News

If we want to find the necessary conditions for life on the surface of another planet, let alone life itself, we should stop hoping for carbon in its atmosphere, a new paper argues. Instead, it is an absence, or at least shortage, of atmospheric carbon that could be the sign we’re getting close. All life […]

More than one in four people in the US have blue eyes. In the UK, it’s three out of every seven; in the Netherlands, it’s three out of five, and in Iceland, it’s three out of every four. Depending on where you live, it’s a very popular ocular color to have. But that’s kind of […]

You can find all kinds of cool things in caves. From pearls to softball-sized spiders, ancient human artwork, and even unicorns, there’s no telling what awaits the curious cave explorer. Nothing illustrates this fact more clearly than the surprise that greeted archaeologists in Mexico recently, when they rolled back a boulder to discover a true […]

Thanks to some beautiful imagery captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover during the recent Mars solar conjunction, you can now watch the passing of a day, from sunrise to sunset, on the surface of Mars. The 25-frame video was captured from the Martian surface using Curiosity’s black-and-white Hazard-Avoidance Cameras (Hazcam) on November 8, 2023, from 5:30 […]

If one of your New Year’s resolutions happens to be staying sober, scientists at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) have some good news for you: not drinking alcohol, or even just cutting back on the bevs, can reduce your risk of some cancers. There’s already evidence to suggest […]

Io is a world like no other, at least within the Solar System. Eruptions from 400 active volcanoes constantly turn it inside out. The Juno spacecraft has provided stunning images of this moon of Jupiter taken during its first flyby. Already, image processors, professional and amateur, are drawing out details that might be missed in […]

We are constantly reminded about how exercise benefits our bone and muscle health or reduces fat. However, there is also a growing interest in one element of our anatomy that is often overlooked: our fascia. Fascia is a thin casing of connective tissue, mainly made of collagen – a rope-like structure that provides strength and […]

Have you ever been wandering around the Natural History Museum in London, and just wanted to take a snooze next to Charles Darwin’s statue? Or perhaps, bumbling along the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and suddenly overcome with a wave of tiredness? Well, you may have been suffering from museum fatigue.   It was […]

Issue 18 (January 2024) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. In This Issue… Advertisement OUR COVER STORY: What Does The Universe Smell Like? From cocktails to gunpowder, […]

What came first, oranges – the plump citrus fruit – or orange – the name of the juicy red-yellow color?  Perhaps surprisingly, the fruit came first. The first time the word “orange” was documented in the English language was around the late 14th century CE, when it was used to refer to the fruit, according […]

Ultraviolet (UV) nail polish dryers, typically used to cure gel manicures, could damage DNA in our hands and cause mutations, new research finds.  The dryers are a common fixture of beauty salons – but despite their widespread use and the fact that some spectrums of UV rays are known to be carcinogenic, there has never been formal […]

The gasoline in your car began its life (for want of a better term) around 360 million years ago. That’s long before even the first dinosaurs wandered the Earth; despite the popular image of the typical automobile being “fueled by exploding T. Rexes”, it’s actually ancient algae and plankton. Given how long it’s been hanging around so far, […]

The planet’s largest-known lithium deposit may have been found hiding beneath an ancient supervolcano along the Nevada–Oregon border in the US. Given the skyrocketing demand for lithium, this deposit could be a treasure trove – although obtaining it could come with a bunch of challenges and dangers. An estimated 20 to 40 million metric tons of […]

The Java stingaree (Urolophus javanicus) has become the first marine fish species to go extinct as a result of human activity according to scientists at Charles Darwin University (CDU), Australia. It was declared following an update to the Red List of Threatened Species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in December. […]

This week we take a closer look at the “Great Wall of Mongolia”, the quest for better energy storage takes a leap forward in the form of time-bending quantum batteries, and a 150-year-old pliosaur skull is examined by Sir David Attenborough as part of a new series for the BBC. Finally, we take a look […]

With the number of people these days opting for a sleep divorce, it’s clear that sometimes, sharing a bed with a significant other is not the pathway to restful slumber. As much as we may love them, sleeping alongside a partner (or indeed, a furry friend) can sometimes do more harm than good. Now, a […]

Although it’s been long suspected, researchers now appear to have confirmed that human cells have resonant frequencies – rates of vibration matching their natural frequency that causes the cells to vibrate with a larger amplitude.  This research has centered around observing the movement of microcantilevers, tiny beams that are unsupported at one end. They can […]

As we approach the end of the year, we may not only be saying goodbye to 2023, but also the geochronologic unit of time we have been living in to date. In 2024, scientists will be making a decision on whether we have entered the Anthropocene, a new epoch marked by human impact on the […]

2023 was an exciting year for the Moon, which made a new friend as India became the fourth country to successfully land on the lunar surface. NASA, meanwhile, announced the crew for its upcoming Artemis II mission, which will see humans visit the Moon for the first time in half a century.  Emerging from this […]