News

The oldest known wild bird – an albatross named Wisdom – has laid an egg at the ripe old age of 74, after finding a new mate earlier this year. Wisdom was first identified and banded by biologists after she laid an egg at Midway Atoll in 1956. As albatrosses do not lay eggs before […]

We are getting better at discovering small asteroids and predicting where they are going to hit our planet. For the first time this year, four asteroids were successfully found and their orbit and predicted ahead of their collision with our planet. The fourth one was predicted and flew over Russia just yesterday, disintegrating into a […]

Humanity’s longstanding friendship with dogs may be even deeper than previously realized. Archaeological remains of a well-loved hound in Alaska suggest that people in the Americas had a close relationship with canine companions at least 12,000 years ago, around 2,000 years earlier than physical evidence previously suggested.  Back in 2018, archaeologists unearthed a tibia, or […]

The importance of the North Star, Polaris, is so great we use it as a metaphor for something that reliably guides us; it’s aspirational enough for companies to name themselves after it. In the days of GPS, its use may have declined, but memories of its importance linger on. However, there is no equivalent South […]

Some animals capture people’s imaginations more than others and old favourites return to familiar spots time and time again. Whether it’s the world’s oldest wild bird or a tortoise birthday party, we love to celebrate animals we recognize. Good news from California: Frosty the orca is back. Frosty was spotted on November 24 by whale […]

An associate professor of physics at the University of Portsmouth has suggested possible types of simulation humanity could be in, following highly controversial claims that evidence could support the idea we are not living in base reality.  Dr Melvin Vopson made headlines last year when he claimed to have found evidence for a new law […]

Chicxulub is the asteroid impact that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and many other living organisms across the planet 66 million years ago – but it was not the last major impact. Two asteroids that were almost as big fell to Earth 35.65 million years ago, but their effect was very different. Despite the devastation, […]

The Kepler-51 system, known for having some of the least dense planets ever found, has a fourth member. We don’t know if the newly discovered Kepler-51e shares this notable trait of its sibling planets, as we only know its mass, not size, but the discovery adds an extra level of intrigue to a truly extraordinary […]

If you’ve ever wanted to experience the world as a bear, then boy do we have a treat for you. Remarkable footage has captured the lives of Andean bears, also known as spectacled bears, like never before. Using collar cams (like the ones people love attaching to their cats), a team with the National Geographic […]

An “unknown disease” has reportedly killed 143 people in a rural part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Central Africa. Symptoms include fever, headache, cough, and anemia, but little is currently known about the illness.  The deaths were recorded between November 10 and November 25 in the DRC’s Panzi health zone of […]

Like Gina Montana in Scarface, Barbarian soldiers potentially sniffed narcotics from dainty little drug spoons when heading into battle against the ferocious Roman army, according to new research. Somewhat classier than a rolled-up banknote, these ancient instruments were often attached to soldiers’ belts and may have been used to deliver hits of anything from opium […]

Every now and then a horrifying news story reaches the airwaves, detailing a gaping chasm that’s appeared seemingly without warning beneath our very feet. These sinkholes can be deadly, growing large enough to swallow entire buildings – but where do they go? What’s waiting at the bottom of a sinkhole depends on how it was […]

In a matter of hours, a small asteroid will burn over the Siberian skies. This is only the 11th time that an asteroid has been predicted to hit our planet before it actually happened, but it shows that the system of planetary defense is working! At around 4:15 pm UTC today, the asteroid will burn […]

If you’ve ever taken a few minutes out of your day to look at old footage and photographs of astronauts bouncing around on the Moon, you may notice a lack of stars in the background. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. It’s not some big conspiracy where NASA decided to fake the whole […]

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It’s that time of year again when humans hack down living trees and bring them inside to hang plastic decorations on, to celebrate the birth of a man who was possibly born in April. While real trees are marginally better for the environment than fake, plastic trees, it’s best to give them a bit of […]

Primordial black holes (PBHs) could become captured by rocky planets and asteroids, where they may consume their liquid cores and leave them hollow, a team of physicists has suggested. In the current age of the universe, black holes form when gigantic stars run out of fuel and collapse under their own gravity. This places a […]

Etching seems like such an old-fashioned technique (for a time it was also an Olympic competition) that you don’t normally associate it with cutting-edge technology. However, integrated chips used in all our electronic devices get etched, with patterns printed on a silicon wafer. And there is one machine in the world that does that. Advanced […]

Hundreds of new species are discovered every year, from frogs that don’t croak to the fish that work at the turtle carwash. Some areas are hotspots for these new discoveries, sometimes because they are almost inaccessible – but some might be in your own backyard. Some areas are particularly large and can carry a wealth […]

Which word captures the spirit of 2024: “brain rot” or “enshittification”? Both have been highlighted by separate dictionary publishers as words that reflect the zeitgeist of the past year – and both show how online culture continues to shape the way we communicate with each other (for better or worse). “Brain rot” has been awarded […]