News

Take a wander through the outskirts of south London and you might stumble across a fragment of Earth’s deep past: a collection of rocks forged more than 2 billion years ago. Older than the first stirrings of complex life, they are among the most ancient rocks in Western Europe. But what are they doing in […]

On Tuesday, US Congress held the latest hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the relatively new term for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) of the past. “The federal government has been hiding information from Americans for decades. We have spent years seeking information on the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Reverend King, and other government […]

In 40,000 years, long after its mission is over, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft will have a close encounter with Gliese 445. It won’t be the probe’s last. The Voyager probes were launched in 1977 and have been traveling ever since. At the moment, Voyager 1 is around 168 AU from the Earth, having become the […]

A gamma ray burst (GRB) unlike anything we detected before has released some of the most powerful photons in the universe four times in the course of 24 hours. The event was not the most powerful GRB ever detected, but was easily the longest. It’s only a few decades since astronomers thought supernovae were the […]

An investigation into shark meat being sold at grocery stores, seafood markets, and online in the US has found that a concerning amount comes from vulnerable through to critically endangered species, and is commonly presented to shoppers with ambiguous or incorrect labeling. Carried out as part of a seafood forensics course at the University of […]

A team of scientists in Finland and the UK has revealed that myocardial infarctions (the fancy medical term for heart attacks) may not be solely caused by cholesterol buildup and lifestyle factors. Evidence has been found that infectious bacteria linked to the mouth could help trigger heart attacks. The rest of this article is behind […]

Whilst standing on Antarctica or the Arctic during winter, you might not notice too much of a difference, looking down at the snow-covered ice. But the Arctic and Antarctic are very different, as you would soon discover if you were able to keep drilling your way down through the ice. For a start, if you […]

Glass cells filled with liquid crystals respond to light to make the first time crystals visible to the naked eye, even if you’d still get a better view using magnification. Previous time crystals have mostly been curiosities, but the makers claim these could be used to store data more efficiently or make almost unforgeable watermarks.  […]

A recently discovered meteor shower that peaks just once every five years is expected to reach its crescendo this week. Known as the chi Cygnids, the rare shower has been slowly increasing in intensity since late August, leading to predictions that it could light up the sky between September 13 and 15. The rest of […]

Back in September 2023, scientists monitoring seismic activity across the world were all met with a mysterious signal making its way throughout the whole of the planet. “We were baffled – the signal was unlike any previously recorded,” Stephen Hicks, Research Fellow in Computational Seismology at UCL, and Kristian Svennevig, Senior Researcher at the Geological […]

Volcanoes are well known for being, you know, fiery and hot. And yet, they can be found dotting the floor of the famously frigid deep ocean – a place where their existence seems to defy intuition. Why do they appear there? How do they survive? And what happens when they erupt? Turns out, some of […]

In 1977, a rhino was born at Dvůr Králové Zoo. She was named Nasi, and came as a bit of a surprised because her mother, a northern white rhino called Nasima, had only had contact with one male rhino. Why was that so strange? Well, he was an entirely different species. Hybrids like Nasi crop […]

A planetary science conference has heard how to redirect threatening asteroids so they don’t come back and endanger the Earth at a later date. You’d think that would be a key feature of any mission to protect the planet, but that assumes the mission is run by scientists, not chief financial officers. When Hollywood imagines […]

A group of researchers have watched every episode of the hit children’s cartoon Bluey, finding evidence for what most parents will tell you about the show against your will. Bluey, for those of you who aren’t of parent or child age, is an Australian cartoon about a family of dogs living in a version of […]

Welcome to the future, where we have two existential problems we simply can’t get rid of: the atmosphere is full of carbon dioxide, and plastic waste is freaking everywhere. Now, though, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have come up with a two-in-one breakthrough that uses one problem to solve the other – by transforming […]

NASA has some exciting new results from the Perseverance rover, and they will be presented during a press conference on Wednesday, September 10. The call for a press conference is exciting as it suggests that there is something really juicy to be showcased with a new paper published at the same time. The rest of […]

From the 1930s to the 1970s, barrels amounting to thousands of tons of chemicals were dumped off the coast of Los Angeles. It was an assault on the environment that would continue to unfold for decades to come, and worse still, we weren’t even sure what was inside the barrels. For a long time we […]

What’s your favorite song? Maybe it’s a classic, maybe it’s a forgotten B-side, a love song, a musical number, or something else. It is often said that it’s something we listened to as teenagers that we link to the strong emotions of those years. There might be truth to that, or at least we become […]

Every year, sea turtle hatchlings crawl across Florida’s beaches in search of the ocean. It’s a treacherous journey as it is – predators, debris, and light pollution all present roadblocks the tiny turtles must navigate – but it’s becoming even more so thanks to a stinky seaweed called Sargassum. This floating brown macroalgae washes up […]

Four volunteers will soon be sealed inside an imitation Mars habitat on Earth, simulating a year-long mission to the Red Planet ahead of the real deal. On October 19, the volunteers will step foot inside their new home and not emerge until Halloween 2026, 378 days later. The study is the second of three planned […]