News

If you’ve ever owned a spider plant, you’ll know they love making babies. They do it with pride, presenting their offspring on the end of a long structure called a stolon. New research suggests that this stolon may be a vital lifeline equivalent to a mammalian placenta that provides dynamic care during a spider plant’s […]

The most recent addition to the human family tree – named after its unusually fat head – roamed northern China at the same time as the Denisovans. According to uranium-series dating, Homo juluensis existed between about 140,000 and 230,000 years ago, making it a contemporary of Homo longi – which literally means “Dragon Man”. The […]

The number of satellites in space continues to rise due to the deployment of megaconstellations. For decades, humanity has sent about 200 satellites every year into space. You need just a couple of days to deploy the same number now. This unconstrained deployment comes with many serious concerns about future utilization of space, but also […]

It’s the headline every dairy lover has been waiting to read: eating more high-fat cheese and cream is linked with a lower risk of developing dementia.  At least, that’s what a new study seems to say. “For decades, the debate over high-fat versus low-fat diets has shaped health advice, sometimes even categorizing cheese as an […]

Water can be liquid at temperatures far below freezing under several conditions; perhaps the most surprising is as a thin layer on the surface of ice. The discovery of this fact dates at least to 1859, but there have only been partial explanations, until now. Don’t you hate it when there is a well-documented phenomenon […]

Smell is a strange sense. We don’t really notice it all that much – we’re hardly nose-first animals like cats or dogs – but it’s nevertheless incredibly powerful. It has the power to evoke memories; to subconsciously heighten arousal or fear; to even change how we see the world around us. And, of course, it […]

We all know that many of the tools in human life have been inspired by nature’s creations, but how often do you stop and really think about where these products come from? A new gallery at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London is encouraging visitors to think more about their impact on the planet, as […]

Eight years ago, a popular interactive map showed you where you would pop up if you were to dig your way right through the Earth. It’s a bit of fun, even if for the vast majority the answer was “somewhere in an ocean”. But would it be possible to dig through the Earth and pop out the other […]

Africa is gradually splitting in two. As with most geological processes, it unfolds at a glacial pace over millions of years, but in time it could cause part of East Africa to break away from the rest of the continent, likely giving rise to a new ocean between the two landmasses. The rest of this […]

Who doesn’t love a long, hot shower at the end of a tiring day? Or – perhaps more relevant right now – an icy cold one in the middle of a heat wave? Well, as with everything humans enjoy, science has looked into our showering proclivities to see what exactly is going on.  It turns out hot and […]

We strongly advise you never go swimming in Burundi’s Rusizi River, but if fate deals you a cruel hand and you’re left with no other option, beware of Gustave. Gustave is a legend in this part of East Africa, surrounded by decades of folklore, fear, and fragmented accounts. Most of what we know about this […]

In humans, as in many animals, things tend to come in pairs. We have two eyes, two ears, two hands, and two feet – and, right in the middle of our faces, two nostrils. For most of those features, of course, having two makes sense. A pair of eyes gives us a wider range of […]

We know full well that our species has the capacity to effect phenomenal change, even accidentally, for better or for worse. We see it in the climate crisis but also in the eradication of smallpox. When the DART mission hit asteroid Dimorphos, our species gained the ability to move celestial bodies. It turns out we […]

This week, a 120-million-year-old dinosaur trackway has revealed the fastest Cretaceous theropod ever discovered, Little Foot, one of the most complete early hominin fossils, may actually be an “unidentified human relative”, and NASA finally confirmed billionaire Jared Isaacman as its new head. Finally, we visited the European Space Agency to ask real astronauts the question […]

Our third interstellar visitor that we have detected, comet 3I/ATLAS, has been found to contain molecules that are key for life. But what does that mean?  If you don’t know the story by now, on July 1, 2025, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System did its job beautifully and spotted an object as it hurtled […]

Picture it now. You are a young scientist at your first conference, and you’ve just seen a senior researcher you’ve long admired. They’re bound to have great insights for your latest project; all you have to do is say hello – it all starts there. Everywhere around there’s a hum of conversation as researchers gather […]

Picture a rhinoceros and you might imagine a pointy-beaked bird perching on its back. These birds aren’t simply there to eat ticks and other tiny nuisances; this unlikely alliance is a complex relationship that blurs the line between parasitic and symbiotic. Oxpeckers are the “ride-or-die” companions of Africa’s megafauna. They most famously hitch a ride […]

Critically endangered species live life on a knife-edge. Often with populations in the low hundreds, every individual is vital to continue to breed and maintain numbers. Unforeseen events, like climate-related extreme weather, can often further threaten this precarious balance, as is the case recently with the Tapanuli orangutan, the rarest great ape in the world.  […]

NASA has just released two images from its recent near-infrared SPHEREx mission. This is an incredible near-infrared space telescope that aims to collect the detailed light spectrum of 450 million galaxies. To do that, it has very narrow filters which are equivalent to how we categorize colors, only not in the light that we can […]

Historically, Jesus of Nazareth was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader, seen as a prophet by followers of Islam – and, of course, he is believed to be God the Son made flesh and the long-awaited Messiah who was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. This latter part earned him the appellative ‘Christ.’ Christians around […]