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Each year in early December, American internet users become bewildered by the sight of people parading down an Alpine street, dressed to the nines in beast-like costumes and ghoulish masks, waving flamed torches and beating drums. Fear not, the Europeans have not declined into devil worship – this is an age-old tradition steeped in folklore. […]

Some Thanksgiving traditions just make sense: sharing a meal with friends and family, eating too much pumpkin pie, fighting over the TV remote. But the president of the US taking time out of, y’know, running the country to stand in the Rose Garden and give a pardon to a turkey that doesn’t appear to have […]

If you’ve never looked at a dog and wondered if there’s “room for a second head on there”, congratulations on not being Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov, a pioneer of organ transplantation who might be better remembered for his groundbreaking work in heart and lung transplants were it not for the “two-headed dog” experiments. Demikhov was […]

You might have seen sped-up videos of how some crystals form. Maybe you did the famous experiment of putting a metal ring in a solution rich in salt, and saw little crystals forming on it. Water is a great medium to see crystals form. But crystals form in a variety of conditions and liquids, even […]

Did you know cuttlefish have the most acute polarization vision of any animal? They can detect patterns in light that human eyes can’t see. We still have a lot to learn about how they process the underwater world, but one mystery we have solved is their bizarre W-shaped pupils. The rest of this article is […]

Tyrannosaurus rex got an upgrade in 2024 when a computer modeling study estimated that these dinosaurs may have been up to 70 percent heavier than we’d previously estimated based on the fossil record. It effectively supersized a predator that was already thought to be pretty damn big, highlighting how much food such a large animal […]

Blue is a relatively rare sight in living things. Green blankets much of the world, yellow and orange frequently pop up in plants and animals, while reds and pinks also find their time to shine. Meanwhile, blue is confined to just a meager selection of flowers, the odd eccentric bird, and a few freaky frogs. […]

When the ancestors of terrestrial life on Earth crawled or slithered out of the sea, they formed the starting point for many of the world’s species. Some of these species even made the return journey back into the water from a life on land. Now, a new study has taken a closer look at explaining […]

It’s nearly December, which – if you’re a tween in Australia – means it’s just weeks until your TikTok and Snapchat accounts go dark. The nation down under is about to become the world’s first home of a total ban on social media for under-16s, with the blackout set to kick off on December 10. […]

A new pre-print paper suggests that our latest interstellar visitor, comet 3I/ATLAS, may be headed for one final close encounter before it departs our Solar System in 2026. The paper, which focuses on dynamical simulations of the object, also attempts to look at the course 3I/ATLAS will take on departure, and the path that brought […]

Until recently, it was widely accepted that the earliest members of the Homo lineage were the first hominids to hunt. In particular, Homo erectus – which emerged around two million years ago – is typically credited with developing the taste for meat, yet new studies have begun to challenge this narrative, suggesting that our ancestors […]

Fort Knox is synonymous with gold. Lots of gold. But this Art Deco castle of concrete and granite is not actually the world’s largest depository of monetary gold on Earth. That title belongs to another US building in a far less conspicuous location. If you’ve ever wandered through downtown Manhattan, you may have walked right […]

A new mRNA vaccine against the flu has proven itself more effective than existing vaccines in a new clinical trial. The Pfizer-developed vaccine was found to be 34.5 percent more effective than current vaccines at preventing illness caused by influenza A in a trial of over 18,000 people. Though the new vaccine was associated with […]

Have you heard that dodo meat tasted foul? Loathsome, even. You’re not alone. It’s a strangely prevalent rumor, given that nobody alive today has ever eaten one. However, it’s quite possible that this “fact” is one that got lost in translation. Known to science as Raphus cucullatus, dodos also went by the nickname “wallowbird”, said […]

An experiment has visualized a prediction about objects traveling at the speed of light known as the Terrell-Penrose effect, first made over 60 years ago. When an object approaches the speed of light (let’s call the object a spaceship, for ease), a number of strange things take place. According to our best classical model of […]

Quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two pinnacles of 20th-century physics. In their respective fields, scientists have demonstrated time and time again how correct these theories are. Still, we know that they have limitations. They do not work together well, especially in two particularly important areas: black holes and the Big Bang. The rest […]

The first person known to have been infected with the H5N5 strain of avian influenza has died, the Washington State Department of Health announced Friday.  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. “Out of respect for the family’s privacy, we are not releasing […]

Worrying levels of “forever chemicals” were detected in the waters of certain pockets of North Carolina in recent years. These human-made pollutants appeared everywhere, from rivers and sewers to drinking water. Now, a new study may have uncovered the culprit. “Forever chemicals” is the nickname given to PFAS, a synthetic group of compounds added to […]

From October 2007 until mid-2022, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) looked at the millimeter and microwave universe. It discovered the most extreme galaxy cluster and many other peculiar things, though its true focus has always been studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB).  This is the light echo of the Big Bang, the first light that […]

The Hayli Gubbi shield volcano, thought to be dormant since almost the last ice age, has erupted, and the volcanic plume is reaching heights at which intercontinental aircraft fly. Hayli Gubbi is located in the Afar region of Ethiopia where the Arabian tectonic plate meets the Nubian and Somali parts of the African Plate, creating […]