News

Sleep – we all need it, but how much? Turns out it’s not as clear-cut as it might often seem. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Most of the recommendations out there for how many hours of sleep we need for optimal health are given based on age. That makes sense considering that our health needs change […]

Over the weekend, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) accidentally fired several employees who were working on the federal government’s response to the H5N1 bird flu outbreak. The USDA are now backpaddling in order to rehire these workers at a time when bird flu is ravaging the US poultry population and contributing to the rise […]

We often think the brain is like a muscle – we say things like “use it or lose it!”, and we talk about exercising or “training” our brains. In reality, actual brain tissue looks pretty much nothing like muscle. For one thing, it’s probably a lot wetter. However, intriguing new findings suggest that deep down, […]

More than 150 cetaceans have been stranded near the north-western tip of Tasmania, and the Marine Conservation Program thinks even those currently still alive are unlikely to be saved. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The stranding occurred on a beach near Arthur River, a village with a population of just 32. Nearby towns such as Marrawah […]

Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore departed for the International Space Station on June 5 2024, the third and final test of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, and its first launch with a crew. The mission was only expected to last for eight days before the two returned to Earth, but due to problems with […]

Nokia’s Lunar Surface Communication System, or “LSCS”, has been successfully integrated with Intuitive Machines‘ second mission lander, Athena. Athena is expected to launch next week and its main goal is to measure the presence of lunar water ice. It will have multiple vehicles on board and some of them will use the LSCS to communicate […]

A new preprint paper has explored what would happen if a tiny black hole were to pass through a human body. Rather than a disappointing “not much”, the physicist behind the paper specifically tried to determine the minimum size of such a black hole that would cause “significant injury or death” to the human unlucky […]

Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of our galaxy, is not as placid as previously thought, new observations with the JWST reveal. Instead, the surrounding accretion disk is flaring almost constantly, with small flares occurring every few seconds, and larger ones several times daily. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Famously, light cannot […]

The humble French fry – or chip, if you’re from our side of the Atlantic – is surely one of the greatest ways of consuming a potato. Few meals cannot be enhanced by a handful of these steaming, golden, crispy yet fluffy morsels of delight. But we’ve all had good fries and bad fries, and […]

A first-of-its-kind global assessment has revealed 603 wild animals plus five livestock taxa that do more than just inhabit the Earth – they shape it. These “animal architects” literally move their own versions of mountains, as tiny ants and termites build towering mounds, and beavers influence the paths of our waterways. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE […]

Fossil collectors submerged in the murky Steinhatchee River in Florida struck unlikely gold in 2022 when they discovered some old horse teeth. They continued their search in an expedition likened to “diving in coffee,” and were rewarded with a hoof core and a tapir skull. “We knew we had an important site,” said Robert Sinibaldi […]

Like a champion sports team, some creatures really are greater than the sum of their parts. Known as colonial organisms, these bizarre beings appear to be a single, bounded organism – but are in fact assemblages of many tiny individuals all working together for a common cause. Weirdly enough, many of these conglomerates are also […]

Meta has announced plans to lay over 50,000 kilometers (31,069 miles) of subsea cables spanning five continents, the world’s longest project of its kind, dubbing the effort “Project Waterworth”. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE “Project Waterworth will bring industry-leading connectivity to the U.S., India, Brazil, South Africa, and other key regions,” Meta’s Vice President of Network […]

Divers at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia have recorded footage that looks more like the surface of the Moon than a healthy coral reef. The videos and stills have been released by the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), who have called on the state and federal government to reveal how they plan to protect one […]

A team of astronomers looking at data from the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope in Western Australia were met with a bit of a puzzle recently. The telescope, designed to look at radio signals that have traversed space for over 13 billion years, appeared to have found a… television signal.  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE This […]

An international team of astronomers have been able to probe the atmosphere of an exoplanet like never before. Exoplanet Tylos, also known as WASP 121-b, is an ultra-hot Jupiter – a gas giant so close to its stars that one year lasts only 30 hours. This proximity allowed researchers to probe the atmosphere like never […]

Asteroid 2024 YR4 has reached the highest risk of impact yet, according to both NASA and the European Space Agency, with the agencies estimating a 2.6 percent and 2.4 percent chance respectively that the rock will hit Earth on December 22, 2032. The two measurements are independent of each other and continue to be in […]

Bitter cold has descended on swathes of the US this week, as the nation faces its 10th – and coldest – polar vortex of the season. In a normal winter, you can expect to see this happen two or three times.  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The anomalous Arctic chill is set to hit the Central […]

Mount Etna is Europe’s highest and most active volcano and has recently been up to its usual albeit impressive tricks of shooting volcanic ash and debris into the air. Mesmerizing new footage captured lava flowing down the volcano’s snow-covered sides, melting it as it goes.  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE It’s not surprising for Mount Etna, […]

What comes to mind when you think about asylums? I bet it involves some large, gothic building on a walled estate. Chances are you are also imagining long sterile corridors, barred windows, white-clothed orderlies, and of course, restrained and straitjacketed patients in various levels of distress. But how accurate is this image? ADVERTISEMENT GO AD […]