News

Relics of the distant past and echoes of recent tragedy lie hidden within the cerulean depths of Belize’s Great Blue Hole. The Great Blue Hole is a large marine sinkhole in the Caribbean Sea, some 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the coast of Belize. With a diameter of 318 meters (1,043 feet) and a depth […]

What’s the biggest volcano in the world? Well, it depends on how you measure. Highest, biggest, most massive; they all have different answers – and each is as fascinating as the last. Highest volcano Sea level to peak, there’s a clear winner for the highest volcano: it’s Nevado Ojos del Salado, on the border between […]

When we’re feeling peaky, we might pop to the pharmacy for a remedy to help get us back on our feet, or visit a doctor for an expert opinion – we may even make ourselves a hearty bowl of chicken soup (there’s more science behind it than you might think). Other animals don’t have the […]

This week, scientists have discovered that one of our organs ages much faster than the others, a 2,000-year-old Siberian mummy’s tattoos provided a rare look at ancient skin art, and for the first time, the entire process of matriphagy in African social spiders has been filmed. Finally, we take an exclusive inside look at NASA’s […]

You may not recognize the name David Phillip Vetter, but you probably know his story. He was the Boy in the Bubble; “Bubble Boy”; a child who, through some of the worst genetic luck possible, lived his entire short life separated from the world by a clear plastic barrier.  But what was his story? Why […]

A study on the movement of molecules within glass has found something pretty astonishing, assuming that the results can be replicated. Processes within glass, as well as a few other materials with similar properties, appear to be time-reversible, potentially telling us something interesting about the second law of thermodynamics. Have you ever noticed, while walking […]

The pitter patter of tiny feet has reportedly come alongside a new world record for an Ohio couple, who recently welcomed a baby born from an embryo frozen for 30.5 years. Despite being less than a week old, that makes Thaddeus Daniel Pierce the world’s “oldest baby”, nabbing the title from a pair of twins […]

Thirty thousand years ago, humans became the last standing human species. Our sister species, Homo neanderthalensis, had held on the longest of all the others, but at last it too was gone. Only Homo sapiens remained. The fate of Neanderthals is the closest we’ll ever get to knowing what it looks like when a human […]

After six years of research and a successful trial period, a South African program that hopes to curb rhino poaching by inserting radioactive material into their horns is now in operation. While conservation efforts have seen rhino populations in South Africa and other parts of their range begin to bounce back from the brink of […]

New species are all around us, and while some have been hiding away in the foliage of tropical forests, some have been hiding in plain sight. In 2009, one manta ray species was revealed to actually be two distinct species, and now, after 15 years of it being suspected, a third new species officially joins […]

Around the polar region of our planet (and even elsewhere in the Solar System), electrically charged particles can form enormous vortices. These space hurricanes, as they are called, deliver a significant amount of energy into the atmosphere, leading to the creation of special auroral displays. Researchers have now published new insights into how they affect […]

Light moves at a finite speed, so whenever we look at something, we look at how it was in the past. This doesn’t matter in your everyday life, but when you consider space, it starts to become important. When we look at the Moon, for example, we are looking at how it was about one […]

MRI machines have become a staple of scientific research and clinical diagnosis. Hundreds of thousands of people owe their lives to them, either directly, or for the discoveries MRIs have facilitated. Some have presumably wondered how they manage to achieve such remarkable clarity of the inner workings of the body without bombarding it with potentially […]

Scientists conducting research in the waters of Cardigan Bay, Wales were treated to a rare sight recently, as their cameras captured footage of a critically endangered angelshark (Squatina squatina), one of the world’s rarest shark species. The camera that nabbed the footage of the shark wasn’t placed in the bay with the specific purpose of […]

Medical advancements are a wonderful thing. When HIV was first discovered back in the 1980s, it was considered a death sentence for anybody who received the diagnosis. With time and careful research, treatments were found; people started to live long and healthy lives with the virus, with a few individuals even being cured in recent […]

A chikungunya virus outbreak in China is prompting US health authorities to take another look at their guidance for travelers. The virus was first identified back in the 1950s, and since then outbreaks have been growing more frequent – but what are the symptoms, and can it be prevented? How do people catch chikungunya virus? […]

A first-of-its-kind implant has just been granted approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Developed by SetPoint Medical, the neuroimmune modulation device works by delivering electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve once a day to initiate the body’s innate anti-inflammatory pathways. It essentially prods the body to […]

Around 2.3 million years ago, ancient human species such as Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus suddenly changed their diets. Using their large brains, these extinct hominins manufactured digging tools that they used to access carbohydrate-rich tubers, bulbs, and corms, despite the fact their teeth were unsuited to chewing these starchy plant fibers. By analyzing the […]

The oldest known wild bird, an albatross named Wisdom, laid an egg at the remarkable age of 74 last year, after pairing with a new mate. Wisdom was first identified and banded by biologists after she laid an egg at Midway Atoll in 1956. As albatrosses do not lay eggs before the age of five, […]