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There is a lot that we do not know about the Sun but something quite shocking to most people is that we have never seen its poles. All our observations have been looking at the Sun face-on and from that disadvantaged view, scientists aim to work out what is going on there. The latest model […]

A neuroscientist who famously taught rats how to drive back in 2019 has explained why she did it, what we learned from it, and how those findings might relate to humans. In 2019, a study went viral for fairly obvious reasons. It involved training rats to drive little rat cars around a laboratory, earning themselves […]

Aging happens in one direction, right? We’re all slowly getting older, accumulating gray hairs and wrinkles, and there’s no going back. While it’s true that as humans we’re not getting any younger, the same can’t be said for comb jellies. When the going gets tough, these strange sea creatures have the incredibly rare ability to […]

Greenhouse gases cause global warming – it’s a fact that we’ve all seen or heard at some point, perhaps more often than usual recently with climate conferences and elections. But how exactly do they have this effect? The greenhouse effect One of the simpler ways we can answer that question is by thinking about how […]

If you’ve ever seen a behind-the-scenes snippet from a nature documentary, you’ll have witnessed the grueling life of a wildlife filmmaker. From getting stuck inside bait balls to getting leeches on your eyeball, monitoring wildlife makes for a testing existence, so what if there was an easier way? What if, say, we could give the […]

When Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, the resulting lava, ash, and debris turned the landscape barren for miles around. It was clear the land would take a long time to recover from the eruption. But one team of scientists had an idea about how they could help speed up the process; sending a few […]

Hurricane Helene made landfall in the United States on September 26, hitting the Gulf Coast of Florida. Its path of death and destruction was monitored in detail from the ground and space, and it was even spotted by an instrument located on the International Space Station. As the ISS flew over it, the Atmospheric Waves […]

There are some seriously strange lifeforms lurking in the depths of our oceans – ghost sharks and upside-down isopods, anyone? Now, two more join their ranks as researchers discover a pair of new bacteria species nestled in the tissue of deep-sea corals in the Gulf of Mexico – and they’re just as bizarre as befits […]

Animal rescue stories are some of the most popular on the internet, from adorable baby beavers to kittens with four ears. However, while the rescuers might have good intentions, “helping” can sometimes do more harm than good. Recent research into the UK hedgehog population has revealed the right times to step in to help our prickly […]

Our ancient ancestors were not picky about who they got into bed with, and the echoes of this prehistoric promiscuity can still be detected in human genomes from around the world today. Listed among our early romantic conquests are the Denisovans, and researchers now believe we mated with at least three distinct populations of this […]

A military spacecraft launched 55 years ago was moved from its orbit – and nobody is quite sure who did it, or why.  In 1969 the UK launched Skynet-1A, a military communications satellite placed in orbit above the east coast of Africa in order to relay information to British armed forces. It stopped working due […]

Viewed from space, the western edge of the Sahara Desert looks like another world. Its abundance of red-tinged sand turns into a sea of dunes that ebb and flow with the wind, unabated by foliage and other earthly obstacles. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station recently took this photograph while orbiting over southeastern Morocco, […]

Just when we thought we were starting to understand the mysterious object 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, it has confounded us again. Four eruptions from its ice volcanoes in quick succession led to a 289-fold brightening. This is the largest set of eruptions since 2021 – and unlike a recent, smaller outburst, we did not see it coming. Comet […]

To visit the southernmost national park in the United States, you’ll need go a lot further than Hawai’i – around 4,184 kilometers (2,600 miles) further southwest, in fact. That’s where you’ll find the National Park of American Samoa, the only US national park south of the equator. Where is the southernmost US national park? The […]

There’s a common trope in movies and TV where, to show a character is off-the-charts smart, the writers will have them solve a Rubik’s cube. The idea, obviously, is that said Platonic solid is so complex, so utterly bamboozling, that only those with a genius-level intellect would be able to wrangle it successfully. Well, it […]

See that strange rock up there? It’s a nifty trick of geology that’s captured three phases of matter, with a solid exterior, liquid middle, and even a gas bubble to boot, all contained within rock crystal quartz. Liquid-filled rocks form when minerals trap fluids, but depending on their composition they can either be classed as […]

A team of astronomers using data from the eROSITA All-Sky Survey has modeled the hot gas in our local stellar neighborhood, finding a curious “interstellar tunnel” towards the constellation of Centaurus. The “tunnel” potentially connects our own local bubble to a neighboring superbubble. Our Solar System resides in a 1,000-light-year-wide “Local Bubble“, sometimes called the […]

A cleaning station for turtles in the waters off the US Virgin Islands recently turned up three fish species that weren’t known to clean turtles. The interaction is a kind of symbiotic relationship as both the hungry fish and the grubby turtles benefit from the collaboration, but there’s growing concern it could also be a […]

Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 aircraft has achieved its fastest speeds yet, blasting towards its goal of surpassing the speed of sound. During its seventh test flight on November 5, the experimental aircraft reached a new top speed of Mach 0.82, or 1,012 kilometers (629 miles) per hour. Advertisement Since its first flight in March 2024, XB-1 […]

Marineland, a zoo and amusement park in Niagara Falls, Canada, has found itself back in the spotlight after the death of five of its beluga whales in the last year. The park is the last place in Canada where whales are still kept captive, and has seen 17 of its resident belugas die since 2019.  […]