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Our best estimates of the composition of the universe indicate that it is mostly dark matter and dark energy, neither of which have been detected on Earth. Even the baryonic matter we sometimes call the “observable universe” is three quarters hydrogen and 23 percent helium, by mass, and even less if you’re counting atoms. It’s […]

It looks like a baby dragon from Game of Thrones or perhaps a desert-dwelling Pokémon, but the armadillo girdled lizard is very much a real animal. Advertisement They are known by a few different names – including the armadillo lizard, the armadillo spiny-tailed lizard, and the golden-armadillo lizard – although they’re scientifically known as Ouroborus cataphractus. […]

Authorities in Spain are investigating a 39-year-old man after it was discovered that, on a quest to get some exciting photos for social media, he had poured water over 6,000-year-old cave paintings, causing them to be damaged. Advertisement Agents from the Spanish Civil Guard’s Nature Protection Service (SEPRONA) launched the investigation in May, after coming […]

While the light and relaxing soundtrack of a nature documentary might make it seem otherwise, nature is, in fact, very noisy – but in a cacophony of different animal sounds, which one rises above the rest? The loudest animal in the world The battle for which animal is the loudest takes place in the ocean […]

A “Global Glacier Casualty List” is being set up by scientists to keep tabs on the ice sheets that fall victim to climate change. If things continue as they are, the database will have a lot of work on its hands: two-thirds of the world’s glaciers are on track to disappear by the end of […]

The Perseids meteor shower continues to be the most popular in the Northern Hemisphere as it peaks in the warmth of August. It is also the most active in this period and one of the most active across the year, consistently delivering spectacles. The peak is happening the night between August 11 and August 12, […]

An otherwise normal stroll along the beach before Independence Day may have led one New Jersey resident to uncover a brand-new world record for the oldest message in a bottle ever found. The discovery was made on July 3 by Amy Smyth Murphy, who noticed something sticking out of the sand while walking along the […]

In the early hours of July 18, 1918, the Franco-American counter-offensive against German positions began at Aisne-Marne in northern France. The first division of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) drove the German forces back, but not without significant losses. Advertisement By the end of the assault, more than 1,000 US soldiers were unaccounted for – […]

Although our universe may seem stable, having existed for a whopping 13.7 billion years, several experiments suggest that it is at risk – walking on the edge of a very dangerous cliff. And it’s all down to the instability of a single fundamental particle: the Higgs boson. Advertisement In new research by me and my […]

Women wait longer than men to receive medical care in hospital emergency departments and are less likely to receive pain medication for the same complaints, a study has found. The research reveals a troubling and “significant” sex bias in how medical staff perceive a patient’s pain. Advertisement Gender and sex inequality in medicine is a […]

Lunar eclipses were more than just entertainment for the ancient Babylonians, who saw these celestial events as harbingers of doom. Reading the signals lurking in the shadows that devoured the Moon was therefore an important science, and resulted in the production of a series of texts documenting the various omens to be found in an […]

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft has not only created the most accurate map of the Milky Way, it has also measured over 150,000 asteroids. And among that data, it found that hundreds of them might have a little moon. If confirmed, it will end up nearly doubling the known number of binary asteroids. Advertisement […]

The mummified remains of an extinct woolly rhinoceros have been unearthed in Siberia. Frozen like a hunk of meat for thousands of years, the prehistoric animal still has its soft tissues intact, raising some intriguing scientific possibilities. Advertisement The discovery was recently made at a mining site in the Oymyakonsky District of the Sakha Republic […]

The return of humans to the Moon is hopefully just a few years away, and the goal this time is to establish a continuous presence on our natural satellite. Crucial to that is the human ability to use resources found on the Moon – and the big one is water. There is water on the […]

A fossil hunter has been honored with the most coveted of rewards among nature enthusiasts: getting a shiny new-to-science species in his name. Steve Edwards is also a safari guide in northern Zimbabwe, where he found a fossil of a curious fish that lived when the dinosaurs were just getting started around 210 million years […]

When thinking of a place to put a telescope, the ocean bed is probably the last place on your mind, following the age-old “sky = up” principle. But it really depends what you’re looking for.  Advertisement The partially built Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT), is looking for high energy neutrinos, in an attempt to study […]

The Coral Sea could soon be misnamed, scientists suggest, after reconstructing annual temperatures over the last four centuries. Recent record-breaking temperatures are so far outside the experience of even the oldest shallow water corals that the scientists are denouncing a recent decision to not list the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as “in danger”. Advertisement Coral […]

Viral TikTok sensation Apollo has proved he’s not a bird brain by breaking the world record of the most items identified by a parrot in 3 minutes. The 4-year-old African grey parrot broke the Guinness World Record after successfully identifying 12 items on December 18, 2023.  Advertisement Based in Florida, USA, Apollo belongs to Dalton and […]

The Beipanjiang Bridge has been described as “China’s Impossible Engineering Feat.” Evidently, though, the stunningly high crossing is very much in the realm of possibility. Elevated a dizzying 565 meters (1,854 feet) above a river valley, the Beipanjiang Bridge is the highest bridge in the world – at least for now.  Also known as the […]

A new study has explored the possible health benefits of using the milk of female horses in ice cream. The frozen treat is more traditionally made up of cow’s milk and cream, but by swapping in the milk of mares, they discovered it was possible to get more good bacteria swirled into the mix. Advertisement […]