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Puffling season has returned to Iceland and with it comes a peculiar site: humans tossing the baby birds off of cliffs. It sounds like cruelty but it’s a long-held tradition that helps these birds head in the right direction when they get confused by city lights. Puffling tossing mostly happens in the Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands) […]

Without an immune system, we wouldn’t be here. It is the crucial way our bodies defend against microbes and parasites that aim to use our bodies for themselves. But there is still a lot we do not understand about it, and that includes possible sex differences in immune responses. New research suggests that these might […]

The world’s largest wind-powered cargo ship has embarked on a transatlantic voyage, loaded with a cargo hold full of fancy wine and jam. Advertisement Sailing Vessel (SV) “Anemos” launched its maiden voyage on August 16 from a port in Le Havre, northern France, headed towards New York, according to TransOceanic Wind Transport (TOWT), the company […]

Colors are not a static entity, but are subjective both in personal and in cultural terms. So it is no surprise to see a little online test go viral based on the very arbitrary demarcation between blue and green. Sure, navy and forest are very different shades. So are emerald and sapphire. But where do […]

A man found frozen in a cave in Pennsylvania, USA, has been identified by authorities, 47 years after his death.  Advertisement On a bitterly cold day on the Appalachian trail in January, 1977, two hikers stumbled across the frozen body of a man in a cave, just below a hiking area known as the “Pinnacle”. […]

BepiColombo is a revolutionary mission that will study the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System like never before. But its fate became uncertain a few months ago following a glitch that has prevented its thrusters from operating at full power. The mission team has recently made two important decisions. The spacecraft will get […]

A new model suggests that the universe did not undergo a Big Bang followed by inflation, as the prevailing model suggests, but a cycle of “bounces”. Though so very far from anything approaching confirmed, the authors believe it could help solve a few cosmic mysteries, including dark matter and the “flatness problem”. Advertisement You may […]

Earlier this year, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore departed for the International Space Station (ISS) for what was meant to be an eight-day trip. Unfortunately, due to problems with the ship they rode in on – Boeing’s now infamous Starliner – they will now be stranded until they can be rescued by SpaceX’s Dragon […]

Saturn is one of the nicer objects to gawp at when you have access to a telescope or binoculars, being large enough to get a good look at, and having a pleasing ring structure around it. In early 2025, you will get a chance to have an even more unusual view: Saturn, without its rings […]

A pig in Hong Kong recently underwent an endoscopy with a twist – the person operating the endoscope was sitting in a lab 9,300 kilometers (5,779 miles) away in Zurich, Switzerland. Advertisement The collaborative project between researchers at ETH Zurich and The Chinese University of Hong Kong saw researchers peering into the stomach of the […]

The ocean wasn’t a fun place to be during the Mesozoic era, which featured a string of periods during which its waters were extremely depleted of oxygen, causing multiple marine mass extinctions. Now, a new study appears to have found the trigger behind this catastrophic chain of events. Advertisement What the team was looking for […]

Do you ever find yourself wondering what prehistoric slugs would’ve looked like? Yeah, us too. It’s hard to place them on the ancient Earth and picture how they first appeared: Were they huge? Were there shells? Does a gooey slug even fossilize? Turns out the answer is no, no, yes, as demonstrated by an incredible […]

Tattooing is one of the oldest and most widespread art forms in the world, and often the designs we decide to commit permanently to our skin are thick with meaning and cultural biases. Studying a tattoo from a certain time and place, therefore, can give us an idea of the cultural norms surrounding its design […]

We live in an age where things like “the Earth orbits the sun” and “Kepler’s third law” are well known, and yet the majesty of a solar eclipse is still something that can make even the most powerful man in the world stop and stare. How much more awe-inspiring must this cosmological phenomenon have appeared, […]

Venus and our closest neighbor Mercury (here’s how that works) are lonely. While Jupiter hogs up at least 95 moons, neither of the innermost planets have a single moon to keep them company in their orbits of the Sun. Advertisement Mercury is likely too close to the Sun to hold onto a moon, with any […]

There’s something lurking in the peaceful waters off the coast of Fukui Prefecture, Japan – but it’s not the kraken, or a whirlpool, or even a shark. In fact, experts believe that the culprit behind a spate of attacks on humans in the area, leading to 18 injuries this year alone, is a single Indo-Pacific […]

Iceland has been having something of a bumper year when it comes to volcanic activity, with lava flows causing all sorts of bother, even leading to evacuations. While the lava flows can be terrifyingly powerful, they are also all sorts of mesmerizing. Advertisement Videographer Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove captured incredible drone footage of the lava inside […]

New research is opening a window into the brain’s prediction machinery, showing how two brain regions work together when something unexpected happens. As well as offering a deeper insight into how our brains constantly work to fill in the gaps and guess what’s coming next, the findings could really help people experiencing difficulties with perception […]

A new study looking at the potentially hazardous asteroid 99942 Apophis has suggested that the odds of an impact in 2029 or 2036 is ever so slightly higher than we thought. Advertisement When Apophis was first discovered in 2004, observations briefly placed it at level 4 on the Torino impact hazard scale, with a score […]

If you ever need evidence as to why you need to respect nature, look no further than US national parks – and none more so than Yellowstone, where a visitor was filmed appearing to dip their fingers into its most iconic hot spring (which is a really, really bad idea). The park’s Grand Prismatic Spring […]