News

Back in 1893, Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo developed the principle that, once a structure is lost in evolution, then it is lost forever. It basically treats evolution like a one-way street and that evolution is not reversible. This simple concept became known as Dollo’s law. However, the law may not be as simple as you […]

Avi Loeb, the sometimes controversial Harvard physicist who believes aliens may have visited the Solar System, spent last month searching the Pacific Ocean for remnants of an interstellar object. The team was on the hunt for an object known as CNEOS 2014-01-08, or sometimes Interstellar meteor 1, which flew over Papua New Guinea in 2014. […]

India’s Chandrayan-3 lunar mission is proving a scientific success as well as a technical triumph, with its Pragyan rover successfully analyzing the composition of the Moon’s surface close to the lunar south pole. The data returned has value beyond that of previous missions, both crewed and robotic, because the area being studied is close to […]

Think of an extinction event, and your mind probably leaps to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs – but Earth has been through five mass extinction events (so far) and is possibly going through our sixth. Of the extinction events, the Cretaceous mass extinction event that put an end to the non-avian dinosaurs is not […]

Doctors in Australia got the shock of their lives when they discovered that a 64-year-old woman’s troubling symptoms had a seriously unusual cause: an 8-centimeter (3-inch) worm. The worm was pulled out of the woman’s brain, alive and kicking, during a surgical procedure, in what is the first reported case of this particular parasitic infection […]

The history of medicine is filled with grisly stories that push the boundary between brave medicine and irresponsible cruelty. But one story doesn’t just strain that boundary, it stamps all over it. The story of Dr Roberts Bartholow and his pioneering work on the human brain is recognized as a terrible example of unethical conduct […]

A biological pathway through which myelin, the protective coating on nerve fibers, can be repaired and regenerated has been discovered in a new study. The ramifications of this finding could be far-reaching for those with neurological diseases affecting myelin, many of which are currently untreatable. If the axons that shoot out from the cell bodies […]

The words “sabertooth cat” might conjure up images of large-fanged felines prowling around the ancient world, but did these big predatory pussy cats roar or purr? New research has revealed that the answer could be hidden in just a few little bones beneath the throat. Vocalization in extant cat species is driven primarily by the […]

Our hopes for finding life on Mars have been downgraded significantly over the years, from the 1870s when many believed we’d find a complex system of canals up there (and presumably a creature intelligent enough to have invented barge holidays to build them too).  Now, we are on the hunt for microbial life on the […]

A team of geologists has recently found a way to locate where diamonds, one of the most expensive gemstones in the world, could form.  Diamonds, the hardest naturally occurring material we have found, can only be created at the immense pressure and high temperatures found deep within the Earth. We know that they are – […]

There’s no shortage of impressive examples of camouflage in the animal world. Whether it’s hiding on a branch, blending in with bird poop, or straight-up pretending to be someone else, nature has gifted us all manner of masters of disguise. Luckily for us, though, a group of scientists was recently able to spot the wood […]

Do you love cilantro, or do you hate it? The common kitchen herb, also known as coriander, is a staple in parts of the globe – and yet some people think it tastes like soap. Fresh cilantro is the leafy part of the Coriandrum sativum plant, which is entirely edible. As well as fresh leaves, […]

In a concerted effort to tackle the climate crisis, humans are turning to offshore wind farms (OWFs) as a source of renewable energy – how does this affect the surrounding sea life? OWFs are, quite literally, one of the biggest forms of renewable energy. The world’s largest covers an area of 462 square kilometers (around […]

Mysterious blobs are the ocean’s bread and butter, as anyone who’s lived near a beach will tell you. All kinds of suspicious lumps can wash ashore, but among them, one of the most peculiar is sea pork, a porcine-like blob that’s meaty, but probably not all that appetizing. Sea pork refers to several species of […]

You might already be aware that the name “strawberry” is a misnomer, as strawberries aren’t really berries at all. Well, it seems strawberries are full of surprises, or rather covered in them because those seedy-looking white dots aren’t actually seeds. The strawberries’ pitted accessories are called achenes, and they are in fact the plant’s fruit, with each […]

The size of the human brain has roughly tripled over the past four million years of hominid evolution, yet the factors driving this encephalic expansion are not fully understood. Attempting to solve this conundrum, a very brainy biologist has devised a computer model that recreates the development of our cognitive contraption, revealing that the human […]

The humble honeybee could become the newest recruit in the fight against a growing global health threat. In a new study, researchers enlisted honeybees, using them to keep track of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment. AMR is the result of bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens evolving to the point where they are no longer […]

Two new dinosaur species have been described by scientists in Morocco, dating back to the period just before an asteroid wiped out 90 percent of life on Earth 66 million years ago. They were primitive cousins of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex, only with bulldog snouts and even tinier arms. Bless. Dating back to the end […]

India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission has made a world (or moon) first: measuring the temperature of the soil at the lunar south pole. Last week, the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover successfully touched down on the lunar surface, making India the fourth nation on Earth to land successfully on the Moon, and the first to land near the […]

The world map was not always as complete as it is today and for centuries explorers spent time, money, and, sometimes, their lives, traveling the planet to fill in the gaps. Relying on a mix of observation, hypothesis, and pure myth-testing, these explorers searched for landmasses and peoples both real and imagined.  As you can […]