News

In 1866, astronomers were astonished when a star that previously required telescopes to see quickly rose to be the second brightest in the Coronae Borealis constellation for weeks. It seems, however, that the event was not unprecedented: a medieval manuscript reveals a brightening of what may be the same star. If so, it would add […]

Life is surprisingly persistent in the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth. Whether or not you subscribe to the idea that viruses count as “life”, little is known about the ones that make it their home. In a new study, researchers have identified a previously unknown bacteriophage residing in the trench, and in doing […]

Blue is one of the rarest colors found in nature – along with the fact there are no green mammals, of course. Now a new species of tarantula has been discovered in Thailand with a blue-violet hue that researchers say resembles the color of electrical sparks.  In Phang-Nga province in Thailand, researchers collected a new […]

Last week, Frank Rubio reached the milestone of spending the longest time in space of any NASA astronaut. Now, he has broken another record. He’s the first US astronaut to have spent a whole consecutive year in space, and he’s still got a few more days to go before he comes down to Earth on […]

Coffee drinkers out there will be familiar with the phenomenon of coffee poops, the poops you suddenly have the urge for after drinking your morning macchiato. The phenomenon is generally accepted amongst coffee drinkers, despite not a lot in the way of scientific investigation. In a small survey, 29 percent of people said that coffee […]

The emergence of life on Earth is a mystery. What were the conditions that made it possible for life to happen here? We do not know. We also don’t know if those conditions are an absolute requirement or if there are different ways for life to come out of the inorganic universe. A group of […]

Tiny blob-like sea creatures could hold the keys to the origins of our nervous systems. A new study put placozoans under the microscope – literally – and discovered that they contain cells that look a little bit like our neurons, something scientists haven’t seen before this far back in evolutionary time. Placozoans have been around […]

Archaeologists believe they have found evidence of a 476,000-year-old wooden structure in Africa. If their work is correct, this would be the earliest known wooden structure ever discovered, marking a mind-blowing milestone in the development of ancient humans. The wooden remains were discovered around the Kalambo River basin of Zambia near to Kalambo Falls. Describing […]

Beefalo are a domesticated breed of cattle that was created with a little bit of encouragement from humans in the 1960s. Made up of part bovine, and part bison, the goal was to create a “superior” cattle that combined the milking ability and general ease of domestic cows, with the hardiness and meat quality of […]

RNA from a Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) specimen preserved more than a century ago has been sequenced. This marks the first time the feat has been achieved for any extinct species, including those whose demise was much more recent. The fact the specimen had been stored at room temperature demonstrates RNA sequencing should be possible for […]

It may feel like the sand dunes and rocky plateaus of the Sahara Desert are as old as time, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. As shown by a new study, this vast strip of North Africa flips from arid desert to lush green woodland every 21,000 years or so. The last period […]

The planet is currently undergoing its sixth mass extinction, but it’s not just individual species being wiped out. A new study has found that human activity is responsible for eliminating entire groups of species, in what researchers are calling a “mutilation of the tree of life”. The Tasmanian tiger, Yangtze River dolphin, and passenger pigeon […]

A reanalysis of thousands of experiments in particle accelerators worldwide has found evidence for an unknown particle, one that does not fit in the Standard Model of particle physics. If confirmed, that alone would be an immense discovery, but the physicists involved go further. They suspect what they have found are “dark photons”, particles that […]

Ancient patches of super fertile black soil have been found dotted throughout the Amazon rainforest, supporting agricultural communities within the dense jungle for thousands of years. Over recent decades, archaeologists have been struggling to come up with an explanation for this so-called Amazonian dark earth, yet new research shows that it was intentionally created by […]

Hunter-gatherers in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile did not live in perfect harmony – quite the opposite, according to research published today. Instead, they were immersed in millennia-old endemic violence, which was a consistent part of life in these ancient societies. Communities maintained a traditional lifestyle of fishing, hunting, and gathering for 10,000 years […]

The night sky around the world is getting brighter. Not only has light pollution from human settlements increased dramatically over the last several decades, but the growing numbers of satellites in space are also affecting the ability of darkness to fall, even where no artificial light is to be found. The faster-than-expected growth in earthly […]

Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi novel Foundation tells the story of mathematician Hari Seldon and his creation of psychohistory, a futuristic discipline that combines history, sociology, and math to make predictions about the future of humanity. In a world of big data, powerful computers, and uncertain times ahead, could such an idea be possible today? Peter Turchin, […]

Snakes are famous for being able to get their jaws around just about anything, from eggs to birds and even centipedes. However, one snake in France bit off much more than it could chew, and that might be just the beginning of the story. Two extraordinary images captured by herpetologist Nicolas Fuento show a viperine […]

In 1912, a British amateur archaeologist told the world he had made an important discovery in Piltdown Village, Sussex, England. According to Charles Dawson, who contacted the Natural History Museum with the information, while exploring Pleistocene gravel beds he had found an unusual human-like fragment of skull.  Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology […]