team of researchers believe they have identified a large, rotating structure 140 million light-years away from Earth. The structure, embedded within a larger filament, appears to challenge current models of the universe. Cosmic filaments, vast, thread-like structures of gas and dark matter, are some of the largest structures known in the universe.  “Astronomers theorize […]

Volcanoes may have played a pivotal role in the Black Death, the bubonic plague pandemic that ravaged 14th-century Europe. The Black Death tore through Europe, as well as parts of Asia and North Africa, between 1347 and 1353 CE. Caused by the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, the catastrophic pandemic killed up to 60 percent of […]

In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, a strange song drew scientists to a new species of bird, the first of its kind identified in over 75 years. It’s cute and very relaxed, but unfortunately, it’s reminding ornithologists of an infamously ill-fated bird: the dodo.  The new species, the slaty-masked tinamou (Tinamus resonans), inhabits the […]

When you think “birds-of-paradise”, your mind may jump to the bright, rainbow plumage of species like Diphyllodes magnificus or Paradisornis rudolphi. But equally present in the natural world is the exact opposite – a black so deep that it reflects less than 0.5 percent of the light that touches it – and now, scientists know […]

A young man in Bulgaria was left with horrific injuries to his head and limbs after he was mauled by a lion 6,000 years ago. Amazingly, however, the unfortunate chap survived the attack thanks to the care of his Copper Age community, although he probably suffered from physical and mental disabilities for the rest of […]