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When the dinosaurs dominated the Earth, a piece of seafloor west of South America was drawn into the mantle as another crust rode over it. Curiously, it has survived despite oceanic plates of the same age usually having been recycled into the mantle, suggesting we need to tweak our understanding of Earth’s interior. Advertisement The […]

If you look up at the sky for long enough at dusk or dawn, or take a few seconds to Google its position, you may see the International Space Station (ISS) zipping its way over your head at 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 miles per hour). Advertisement While seeing it is pretty cool in itself […]

What can an ancient gnarly log tell us about safeguarding the future? According to a new analysis of one 3,775-year-old chunk of tree, potentially quite a bit – thanks to an emerging climate solution known as “wood vaulting”. Advertisement We often hear about the importance of trees in the fight against climate change, and that’s […]

There’s an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is among the most acute problems facing humanity right now, and to tackle big issues you sometimes need to look at creative solutions. A team of scientists from Sweden wanted to test the appetite for out-of-the-box climate initiatives, so they surveyed nearly 9,000 people from five countries […]

The movements within Earth’s molten core have been resisting efforts to understand them for a long time, but agreement between a mathematical and physical model has led two physicists to claim they are getting close. Since these motions are the driver of the Earth’s magnetic field, understanding them and why the field changes could turn […]

Colossal Biosciences has announced it will be launching a new non-profit: the Colossal Foundation. Already backed by a confirmed $50 million in funding, its goal is to halt the extinction crisis through three key conservation focus points. Advertisement The Colossal Foundation’s first key area of focus is “saving today’s at-risk species”, encompassing endangered species like […]

Quicksilver, also known as mercury, has long been used in the process of gold extraction. Its unique ability to bond with gold has made it a useful tool in mining, but this ancient practice comes with its own set of dangers. So, how exactly is mercury used to extract gold, what are the implications of […]

If you Google “what is the largest star” you’ll probably get the answer UY Scuti, but if it was as simple as that we wouldn’t be adding much value here. Fortunately, the universe is a more interesting place than that, so let’s explore a bit deeper. Advertisement The largest star It might seem easy to […]

It’s old news by now that Columbus was far from the first European to make it to the Americas. We know for a fact, for instance, that there were Vikings in Newfoundland 1,000 years ago – but what they were up to while they were there has always been a little more mysterious.  Advertisement A […]

While the world waits to see comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) brighten up our skies a little later this month, astronomers bring more good news. A newly discovered comet should be visible later this month, possibly outshining Venus.  On September 27, the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on Mauna Loa in Hawai’i spotted the […]

Charon is the largest among the five peculiar moons of Pluto. It was studied briefly as NASA’s New Horizons flew by the system in 2015, a quick encounter that revealed a lot, including a dark patch on its Northern pole called the Mordor Macula. Planetary scientists have now conducted follow-up studies using the James Webb […]

Researchers have witnessed and filmed oxygen and hydrogen merging to form tiny, nanoscale water bubbles for the first time. Advertisement Back in 2024, the team from Northwestern University, Illinois, developed a new method for viewing and analyzing gas molecules in real time. The method involves trapping gas molecules within honeycomb-shaped nanoreactors using ultra-thin glassy membranes, […]

Are you a whisky fan? Yeah, us too, but it recently occurred to us that we didn’t have a scooby when it came to how the amber nectar is made. So, we set out on a quest to uncover the science of whisky, a quest that led us to Scotland. Advertisement First, we spoke to […]

Montana resident Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, aged 81, was handed a six-month prison sentence on Monday, September 30, for perpetrating a long-running scheme to breed enormous – and illegal – hybrid sheep.  Advertisement Between 2013 and 2021, the court heard, Schubarth conspired with at least five other individuals to get his criminal enterprise off the ground. […]

Astronomers have found a planet around Barnard’s star, the closest single star to the Sun. It is the fourth closest star overall, after the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system, which already have planets around Proxima Centauri. Still, this new world is very exciting. Advertisement It is estimated to be half the mass of […]

COVID-19 wrought – and continues to wreak – havoc on the Earth. According to a new study, its effects were not limited to our planet; the surface of the Moon may have been indirectly affected by the resulting lockdown. Advertisement At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, before vaccines were developed, lockdowns were used by […]

The release of the tournament bracket for this year’s Fat Bear Week has been delayed after a fight between two of Katmai National Park and Preserve’s brown bears resulted in the death of one of the event’s competitors. Advertisement Fat Bear Week is usually a celebration of all things chonky as Katmai’s resident brown bears […]

Does it get any more Indiana Jones than a jewel that can glow? Such a piece of jewelry has been made possible thanks to jeweler-turned-scientist Sofie Boons of the University of the West of England (UWE). The ground-breaking gemstone is the world’s first single stone lab-grown crystal that can glow in the dark. It was […]

A team of physicists has taken a step towards creating more powerful lasers out of sound instead of light, which could have a huge number of practical uses beyond just being pretty neat. Advertisement Typical lasers themselves are pretty cool, and these devices haven’t actually been around on Earth that long, being first created by […]

Scientists seeking an intact ice core stretching back 1.5 million years have found what they think could be a Rosetta stone in the quest to almost double the current record. This still won’t be the oldest ice ever obtained, but will provide something much more valuable when it comes to understanding the planet’s climatic past […]