News

As civilizations grow and mature, if humanity so far is anything to go by, they require a lot more energy to sustain themselves. A number of power-supply options for advanced civilizations have been dreamt up by sci-fi writers and scientists alike, including Dyson spheres and swarms. These are hypothetical megastructures placed around a star to […]

Planet BD+054868Ab is one of only four known disintegrating planets, worlds close enough to their star that they end up being roasted and torn apart. But this little world is unique in the extent of this process; it has the longest tail of any such planet. Yes, these worlds form a comet-like tail of materials […]

According to our best understanding, the universe should be homogeneous at large scales. This means that it’s ok to have clumps of matter and areas of void, but it should all average out. So it’s ok to have galaxy clusters and cosmic voids, but you won’t find structures extending for billions of light-years. Somebody must […]

NASA’s Perseverance rover has stumbled across a rather intriguing rock while driving west downslope towards lower “Witch Hazel Hill” on the edge of the Jezero Crater rim on Mars. Over the last week, the Perseverance rover has moved down the Witch Hazel Hill area, towards an area named by the team as “Port Anson”. From […]

Global warming is flooding low-lying coastal regions, but it’s drying out the land beyond. The most serious consequences of this are for agriculture and ecosystems that depend on soil moisture, but it’s also changing the way the Earth’s axis points, which can be a useful way to monitor the global scale of the changes. Higher […]

Dolphins might have a reputation for being playful, friendly creatures, but best believe they aren’t always like that – something that was made all the clearer last week when a group of people on a wildlife-watching trip in Cardigan Bay, Wales, were witness to four bottlenose dolphins hunting down and killing a young common dolphin. […]

The US population has been gradually losing its faith in Christianity for many years, but a major new poll shows that the long-term decline may be starting to level off. Still, don’t expect the faith to stage a comeback just yet. The Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study (RLS) has tracked trends in religious beliefs […]

Have you ever been stuck in a big queue of traffic and wondered what the holdup was, only to find no signs of a car crash or any other type of holdup by the time you get to the front?  If so, you may have fallen victim to a “phantom traffic jam”, or a “ghost […]

It is the stuff of nightmares. Going in for a surgical procedure and when you wake, your medical team is looking at you in horror because, during the procedure, they discovered a critter that really should not be there. This has happened to a few people who have had colonoscopies.  Colonoscopies are examinations that are […]

When an iceberg broke away from Antarctica in January, it opened up a rare opportunity for scientists to explore a pristine seafloor ecosystem that was once hidden beneath an ice shelf. To their astonishment, the research team captured the first confirmed footage of the elusive glacial glass squid (Galiteuthis glacialis), among many other deep-sea weirdos.  […]

Seceding from the Union? That kind of thing is so totally 19th-century, right? Wrong. Just 43 years ago, the city of Key West in Florida did just that, declaring itself to be an independent state known as the Conch Republic. Well, sort of – the Conch Republic isn’t really its own country (attempt to use […]

Last week, as is its wont, Southern California experienced an earthquake. Rated a magnitude 5.2 by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the quake was strong enough to unnerve, but not so bad as to result in much damage. But that didn’t stop one particular group of residents from mounting an emergency defense.  “Elephants have […]

The Trump administration recently debuted a new look for the official COVID-19 page on the White House website. The headline, complete with superimposed full-body photo of POTUS himself, loudly trumpets the so-called lab leak theory as “the true origins of COVID-19”. However, there is no consensus on the origins of COVID-19 as yet, and framing […]

More than 10,000 years ago, a group of Indigenous Americans with close genetic ties to the mysterious Clovis people buried a member of their tribe in a cavern in Nevada that we now call Spirit Cave. Against all odds, the mummified remains of this prehistoric man eventually helped to settle a legal and cultural dispute […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched ACES, or the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space, to the International Space Station (ISS). This project will measure time with a precision never reached before in space. The goal is to use this cutting-edge tech in both testing established theories and looking at what might exist behind them. […]

The general public are showing “ignorance and apathy” towards the threat of bird flu, say the authors of a new editorial, based on a survey they conducted of US residents. It found that many were unaware of or unwilling to take simple precautions that might decrease their risk of exposure to the virus. “These attitudes […]

Paleontologists are being forced to compete with rich collectors for access to dinosaur skeletons. When it comes to T. rexes in particular, the outcome is predictable, and science is suffering, a new study reveals. Science has always had an awkward relationship with extreme wealth. For centuries, progress relied on those with enough inherited wealth to […]

It isn’t just humans that have a taste for alcohol. Chimpanzees will search around in the jungle and hunt for fermented fruit, seemingly wanting to catch a buzz from the psychoactive effects of ethanol. In fact, new evidence suggests that our great ape cousins might also use alcohol as a social lubricant, just like Homo […]

If you’re interested in space and have spent any time online over the last few days, you may have seen a claim that there will be an unusual(ish) astronomical event this week, as a “triple conjunction” will turn the Moon into a pleasing smiley face in the sky. According to various posts, on the morning […]

A US national marine monument found in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has recently lost one of its key federal protections, after an executive order from President Donald Trump opened up parts of the monument to commercial fishing. One of the largest marine protected areas in the world, the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National […]