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The Greenland shark is the poster child for animals with extreme longevity – and with good reason. As the longest-living vertebrates on Earth, they develop incredibly slowly in their frosty Arctic home, but when it comes to the longest-living animals on Earth, they’re not all that. The ocean quahog is a pretty unremarkable-looking clam, reaching […]

Archaeologists have found the remains of a 17th-century burial near Pień in the Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. The infant occupant of this grave had been padlocked and buried facedown, in a practice used to stop the wicked dead from returning to haunt the living. The discovery was found close to another grave where a female […]

Around 85 percent of the world’s people identify with a religion, most of which are thousands upon thousands of years old. Of all the countless religious belief systems globally, Hinduism is most often cited as the oldest surviving major religion. However, there are a number of spiritual belief systems that deserve a mention when exploring […]

Brightness fluctuations on a star with 10,000 times the Sun’s volume have been explained by enormous waves rippling in its outer layers. Instead of sloshing endlessly around the star, these waves break once a month, throwing gases into orbit. Naming a star MACHO 80.7443.1718 makes it sound tough. However, this star is called that because […]

If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. That’s especially true when it comes to the internet and the many free services you’re offered, whether it’s social media platforms or search engines. Internet companies often make their billions by advertising and harvesting their users’ data. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to get a […]

Russian scientists have introduced 12 bison to the Russian Arctic in the hope they will restore the ancient ecosystem that was once maintained by woolly mammoths. In addition, the scientists involved hope these animals will help slow down the damage being caused by climate change.  The bison (Bison bison bison – easy to remember), also […]

One of the oldest burial chambers in the Iberian Peninsula has been identified in a cave in northern Spain, with bones from within the pit dated to over 6,000 years ago. Representing some of the earliest Neolithic human remains ever discovered in the region, the find provides a rare insight into the funerary customs of […]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has updated its forecast for the ongoing 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, ramping up its predictions from a near-normal level of activity to an above-normal level of activity. The latest update was announced by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center on August 10.  Advertisement Its previous forecast in May predicted just […]

People have done all kinds of wacky things in the name of science. Thankfully, the events of this story are a bit less drastic than that time a scientist fed birds rice to see if they would explode, or when the discoverer of LSD took a pretty hefty dose to test it out, culminating in […]

This week a new species of tarantula showed off its locks of golden hair, astronomers have set their next target following the first-ever image of a black hole, and a new shark species was discovered in Australia with some funky-looking teeth. Finally, we learned about the first name ever given in print for a dinosaur […]

Airplane mode is not just for when you want to secretly read your WhatsApp messages – it’s actually supposed to be used on, you know, airplanes. You might not have realized it, but your phone’s radio signals could be causing all sorts of havoc as you zoom through the sky, with knock-on effects that could […]

The Perseid meteor shower, the best of the year, is set to peak on Saturday, August 12 with an expected 40 meteors an hour. The Perseids is one of the most prolific meteor showers and this year the conditions are perfect to view the fireworks. The rate per hour of this shower can reach 100 […]

You can find all manner of weird and wonderful stuff in caves. From softball-sized spiders to ancient water, and even the remnants of Neanderthal interior design, some of our planet’s greatest treasures have been found in its hidden hollows. It was in a cave in Morocco that archaeologists made a discovery that changed our view of […]

Plasmons are truly peculiar quasiparticles. They arise from quantized oscillations in plasma, the fourth and most common state of matter. Just like light is an electromagnetic oscillation with its own particle, the photon, other oscillations can create something similar. One of the weirdest plasmons of all is without doubt Pines’ Demon, and the fact that […]

The Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus, is the longest-living vertebrate on the planet with a lifespan that’s thought to possibly extend beyond 500 years. Even at the most conservative estimate of 272 years, it beats any other species on Earth – but the way we came to discover their extreme longevity begins with the atomic bomb. […]

A mini-race to the Moon is gonna happen over the next couple of weeks. The Chandrayaan-3 from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is expected to land on the South Pole of the Moon between August 23 and August 24. And this week, Roscosmos has announced that its very delayed Luna 25 will launch sometime […]

Molecules produced by extinct branches of the human family have been recreated for the first time since the species they came from went extinct. The work might help us in our quest to understand our long-lost cousins, but there is also a more practical concern: fighting pathogens to which others may have been immune. De-extinction, […]

Crying infants may attract Nile crocodiles, according to an eyebrow-raising new study that found these predatory reptiles are well attuned to the tearful cries of some primates. Having been a threat to the human lineage since it first developed, it’s entirely possible the squall of babies may represent attractive stimuli for these massive meat eaters. […]

In one of the greatest upsets of all time, an unfancied sloth has recorded an unlikely victory against a feline predator. Known for their ponderous movements and dopey charm, sloths aren’t exactly built for combat – but as one ocelot found out in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the tree-dwelling dawdlers can pack a punch. The bout […]