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The cuts in funding to American and international research projects currently underway are unprecedented in their size and speed, but they’re part of a long tradition. For decades, politicians have loved to find examples of science research projects that sound stupid to people who’ve never studied the area and wave them around as examples of […]

If there is life on Proxima Centauri b, it could take the Extremely Large Telescope as little as 10 hours to detect its influence on the planet’s atmosphere. Observations will take longer for planets orbiting more distant stars (ie all the others), but modeling undergoing peer review is encouraging about how quickly the giant telescope […]

A single sheep on a Yorkshire farm has tested positive for H5N1 bird flu, the UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer has confirmed. The detection was made during routine surveillance after birds on the farm had become infected, but it marks the first time the virus has been found in a sheep. ADVERTISEMENT Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian […]

DNA analysis confirmed in 2023 that a trapdoor spider lost to science had been rediscovered in the Portuguese village it was named after following a 92-year disappearance. Fagilde’s trapdoor spider (Nemesia berlandi) was first described in 1931 before apparently dropping out of existence – but all that changed when an expedition team happened to look […]

There are so many variations to the human ear that a study concluded they can be used as accurately as fingerprints to identify an individual. One of the ways our ears can differ is in the presence of what’s known as Darwin’s tubercle, a small bump on the outer ear that’s thought to be an […]

A blink, a heartbeat, or even saying “one Mississippi”. These are ways we try to count one second with our body. Whether it’s the ticking of a clock or a changing number on a digital display, the basic unit of time describes the beat of our lives and underpins almost all scientific measurements. But what […]

This week, scientists now know how Maria Branyas Morera lived to be 117 years old, further observations have found that a set of famous dinosaur tracks were not made by sauropods walking on their hands, and, in a world first, an Australian man leaves hospital with a titanium heart. Finally, we exclusively speak to astronaut […]

When looking at a towel, you may have wondered a few things, such as, “Why do I have to wash my towel when I only use it when I’ve literally just been cleaned?” and, “Huh, what the hell are those lines for?” ADVERTISEMENT The latter question has been discussed a lot this week, after one […]

The World Happiness Report 2025 is out and it’s bad news for the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada. However, the fortunes of Mexico and Costa Rica have risen, with these countries entering the top 10 happiest countries for the first time.  ADVERTISEMENT The US dropped to the world’s 24th happiest country, its lowest-ever position […]

While carrying out surveillance of bats in Brazil, scientists have identified multiple different coronaviruses, including a brand-new one that they discovered was closely related to the virus behind Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). ADVERTISEMENT The discovery came as part of a project to identify new pathogens with zoonotic potential – meaning they can jump from […]

Everyone loves a thought experiment, from Maxwell’s demon to the classic bootstrap paradox. But there is one thought experiment – briefly banned by the Internet forum where it was first posted – which you might regret reading about, known as “Roko’s basilisk”. ADVERTISEMENT Basilisks, as anyone familiar with ancient folklore or Harry Potter will know, […]

This week on Break It Down: An unknown lifeform has been making micro-burrows in the Namibian desert, the secret to living until 117 has been revealed, sauropods were not doing handstands in Texas 100 million years ago (boooo), should we be attempting to de-extinct animals, an Australian man achieves a double world-first with a titanium […]

Feathers belonging to a griffon vulture that died around 30,000 years ago have become the first fossils of their kind, mineralized in a way not previously reported in soft tissues. The vulture fossil was found in volcanic deposits of the Late Pleistocene Colli Albani volcanic complex near Rome, Italy. It was first discovered way back […]

Joining southeastern Virginia with northeastern North Carolina, the Great Dismal Swamp is a stretch of forested wetland that, in hindsight, doesn’t really live up to the “dismal” part of its name. While its past is marked by some of the darker parts of American history, this swamp has long served as a refuge for both […]

Alaska’s wilderness is back on the market for big oil. The US government has announced it’s taking steps to open up oil and gas leasing in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve and the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ADVERTISEMENT The US Department of the Interior said on Thursday, March 20, that it […]

From the Mechanical Turk to Rosey Jetson to Data himself, robots have often been imagined as sophisticated machines, capable of running a household while winning at chess and enjoying a good Sherlock Holmes mystery. But here’s a counterpoint: what if, in real life, we just made them do sick heelflips and ollies instead? ADVERTISEMENT It’s […]

Between getting squeezed through a tube so tight it literally squidges your skull into a weird shape, having teeth force themselves out of your gums at random intervals, and, let’s face it, pooping and peeing yourself near-constantly, it’s probably a kindness, really, that we can’t remember life as a baby. But why we enjoy that […]

Something that distinguishes current robots from living creatures is rigidity. Cells are often squishy, while robots’ usual plastic and metal structures are not. There are some examples of softer robots but researchers from Gachon University and Seoul National University might have come up with something even trippier: a liquid robot. ADVERTISEMENT The robot is not […]

There are only a handful of people who have experienced seeing Earth from space and what lies at the bottom of the ocean, but even among those select few, Dr Kathy Sullivan has a record that is unique. She’s the only person ever to have spacewalked and visited the Challenger Deep, the deepest point in […]

What do you get when you combine chicken embryos, a gene named after a video game character, and a couple of scientists? A brand-new study that’s confirmed a key element in feather evolution, after it temporarily caused developing chicks to have primitive feathers resembling those thought to have been found in some dinosaurs. ADVERTISEMENT The […]