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Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps may be among the greatest modern Olympians, but their exploits in the pool would not have found much appreciation in Ancient Greece. In fact, at no point in the history of the original Olympic Games did swimming feature as an event, despite the fact that most Greeks knew how to […]

Five hundred million years ago, the Earth was a whole lot of sea. Underwater, the Cambrian Explosion was bringing a flurry of differentiation that laid the foundations for modern animal phyla. The new creatures were not just multicellular blobs, but had many of the distinguishing features of animals today: eyes, legs, shells, and mandibles. One […]

It’s no secret that giants walked among the dinosaurs, but just how big were the biggest? A new study has used computer modeling to estimate that Tyrannosaurus rex may have been 70 percent heavier than the fossil record indicates, supersizing a predator that was already thought to be pretty damn big. Most dinosaurs we see […]

The Moon is believed to have become pretty solid pretty quickly after it formed 4.4 billion years ago. But that doesn’t mean that volcanism and magmatic events stopped there. By looking at rocks collected during the Apollo missions, researchers believe they have found evidence of a major magmatic event taking place about 100 million years […]

A mass stranding event involving a total of 146 dolphins on the Cape Cod peninsula in the northeastern United States has officially been declared the largest such event in the country’s history. According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), whose rescuers responded rapidly to the distressed cetaceans, 37 animals died in the event […]

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), July 22, 2024 was the hottest day since the ERA5 recording started in 1940. That day, the planet had an average temperature of 17.15°C (62.87°F), breaking the record set on July 21 of 17.09°C (62.76°F), that one only fractionally hotter than the previous record on July 6, […]

When they were created, the Olympics were only open to amateurs, a restriction dropped decades ago. Nevertheless, at least one form of discrimination still stands – you need to be a member of the species Homo sapiens to compete (equestrian events aside). With the Paris games about to open, it’s time to consider what would […]

Some things just look better from up in space, which is a tad unfortunate given most of us can’t get up there. Luckily, the fortunate few who venture outside Earth love to snap a few pictures of their view and share them with us – and that’s how we get to see these brand-new photos […]

In an effort to tackle its titanic trash problem, Grand Canyon National Park has set out a plan for its South Rim site to become the first in a US national park to use almost entirely reusable foodware. Advertisement It’s no surprise that so many people want to visit national parks – they’re home to […]

For the first time, NASA has used laser communication to send 4K video from a plane to the International Space Station (ISS) and back again. So far, NASA has relied on radio communication to send and receive messages to missions in space. While effective – we can communicate with Voyager 1, which is over 15 […]

Take a walk past The Natural History Museum, London, and transport yourself back in time with their brand new Evolution Garden. This five-year-long project to transform the space at the front and sides of the museum was unveiled last week and marks a remarkable journey through 2.7 billion years of evolutionary plant biology. We caught […]

The UK Government has trialed what it is bizarrely calling a “speed of light laser weapon”, firing it from the top of a British Army combat vehicle. Advertisement The UK Ministry of Defence’s Land Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) Demonstrator program developed the weapon, which has now been tested at a firing range in Porton […]

Researchers have recorded the first-ever video of a shark being struck by a boat, revealing how the animals respond to traumatic interactions with human maritime activities. In this case, a 7-meter-long (23-foot) basking shark was hit by the keel of a boat just behind its dorsal fin, resulting in “flight behavior” and a drastic change […]

Science can’t be sexist, we hear you cry, it’s methodical, rational. And yet science is carried out by humans who are often a product of the time and place they operate in, struggling to overcome intrinsic biases and outside influence. Host Katy Evans is joined by zoologist and presenter Lucy Cooke, author of Bitch: A […]

The first astronauts heading to Mars will venture further than any human before them, and should any of them encounter medical problems on their journey – perhaps “cosmic kidney disease” or a bacterial infection – they will be almost entirely alone to deal with them. Adding to those challenges, a new study has identified another […]

Animals hunting in groups is an amazing example of both intelligence and communication between individuals, from orcas teaming up to sink yachts to prides of lions and packs of wolves taking down prey often much larger than themselves. While these are fairly common examples, taking a trip below the waves reveals that even tiny sea […]

Picture it: you’re 10 years old, you’ve just absolutely smashed the hotel breakfast buffet, and now you’re ready for a day of larking about in the pool. But wait – your parents say you have to wait before you can go swimming (boooo). Why? None of their answers seem very believable and it turns out […]

As Elvis famously crooned: “Wise men say, ‘only fools rush in.’ But I can’t help falling in love with you.” It’s both a romantic song and, according to a new study, a massive red flag – as it turns out that “rushing in” to love may correlate with a higher chance of infidelity in relationships. […]

When a duck glides across the surface of a pond, it may appear to be effortlessly traversing the water, but in fact, its hidden feet are working overtime to keep it afloat. It is this contrast of outward calm and concealed exertion that inspired the term “floating duck syndrome”. Beyond the name, it has very […]

A new class of antibiotics is offering real hope of a response to the problem of antimicrobial resistance, hitting bacteria with a dual-pronged assault that’s almost impossible to combat. Called macrolones, the drugs target two bacterial processes simultaneously – and the scientists behind a new study say this makes evolving resistance 100 million times more […]