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Have you ever been walking in the woods and stumbled across a perfect ring of mushrooms? These curious fungal displays are what’s known as a fairy ring, and their formation comes down to the strategic ways in which fungi’s mycelium networks spread out underground. Advertisement What are fairy rings? We often think of mushrooms when […]

Dust off the thermal underwear and watch out for falling iguanas: a polar vortex is bringing extremely cold weather to millions of Americans this January. This weekend, between January 4 and 6, a winter storm will bring significant snow and ice to the Central Plains to the Mid-Atlantic East Coast, according to the US National […]

On December 30, the people of Mukuku, a village in Kenya about 90 kilometers (56 miles) from the capital Nairobi, found a massive piece of space debris. Luckily nobody was harmed when the 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) rocket piece came crashing down. Advertisement The piece is a metallic ring 2.5 meters (8 feet) across believed to come […]

Endometriosis is a common condition, but getting a correct diagnosis can be a difficult, years-long journey. Now a group of Australian researchers have taken a step towards a breakthrough blood test for the disease, which could be the non-invasive solution so many have been hoping for.  Advertisement Endometriosis affects roughly 10 percent of reproductive-age females […]

Researchers in Poland have published a cartometric map that shows the distribution of supernatural beings from Polish folklore along the Polish-German border. The map is beautifully designed to resemble Renaissance maps, and depicts various reported phenomena, including devils, spirits, the wild hunt, gnomes, will-o’-wisps, giants, dragons, mermaids, ghosts, werewolves, and nightmares. Advertisement The map, which […]

It is undeniable that 2024 was a tough year in the fight against climate change, but it is not all doom and gloom. Good news, for example, comes from the United Kingdom where, in terms of energy production, renewable energy is going from strength to strength. The amount of electricity produced using fossil fuels in […]

The delightfully bizarre golden nugget that is the southern marsupial mole is one of nature’s most cryptic species. It’s rarely seen, not actually a mole, and has a bunch of unusual traits that until now, scientists have been unable to determine much about. However, thanks to new research that has studied its genome for the […]

Nanocrystals have been made that can switch between glowing and darkness fast enough that they could be used in computing. Some of the ingredients used in the initial demonstration may impede widespread applications, but the findings are a significant advance down the long road to lower-energy IT as processing demand skyrockets. So much solar power […]

Winter is here and it can be a difficult time for many wildlife species as they try to find food in the cold. However, if you’re visiting any of the US’s multitude of national parks, officials have a clear message for you: don’t feed the animals. Advertisement “We want to remind the public that feeding […]

When researcher and bird expert Jack Dumbacher was mist-netting in New Guinea, his team accidentally caught a lot of hooded pitohui while looking for the Raggiana bird-of-paradise. No problem, except that when they freed them, the birds gave them a nip. Without band-aids, they used the trusty old finger suck to tend to their wounds, […]

Do you know someone who, from the moment they open their mouth, you know you’re about to be taken on a captivating ride through some aspect of their life? The person could be recounting something as trivial as buying milk, but their delivery is entertaining and engaging. At the same time, there are people who […]

One of the most prolific meteor showers of the year peaks immediately in January. Tomorrow, Saturday 4, the Quadrantids will peak with an expected 25 meteors an hour for most, and a maximum rate of 120 streaks across the sky. Advertisement As showers go, they tend to lack persistent trains so they fizzle quickly, but […]

This week on Break It Down: one of the most significant mammal recoveries ever recorded (and four other wildlife wins), a once-in-a-lifetime event is about to kick off in space, spookily accurate predictions made by a “professor” 100 years ago, an undersea volcano is about to erupt, scientists achieve a world-first embryo milestone on the […]

When a quarry worker in Oxfordshire, England, noticed some “unusual bumps” beneath the site’s clay surface, he could never have dreamt that he was in fact following in the footsteps of dinosaurs. As it happens, the lumpy anomalies were made by some of the Middle Jurassic period’s largest beasts – including the ferocious Megalosaurus – […]

A party trick performed using fruit in a microwave oven could lead to more sensitive detectors of microwave radiation, with applications in fields such as dark matter detection, quantum computing, and satellite communication. Adding a pair of grapes either side of a doped diamond might seem an eccentric habit, but it could signal a low-cost […]

Academic math, you’d probably assume, is a kind of dry topic, filled with tedious equations and the like. Not so, if a new paper is to be believed: in fact, it’s an area in which you hack a common schoolyard game by teaching robots to hula hoop. Advertisement “We were surprised that an activity as […]

Welcome to True Crime in Science. Over six episodes, we have discussed some well-known true crime cases, as well as some cases you may not have heard of, and then looked further into the science and the forensic details behind them. Watch our sixth and final episode now. In episode one we covered Colin Pitchfork, episode two examined the case […]

For a long time, archaeologists interpreted the many bones of small carnivores they found in early Neolithic settlements in the Levant as coming from fur hunters, but new analysis suggests they were exploited for other purposes – foxes and wildcats were actually on the human menu. The results indicate that these small predators should be […]

For thousands of years, thinkers argued about whether light is made of particles or waves. At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists realized it was both: massless particles and waves. An even more upsetting realization came a few years later though, when Louis de Broglie put forward the idea that all matter also has […]

The Earth is a wondrous place, but some of the most stunning things sometimes come from off-world. Take, for example, pallasite meteorites – extra-terrestrial rocks that are strung through with gemstones, offering tantalizing glimpses into our Solar System’s deep history. Advertisement Oh, you haven’t heard of them? Well, you’re in for a treat. Advertisement What […]