News

The cicadapocalypse is now upon us, with potentially up to a trillion insects set to rise up, make a whole bunch of noise and cicada babies, and then die – all within the space of about a month. But why so noisy? That’s called seduction in Cicadaville, and it turns out we can mimic it. The […]

Have you been looking for an article you read several years ago but just cant find it? If it was written in 2013, there is a good chance it has simply disappeared from the internet. That’s according to new research from the Pew Research Centre which found that nearly 40 percent of all webpages created […]

Two different groups of astronomers have reported the discovery of an exoplanet that might be an Earth twin, or maybe a Venus-like world. This world is a fantastic target for exploration and it might provide crucial insights into rocky planets like our own – and their habitability. The planet is called Gliese 12 b and […]

Google has launched AI Overviews. And it is not going too well. The feature was launched in the US last week and it will spread globally by the end of 2024, but results so far suggest that it is a mess. Users on social media were quick to point out the funny answers until several […]

Birds are dinosaurs. That’s how the Natural History Museum, London kicks off its exciting new exhibition, Birds: Brilliant & Bizarre. From the very first Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug up, through to the most peculiar adaptation of the dinosaurs’ only extant relatives, the exhibition displays the remarkable diversity of one of Earth’s most successful animal groups […]

Chernobyl’s wild boars have been the subject of a long-standing scientific mystery. While the radioactivity of deer in the region has predictably decreased over the decades, the wild boar remained surprisingly radioactive. It turns out that these Ukrainian hogs aren’t only being irradiated from the infamous disaster of 1986, but also the atomic bomb testing […]

If you were assigning animals to sporting contests based on looks alone, you wouldn’t send a wombat to track and field. With short legs and a mighty butt, wrestling might be a more obvious choice, or perhaps weightlifting. Yet wombats can produce a surprising turn of speed. Some even propose carrots strategically placed at the […]

The latest forecast from the NOAA National Weather Service predicts that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season will be a freakishly busy one and could even rival 2005 – the year of Hurricane Katrina and Rita. The NOAA forecast says there’s an 85 percent chance of an above-normal season, a 10 percent chance of a near-normal […]

According to a new study, just 10 “superspreaders” were responsible for over a third of the misinformation posted on Twitter (now X) during an eight-month period in 2020. Misinformation has become a serious concern in recent years. On the face of it, this type of content may appear to be simply irritating, but it can […]

Dozens of rivers and streams in the far reaches of Alaska have turned from crystal clear to a rusty color, some looking “like a milky orange juice.” According to a new study, the culprit is likely to be warming temperatures causing permafrost to thaw and leak metals into the waterways.  Needless to say, the researchers […]

If you like to use your lunch break to catch up on a bit of YouTube, you’d be far from the only one. Some people, however, invest far more time and energy in the online personalities they watch – despite the fact the other party has no idea they exist. Such a one-sided relationship might […]

The world is about to see a stellar event that was likely first recorded in 1217; a nova explosion of T Coronae Borealis (T CrB), also known as the Blaze star. The star – actually a binary star system comprising a white dwarf and a red giant – is for the most part not visible […]

It’s been a big couple of days for Microsoft. The company’s annual Build conference, held from May 21-23 in Seattle, has seen a slew of announcements on upcoming tech, with much of it centering on integration of AI into future devices. But there’s one announcement in particular that has already proven controversial – and might […]

Trillions of cicadas are set to erupt across parts of the US this spring, bringing a deluge of high-pitched buzzing to the Midwest and the Southeast. One group of people that could be unexpectedly impacted by the so-called “cicadapocalypse” will be those with tinnitus, a condition that involves hearing an unwanted ringing, buzzing, or whooshing […]

Eyes on the sky, people: Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) has a good chance of getting bright enough to be visible to the naked eye in the coming months. It is currently visible only to telescopes, but it is still quite a distance away from the Sun. It has time to get brighter, and could even […]

The European Space Agency has designed their space observatory Euclid to hunt for the invisible but crucial components of the universe: dark matter and dark energy. Its first science release is now out and it shows that the observatory is more than up to the task. And it can do so much more than that. […]

Does it hurt to be executed by guillotine? Do you remain conscious after being decapitated? Unfortunately, there’s nobody with first-hand experience around to answer that question. Nevertheless, it is possible to piece together a fair amount of evidence that indicates how a last dance with the guillotine might go down. The guillotine is the iconic […]

Laili rock shelter on the island of Timor, north of Australia, appears to provide the smoking gun to rule out what was once considered the obvious route for one of the greatest and least understood migrations in human history. In the process, it may tell us something important about how people first arrived on Timor […]

Six years ago, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a Tesla into space, in a stunt that even the most hardened Musk haters would grudgingly admit is pretty cool. The Roadster has since been on one hell of a journey, currently moving away from Earth at the impressive speed of 25,290 kilometers per hour (15,715 miles per […]

On May 21, one person died and several were injured after a flight from London to Singapore was struck by severe turbulence. Though such fatalities are rare, and turbulence is usually only mildly bumpy, some scientists believe we could be seeing more of it. What is turbulence? Turbulence is a sudden, irregular change in airflow […]