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About 400,000 years ago, large parts of Greenland were ice-free. Scrubby tundra basked in the Sun’s rays on the island’s northwest highlands. Evidence suggests that a forest of spruce trees, buzzing with insects, covered the southern part of Greenland. Global sea level was much higher then, between 20 and 40 feet above today’s levels. Around […]

You may have seen a lot of talk about a “gravity hole” in the Indian Ocean. It’s an easier-to-remember name for what scientists call the Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL), and it’s a gravity anomaly that’s been puzzling scientists for a long time. The Earth isn’t smooth. Just look at plunging depths like the Mariana […]

Humanity’s first cities and empires rose and fell in a region cradled between the River Tigris and River Euphrates: Mesopotamia. During the first echelons of recorded history, this ancient land was the birthplace of the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians. Cities thrived, and eventually gave rise to writing, mathematics, astronomy, and stunning artistic developments. […]

Temperatures around the world are soaring. Both California’s Death Valley and China’s Xinjiang region have seen temperatures climb above the 50°C mark. A blistering heatwave is also sweeping across the Mediterranean, causing temperatures in parts of Italy, Spain, France, and Greece to exceed 40°C. In the future, the impact of scorching temperatures will extend beyond […]

The history of medicine is full of dubious claims and outlandish ideas. We have all heard of quack practitioners who claim medical expertise in order to promote and sell nonsense treatments and nostrums. These individuals experience various levels of success, but usually, their bogus claims are discovered before too long. But what about instances where […]

Have you ever wondered how ancient people made maps before the invention of air travel and satellites? Ancient mapmakers from across the world relied on a mix of artistry, exploration, mathematical ingenuity, and a heap of imagination to capture the vastness of the lands they knew and many of the ones they believed were out […]

An unidentified arachnid fossil was retrieved from the Late Carboniferous (Moscovian) strata of strata of Piesberg near Osnabrück in Lower Saxony, Germany, a few years ago. The mysterious specimen was passed on to fossil arachnid expert Dr Jason Dunlop of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, who in a recent study has revealed its astonishing […]

In February 1971, physicists working at the National Accelerator Laboratory (NAL), Illinois, were faced with a puzzle. They were testing a new state-of-the-art machine they had built. The 200-billion-electron-volt (BeV) proton synchrotron particle accelerator was not only extremely sophisticated, but it was also the largest machine in the world at the time. To say its […]

China has long been touted as a revolutionary when it comes to wind power. Earlier this year, it was reported that the country had begun construction of a wind farm using what were then hailed as the largest turbines ever seen, each with a capacity of 16 megawatts. Now, a new milestone has been reached, […]

Rats, to some, are a menace – but to others, they are an adorable cutie-pie of a pet. Scientists have now identified that a part of the rat’s brain called the periaqueductal gray (PAG) is critical for laughter and playfulness, all through tickling them.   Playing is necessary for development and forming connections in both […]

There’s nothing more badass than heading into battle with a space arrow in your quiver, and one Bronze Age dude (or lady) knew exactly how that felt. After scanning an area of Switzerland for archaeological artifacts made of meteoritic iron, researchers discovered a single arrowhead that had been forged from extraterrestrial metal. Reporting their find […]

Across the animal queendom, some species do without sex, reproducing asexually. For some wasps and lizards this is a common thing. In other cases, it’s a rare resort for a female with no males – or at least no males she considers worth her time – around. Animals in captivity astonish their keepers now and […]

If you are ever lucky enough to travel down the Peruvian Amazon, you may see a rather magical sight. Amongst all the incredible animal species that the area is home to, butterflies have been filmed doing something rather incredible: drinking the tears of the turtles that live there. Tropical entomologist and science communicator Phil Torres […]

Aliens are big news at the moment, what with the accounts of potential extraterrestrial encounters being discussed in Congress. No matter what you personally believe about the possibility of alien visitation, there is no denying the sheer amount of dodgy evidence used by some to support their existence. This has nothing to do with whether […]

Hidden below Guatemala’s lush Petén rainforest lies an ancient city not touched by humans for more than 1,000 years, but in its heyday, it was home to millions of Mesoamericans who built a sophisticated, sprawling empire. Now, for the first time, a team of international archaeologists has discovered and mapped tens of thousands of ancient […]

This week, bowhead whales were found to possibly be pregnant for up to two years making them a contender for the longest gestation in a mammal, magnetic heat waves might be able to explain why the solar corona is so much hotter than the sun’s surface, and we investigate the extremely rare medical case of […]

If you have ever seen any forensics show, we’re sure you will have seen some blood showing up in a darkened room like a deathly glow-in-the-dark art project. But, what is actually making it glow? Put yourself in the shoes of a killer. The body is now gone, but there is a suspicious pool of […]

Pop the champagne and blow out the candles, because a new baby has been born – a baby volcano, that is. On July 10, 2023, three cracks appeared at the base of a mountain in Iceland, spurting lava and gas into the air. While two of the cracks closed overnight, the remaining one has since […]

An “earthquake” was recorded by a seismologist in Seattle recently – but the culprit wasn’t the grinding of tectonic plates, oh no. It was the Shake It Off of the Swifties. The “Swift Quake” caused by Taylor Swift concerts was recorded by seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, reports CNN, and it made the 2011 “Beast Quake” of […]