News

After thousands of years, we may finally know how to play an ancient board game, or at least a decent approximation of it. In 1977, Italian and Iranian archaeologists were excavating a cemetery in Shahr-i Sokhta in the south-eastern region of Iran when they discovered an unusual item in grave number 731. Inside the pseudo-catacomb […]

Just over a decade ago, a story did the rounds about a man who was stranded in his snow-covered car for two months during a desperately harsh Swedish winter. He was only able to survive, his doctor said, thanks to the “igloo effect”. Peter Skyllberg, 44 years old at the time, became trapped in his […]

Winter has come to the Northern Hemisphere, and with it the usual slew of viral illnesses. Amid the inevitable chaos of the race to the year’s end, preparing for holiday festivities, juggling the kids’ school play and the office party, it can be easy to forget about your flu shot. If you’re only just now […]

Researchers have conducted the first bioarchaeological analysis of the diets of people living in Ukraine over 5,600 years ago. The results shine light on the lives and somewhat grim deaths of these Neolithic people. The people in question were associated with the Neolithic Cucuteni-Trypillia culture who lived across Eastern Europe from around 5500 to 2750 […]

NASA’s Ingenuity was the first ever flying vehicle operated on another planet. It truly was a marvel, and every flight outperformed the hope of its designers – but on January 18, 2024, the little helicopter that could had an accident that brought an end to its career. Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern […]

The Geminids of 2024 are ongoing, and the meteor shower is about to peak in the next couple of days. When it does, we could see up to 150 meteors per hour! It is not among the biggest meteor showers for nothing. The only drawback might be the Moon approaching fullness, which could dampen the […]

If there’s one thing everybody but Danny DeVito needs, it’s a way to appear more likeable. Fortunately, psychologists have looked into how to do just this in many different studies. One such study looked at those awkward first meet and greets, when you are forced to socialize with colleagues or friends of friends with whom […]

NASA’s Lucy is a record-breaking mission that will study a record-breaking 11 asteroids across the Solar System. Three of them are already under its belt; it passed close to asteroid Dinkinesh last year and discovered a double moon around the small object. Next year, it will visit asteroid Donaldjohanson before flying towards the Trojan asteroids, […]

If you think your own password habits are bad (adding the number “1” after your cat’s name), you will be reassured and horrified to learn that the US nuclear arsenal was allegedly much less secure during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Assuming you aren’t Dr Strangelove, you would probably like […]

In sports, coin tosses are often used to decide who goes first, or pick who goes to bat for the first part of the game.  It seems fair. You’d assume that as coins have two sides and you introduce a random element (flipping the coin and catching it), the odds of it coming up with […]

Some species are well known for the distances they are able to cover: from birds that fly pole to pole, butterflies making incredible journeys, and silky sharks breaking records, these feats never fail to impress. New research has highlighted an individual humpback whale that has traveled one of the longest migration routes ever seen, though […]

It’s that time of year once again: festivities, merriment, twinkling lights, goodwill to all humankind, and the annual Christmas Challenge of the UK’s national intelligence agency. This year, seven puzzles have been designed by a team of puzzling experts who work at GCHQ, the UK security agency that’s tasked with signals intelligence. Advertisement The challenges […]

The only fish species on the Great Barrier Reef to care for their offspring as juveniles has found a win-win approach to protecting their young from parasites. As well as drastically reducing a major source of mortality in their children, the adult spiny chromis damselfish (Acanthochromis polyacanthus) gets to supplement their diet. You may need to […]

If you’ve ever done any kind of DIY – literally, any kind at all, from car maintenance to building a desk to changing the batteries in your vintage GameBoy – you’re probably familiar with the crosshead screw. It is, in various forms, one of the most popular types of threaded fastener in the world – […]

An unidentified disease has reportedly affected over 400 people in the rural Kwango Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since October 2024. Some estimates have placed the number of deaths so far in excess of 140, although experts acknowledge the challenge of getting a true sense of the scale of the issue.  […]

Ask any random person for an example of a fractal, and there are a few answers you can expect. The first, obviously, is “Who are you? Stop asking me math questions lady, this is a Wendy’s”. The second, though, may well be this: The Mandelbrot set. It’s called the Mandelbrot – or more properly, Mandelbröt […]

A new-to-science predator has been identified from the hadal depths of the Atacama Trench, a first for this island-like ecosystem in the Southeast Pacific. Here, scientists had loaded bait traps with some chicken in an effort to lure in some scavengers and instead found themselves with a whopping great predatory amphipod– something that had been […]

From the largest planets to comets, there are a variety of worlds in the Solar System that experience aurorae. On Earth, the Northern and Southern Lights are caused by electrically charged particles from the solar wind. They get carried along our planet’s magnetic field to higher latitudes before slamming into the atmosphere. That collision makes […]

A new paper has set out ways that we can test the anthropic principle, or whether the universe has been “finely tuned” for life. Surprisingly, it may be possible to have answers to this age-old question in a pretty short timescale. There is a problem (or not, for fans of being alive) within physics, in […]

China’s got a problem. The southern regions of the country are relatively humid and well-watered, yet much of the north suffers from parchingly arid conditions. This issue has become increasingly burdensome as a third of the nation’s vast population is concentrated in the dry northern basins. A bold solution is being delivered in the form […]