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From time to time, Mars rovers and orbiting spacecraft send back striking images of unusual rock formations on the Red Planet. These discoveries range from the curious—like a donut-shaped rock that might not even originate from Mars—to the playful, such as the so-called avocado rock or a pile of stones jokingly dubbed ‘bones.’ Recently, attention […]

Time to refresh your geography: Earth actually has five oceans, not four, as many of us were taught. In 2021, National Geographic officially recognized the Southern Ocean as the world’s fifth ocean. This decision ended decades of debate over the waters encircling Antarctica and, quite literally, put the Southern Ocean on the map.  Traditionally, only […]

Psychologists are studying an optical illusion so powerful it can even fool the brain’s automatic visual reflexes. Strangely, only about 80 percent of people seem to experience the full effect, and researchers still don’t know why. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. […]

Around the turn of the century, a number of huge tunnels were discovered in South America. After investigation, the scientists who discovered them found that they are not made by any humans, nor geological process. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Professor […]

Could black holes be tunnels to other locations in space-time? Could they be wormholes connecting different regions of the universe? A study gives a resounding answer to this question. Black holes are complicated beasts. They have consistently broken our physics and studying them has opened our eyes to the limitations of our knowledge. One crucial […]

Communication is key. That’s true on Earth and it’s true in space. But in space, you need to contend with a crucial fact of life. The speed of light is finite and distances between worlds are pretty big; between star systems, they are enormous. An analysis envisions what it would be like to communicate with […]

At the outbreak of the Second World War, before a single shot was fired, the British began killing hundreds of thousands of their own pets. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. The British pet massacre is one of the stranger tragedies of […]

Kids are full of curious questions, often asked repeatedly, and usually right when you’re trying to cook. One such question came from the 9-year-old child of a Reddit user, who wondered: “If helium is lighter than air, would a balloon with a vacuum in it, also float?” The rest of this article is behind a […]

This week, a new lineage of tropical mammoth has been discovered in Mexico, the latest in the saga of whether the small-brained Homo naledi may have buried its dead, and violent storms led to the perfect preservation of hatchling pterosaurs. Finally, we ask: what is the largest egg of any animal? Spoiler, it’s not an […]

Goldfish are often – and unfairly – maligned for having super-short attention spans. In reality, goldfish have quite impressive brains. They can also grow to be absolutely massive and are competent motorists, so you should watch what you say about them. Humans, on the other hand? If recent research is to be believed, our attention […]

A 1,000-year-old gaming piece made from walrus ivory may be the first depiction of an actual Viking ever found, revealing how these ancient Norsemen wore their hair. Sporting a center parting and sideburns, the miniature figurine – which probably represented a king – may also be stroking its massive beard in an apparent display of […]

The longest snake in the world is the reticulated python, Malayopython reticulatus. While they typically stretch to lengths surpassing 6 meters (20 feet), the longest ever recorded was said to be a whopping 10-meter (33-foot) long reticulated python that was found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 1912. Unfortunately, that lengthy specimen was also […]

Scientists at the University of Leicester, UK are turning to an unexpected source in their mission for new medical treatments: zoo animal poo. Yes, the waste from giraffes, tigers, elephants, and other exotic animals has been collected, but not for fertilizer. Hidden inside animal droppings are fascinating little viruses called bacteriophages (or phages for short) […]

It’s rare enough to find a plant encased in amber, rarer still to find part of a dinosaur – so imagine paleontologists’ surprise when they discovered this feathery “flower” was in fact a feathery tail that once belonged to a juvenile theropod. The fascinating case of mistaken identity began back in 2015 when Lida Xing […]

A former NASA analyst on TikTok has explained the (hopefully obvious) reason why photographs of our galaxy – the Milky Way – are not real. Responding to the question “How do we take pictures of the Milky Way if we are in it?”, science communicator and former NASA space analyst Alexandra Doten explained that we […]

Teeth and the evolution of teeth have long fascinated researchers in all manner of species. Questions arise, such as why they evolved, why they were lost, and even in some cases, why they evolved again. However, these questions focus on teeth within the mouth – one fish species is growing teeth straight out of its […]

The Late Cretaceous was a time of ocean giants, with the likes of scarily sharp-toothed mosasaurs and ridiculously long-necked elasmosaurs bigging it up in the seas. But while these might be some of the more famous aquatic reptilian behemoths from this period, they aren’t the only ones. Around 74 million years ago, they were joined […]

Pterosaur fossils aren’t easy to find, especially well-preserved ones. Often, you’re looking at the odd bone here and there. That is, until you start looking in the Solnhofen Limestones in Germany. Here, scientists have found almost perfectly preserved hatchling pterosaurs; meanwhile, the adults are all in pieces. The solution to that mystery appears to rest […]

New research has identified a new restriction on the chemistry involved in the Earth’s core, explaining how it was able to crystallize millions of years ago. According to this work, the core would have needed to be made of 3.8 percent carbon for crystallization to begin, which means carbon is likely far more abundant in […]

Eyeless, colorless fish inhabit the rivers running through caverns beneath the eastern and southern United States. Who needs eyes or a flashy appearance when you live in complete darkness? Remarkably, this trait evolved independently at least four times among cavefish, making them a striking example of convergent evolution in action. Scientists at Yale University examined […]