News

The lights shone bright and fluorescent as a crowd of people gathered in a small white room. Their eyes were mesmerized and locked on the viewing window. Behind the glass, two people were holding a medium-sized snake, with its mouth hinged open around a plastic dish covered with a thin parafilm layer, which was pierced […]

The dodo has become an enduring symbol of humanity’s role in driving species to extinction. By the late 17th century, European colonizers had wiped this flightless bird from the planet. Practically nothing of the species now remains – except for a fascinating specimen at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The so-called “Oxford Dodo” […]

Until recently, it was believed that certain aspects of musicality were universal to all human cultures, yet an Indigenous population in Paraguay has just shattered that assumption. Known as the Northern Aché, the forest-dwelling community is the only known human group that doesn’t sing to its babies or engage in dancing.  “This demonstrates that dance […]

A new “landmark assessment” has estimated that 397 snow leopards live across Nepal, up from earlier estimates of between 300 and 350 individuals. Sometimes called the “ghosts of the mountains,” snow leopards are famously elusive, blending effortlessly into the remote, snow-covered terrain they inhabit. Their solitary nature and rugged habitat make them one of the […]

Ancient patches of super-fertile black soil have been found dotted throughout the Amazon rainforest, supporting agricultural communities within the dense jungle for thousands of years. Over recent decades, archaeologists have been struggling to come up with an explanation for this so-called Amazonian dark earth, yet research shows that it was intentionally created by ancient cultures […]

If you go down for a dive today, you could be in for a great surprise. Swimming off the coast of Australia, diver Jules Casey spotted a rare white stingaree swimming along the seafloor. Stingarees belong to the family Urolophida, while the more common stingrays are found in the family Dasyatididae. Stingarees also have a […]

Elon Musk’s private space firm SpaceX now has its own municipality in Texas, complete with its own Mayor and Commissioner, following a Cameron County vote on Saturday. Musk has been vocal in the past about his desire to turn the SpaceX base of operations into a fully-fledged city, after the firm first began buying up […]

When looking at a towel, you may have wondered a few things, such as, “Why do I have to wash my towel when I only use it when I’ve literally just been cleaned?” and, “Huh, what the hell are those lines for?” The latter question has been discussed a lot this week, after one X […]

Much of the ocean has never been mapped, and it is for this reason that projects like Seabed 2030 exist, to finally map every ocean. Just over a quarter of the oceans’ floor has been mapped, which is small, but a significant increase from the 6 percent that it was in 2017. Still, there is […]

Scientists now have a new approach to study never-before-seen quantum phenomena. Physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have produced the first images of atoms freely interacting in space, showing correlations that had been predicted in theory but never directly photographed before. The team’s Atom-Resolved Microscopy is done in this way. Atoms are allowed to […]

Imprints of evolution can be seen among the Haenyeo of South Korea. After generations of foraging for food on the seabed, these all-women divers have fostered several genetic adaptations that allow them to freedive in chilly temperatures and for long periods. The Haenyeo – literally “sea women” – are a group of women who live […]

With the news that President Trump is looking to reopen Alcatraz, we wondered whether it’s true that there’s never been a successful prison break from the notorious island. This led us to a fascinating piece of research by scientists in 2014 that looked into the most famous escape attempt that occurred in June 1962. Their […]

The Vesuvius Challenge has announced the latest award for the identification of the first title on one of the ancient Herculaneum scrolls. The title has been unread for nearly 2,000 years, ever since the volcano erupted in 79 CE, but now innovative noninvasive techniques have recovered it from the still-rolled scroll that would have otherwise […]

A new-to-science species of worm has just pulled out one hell of a party trick: it can squash up like an accordion to a staggering one-fifth of its normal body length. No news yet on whether the feat comes with an equally comical gasp of discordant notes, but a reminder that worms really are a […]

A bill that has just passed out of the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is aimed at tackling challenges beyond Earth “due to relativistic effects”.  The Celestial Time Standardization Act will now make its way through to a floor vote, before going to the Senate, before being signed into law. The purpose […]

The largest dam removal project in US history, and likely the world, was completed at the end of last year, with the removal of four huge dams. But with the Klamath River now running free, the river’s restoration is only just beginning. The project is featured in the new season of the BBC’s Our Changing […]

The world’s largest experiment in fusion power is about to have its magnet installed, following the announcement that all components have been completed.  Nuclear fusion powers the Sun and other stars, but they achieve the vast forces required to push atoms together with gravitational pressure unachievable on Earth. Therefore, alternative forms of pressure or temperature […]

Japanese space company ispace has a mission that has slowly made its way to lunar space, and in the coming weeks will attempt to land on the Moon. There’s a crucial event ahead of that, and it is getting into lunar orbit. That will happen today, May 7, 2025. This is the second time the […]

As if Australia’s mammalian fauna was not already weird enough, they also glow under ultraviolet light. The reasons for this are still not understood, but scientists have improved our knowledge by studying the molecules responsible, and finding they differ among species. Certain molecules absorb ultraviolet light and re-radiate it at wavelengths we can see. Consequently, […]

The laws of general relativity suggest that it is possible for an object to have such a density that nothing, not even light, can escape. That is a black hole. There are a few defining characteristics for these objects. They tend to have an event horizon, the surface that separates them from the rest of […]