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Along with summoning beautiful aurora in the night sky around the world, the gusty solar storm that rocked Earth in May this year left another legacy: a new Van Allen Belt looping around the planet.  Advertisement The Van Allen belts are two donut-shaped belts of radiation wrapped around Earth, composed of energetic charged particles trapped […]

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has passed a resolution to strengthen the work it does in protecting the Dark and Quiet Sky both on the ground and in space. That the resolution would pass was obvious – you wouldn’t expect turkeys to vote for Christmas – but it matters greatly in showing the commitment of […]

The light signals of fireflies appear to have been highjacked by orb-weaving spiders. Scientists believe they have observed the spiders manipulating captive flies so that they flash like females, luring more male fireflies into their trap. Can’t trust anything anymore. The spider is Araneus ventricosus, which is partial to feeding on the firefly species Abscondita […]

A powerful geomagnetic storm that engulfed our planet three months ago altered the atmosphere in ways that have never been seen before. Among the unique phenomena triggered by the event was the appearance of a huge spiral structure in the thermosphere, as well as the complete obliteration of the ionosphere in the mid-latitude region. Advertisement […]

A group of bats that fly as if they’re very proud of their feet have been vindicated with the discovery that their toes have a remarkable talent. When under ultraviolet (UV) light, the fluffy feet of a certain bat in Mexico glow a spooky hue of green and blue, and it’s possible it could be […]

There are technically 50 states in the USA, but let’s face it: some of them are cheating. Take Alaska, for example – clearly a part of Canada, sorry guys, but look at a map – or Hawaii, which is separated from the rest of the states by about 3,860 kilometers (2,400 miles) of ocean and […]

Canadian carbon removal company Deep Sky has announced plans to build the world’s first carbon removal innovation and commercialization center. It’s set to be built in Innisfail, a town about an hour north of Calgary, Alberta. Advertisement The quest for net zero needs to be fought on many fronts. You have your vanguard offense: simply […]

There is something magical about the flight of the swift. They are quick, almost too quick for us to see. Here one moment, the next they are gone, always chasing bugs. Unlike us land animals leaving footprints with every step, each wingbeat leaves no trace of its passage. That is until Xavi Bou started capturing […]

Good sleep is essential for good health, so it’s no wonder you feel crappy when you’ve just woken up at 4.00 am… again. When even a cheeky daytime nap won’t cut it, it’s understandable that people will turn to all sorts of things to try and reach that magic eight hours a night. Some even […]

This week, two new victims at Pompeii were found trying to rescue their valuables but sadly could not rescue themselves, everyone is surprised Stonehenge’s famous Altar Stone doesn’t come from Wales as thought but somewhere else entirely, and we now know where the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs came from. Finally, we delve into […]

At what point in our evolution did humankind start to grapple with the concept of death and mark our mortality with graves? It’s hard to tell without the knowledge of a time-traveling philosopher, but we can learn a lot from the archaeological history of early human burials.  Advertisement Some of the earliest evidence of intentional […]

Ocean Photographer Of The Year 2024 has announced the finalists for this year’s competition, whittled down from some 15,000 entries. Combining shots achieved with the aid of drones and capturing environments some of us might otherwise never see, the competition has brought the oceans to our screens, and picked up a few rather majestic animals […]

Good news for lunar lovers, as the first Supermoon of the year is fast approaching on August 19 at 6:26 pm UTC. It’s also a double whammy of celestial phenomena: as well as being “super”, the Moon will be “blue” – here’s what that all means. Advertisement The Moon’s orbit is not quite a perfect […]

Uranus is filled with surprises and mysteries to solve. As well as probably containing a lot more methane than we thought, there are a few other strange things we found about Uranus when scientists first started looking into it. For instance, why is Uranus (and fellow ice giant Neptune) so far out in the solar […]

Archaeological evidence of shark attack victims is extremely rare, so when the story of a 3,000-year-old Japanese victim was published in 2021, it caught people’s attention. At the time, the victim was thought to be the oldest recorded case of a shark attack victim, but soon after the study was published, other researchers identified what […]

The world record for the widest female tongue has just been broken for the first time in 10 years. No need to adjust your display settings – you read that just right. Advertisement The proud owner of the gargantuan glossa is Texan Brittany Lacayo. Her tongue measures 7.9 centimeters (3.11 inches) at its widest point. […]

There are many sites across the world that have been called “gates of hell”. Some of these strange subterranean places were believed to be actual doorways to the underworld, while others have earned their name due to their impressive geology, volcanic activity, sheer inaccessibility, or other features. Here are some examples of famous so-called gates […]

Jellyfish-like spurts of electricity recently lit up the sky over Puerto Rico in a rare natural event scarcely ever caught on camera. Known as “gigantic jets” or “giant sprites”, the electrical discharges are similar to so-called “red sprites” – although they are even more intense and rise upwards into the atmosphere, rather than zapping down […]

As the Sun spits out more and bigger storms, videos of flares emerging from its surface help us see its power. Watching these, it usually looks like they peter out a few solar diameters away, but the truth is very different. Although the particles that accompany smaller flares can fall back as the powerful solar […]