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When the first complete Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010, the 3 billion base pairs it contained helped to fill in some of the gaps in our own species’ ancient history, revealing a wild past colored by prehistoric love affairs with our extinct relatives. As a result, all present-day populations outside Africa continue to carry […]

A former deep-sea treasure hunter and research scientist jailed for refusing to disclose the location of 500 missing gold coins may soon be released, after a judge ended the charge, stating he “no longer is convinced that further incarceration is likely to coerce compliance.”  ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE In 1857, the SS Central America sank […]

Up until the recent discovery of the asteroid 2024 YR4, which at the time of writing has an estimated 1.6 percent chance of hitting us next decade, the most dangerous space rock to us was asteroid Bennu. Bennu was visited and sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and data from it is revolutionizing our understanding of the […]

Microplastics are everywhere, and we mean everywhere. In fact, a new study suggests there’s a chance that if you’re thinking about this statement, then the squishy wrinkled organ doing that thinking may have a worryingly abundant amount of micro- and nanoplastics in it. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE In recent years, scientists have become increasingly worried […]

Travel across a country and you’ll come across a vast array of dialects in humans – but what about one of our closest-living relatives, chimpanzees? A new study appears to show that they too have different “dialects” across groups, but we might also be triggering them to change. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE To find this […]

It’s a good day to be a marine biologist: a bundle of new species has been found living among the deep-sea methane seeps off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Scientists led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography have collected the results of five research expeditions and 63 submersible dives to […]

We are just over two weeks out from the beginning of Trump’s second presidency, and scientific research in the United States is in complete disarray. A series of executive orders that have been described as illegal, violating the constitution, and segregationist have sown chaos in the many scientific funding agencies across the US.    ADVERTISEMENT […]

Was Jesus a man, a myth, or something in between? While we can’t comment on supernatural claims of water-walking and red wine alchemy, many historians agree that Jesus was a living, breathing person who walked the Earth. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Let’s assume, as most scholars do, that Jesus H Christ was an influential Jewish […]

History is replete with notorious experiments which, quite rightly, would not be performed today. The “Little Albert” experiment takes a prominent place in the list, alongside the infamous Milgram experiment and the Monster Experiment. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The Little Albert experiment was actually inspired by another horror show you may be familiar with: Pavlov’s […]

In the McMurdo Sound region of Antarctica, there lives a species of sponge known as the giant volcano sponge (Anoxycalyx joubini). Though aging the individual animals is troublesome, they may be amongst the oldest animals on the planet. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE Sponges, though not the most thrilling of animals in terms of their shenanigans, […]

Working out how smart or intelligent your partner is, in any given task, is a tricky skill at the best of times. This type of intelligence to have forethought about the state of mind of others is something seen in people but not in non-human apes. It is known as “the theory of mind” and […]

In ancient times, before we really understood where diseases came from, illnesses were often blamed on some mysterious unseen malevolence in the air. Unsure of how to combat this invisible and omnipresent evil, people would turn to magic and prayer to save them, adorning themselves with charms and incantations to ward off the danger. ADVERTISEMENT […]

Come with us as we dive into a belter of an ocean mystery: a giant, unidentified object spotted by ocean explorers at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. In one sonar image (albeit it rather blurry) it looks like the Millennium Falcon from above. Perhaps most curiously of all, the team that discovered it in […]

Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is the only one still standing today. While archaeologists and scholars have found the sites of six of these magnificent structures, the location of one has eluded them for centuries: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The […]

Over the weekend, Joe Rogan, conspiracy theorists, and Elon Musk got excited about a “square structure” on Mars, photographed by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC). ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE While everybody talked about the mysterious square, others highlighted another, perhaps more intriguing mystery found by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. That is […]

While animal rescue missions might make you think of a cat stuck in a tree, or even the zoo animals rescued from Ukraine, sometimes even the smallest creatures need some help. An ambitious amphibious project has seen tiny frogs and their tinier tadpoles brought on an 11,265-kilometer (7,000-mile) journey. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE On a […]

As hard as it is to keep a cat away from something they’ve got their sights set on, it’s worth them looking at you like they’re going to eat your eyeballs when it comes to lilies. Though beautiful, these flowers are highly toxic to cats – but why? Turns out it’s something of a mystery. […]

For decades people were puzzling over a phenomenon of mysterious origin that stretched across every continent on the globe apart from Antarctica. Residents of Earth and scientists alike had started to pay attention to vast fields of meters-high circular mounds, hillocks that have since become known as “Mima mounds” – but nobody knew what was […]

Two giant canyons on the Moon were created in less than ten minutes, according to a new study analyzing clues about their formation. The findings could impact NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions to the far side of the Moon. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE The Schrödinger Impact Basin, named for noted quantum physicist and hypothetical cat murderer […]

The results of the 28th annual mid-season Western Monarch Count have been released: only 9,119 of the butterflies were counted during the time the overwintering population is usually at its peak. This represents the second-lowest number since the count began, and a nearly 96 percent decline from the year prior. ADVERTISEMENT GO AD FREE “The […]