News

Take a look a look through a telescope this week and there’s a chance you might make out a glowing dot edging across the night sky. Could it be a certain Saint prepping for his annual trip across the globe? Or perhaps the celestial omen of a new messiah?  Unfortunately, there’s nothing supernatural going on […]

On December 11, the Artemis I mission concluded with the successful splashdown of the Orion capsule in the Pacific Ocean. The end of this mission came on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 17 moon landing – the last time humans walked on the surface of the Moon. The Artemis program aims to land humans, […]

The Northern White Rhinoceros is a subspecies on the very edge of existence. Just two individuals remain alive after catastrophic poaching has wiped out the population. The last two surviving rhinos are both females; 33-year-old Najin, and her daughter, 22-year-old Fatu. You might think this would mean the end of the species entirely – but […]

A lone moose was spotted wandering around Mount Rainier National Park in southwest Washington for the first time last week, some 563 kilometers (350 miles) from where large numbers of the species can be found in the Selkirk Mountains. Rangers from the Mount Rainier National Park shared a photo of the moose as it trampled […]

Two years and one week ago, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 delivered to Earth a special cargo: samples of material collected on Asteroid Ryugu. Analysis of the precious few grams of soil from the surface and subsurface of the asteroid has revealed new insights into the past of our planet and the whole solar system. An […]

Winter has arrived in many places, and for some, this comes with frosty and magical winter mornings. Unfortunately, for a few people, the mystical time can also bring a sense of pain – their bodies can experience more than just cold toes and fingers, but an allergic reaction to the freezing weather.   This allergy […]

Genes facilitating the sixth sense – proprioception – have been described in a new study in mice. The sixth sense, often overlooked in favor of its five more famous counterparts, is the sense of body position in space on which our ability to perform coordinated movements depends. Proprioception, unlike the senses of sight, hearing, smell, […]

Last week, NASA announced that members of the Artemis I mission had hidden several easter eggs around the capsule for people to solve. We have to admit that some had us stumped and we even dismissed one as part of the design rather than an actual puzzle to solve. The puzzles were tributes to late […]

A TikTokker has explained to the masses why the UK can feel colder than Canada, even though it definitely isn’t, after another who has lived in both countries posed that exact question. “Ok someone please tell me how I was able to survive Canadian winters for 25 years of my life,” Megan Ruthie said on […]

Thanks to a new experimental gene therapy, one teen’s previously incurable leukemia is now entirely undetectable, marking an incredible breakthrough in genetic immunotherapies. Alyssa, 13, from Leicester in the UK, was told that the only remaining options were end-of-life care to ensure she was comfortable as the aggressive T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia took hold – […]

Microdoses of psilocybin – the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms – have been found to normalize certain elements of cognitive performance in young rats with autism. And while it’s far too early to say if the drug produces the same benefits in humans with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the fact that larger doses of psilocybin […]

While getting ready to deck the halls and put up the Christmas tree this year, you may have been wondering what’s better for the planet: slashing down a natural tree or buying a synthetic reusable one made out of plastic. It’s a bit of a fiddly question, but real trees are marginally better for the […]

A man who showed up to the doctors with fevers and swelling discovered that his problems were caused by worms dancing around in his scrotum. The 26-year-old man had been suffering from low-level fever, and pain and swelling of his scrotum for around a month before he was seen at an outpatient clinic at a […]

You know what we love about the holiday season? The savings! And our love of savings means you get to score even more throughout December, with new deals dropping all the time — like this 24-hour Green Monday flash sale that’ll help you upgrade your PC’s productivity software. Today only, you can get the entire […]

In just a few hours, the Orion spacecraft will come back to Earth. It will be performing a maneuver that no other craft designed to carry humans has done before, a skip entry. This will allow for greater control over where the capsule will re-enter. As NASA announced on December 8, Orion will splash down […]

Multiple myeloma is an incurable type of bone marrow cancer; however, a new therapy has seen success in as many as 73 percent of patients across two clinical trials. The novel therapy works by turning the immune system on the body’s diseased bone marrow, killing the cancer cells. It’s called bispecific antibody therapy (shelf name […]

If you’re working from home all or part of the time, the chances are that your home working space is getting chillier as winter sets in. But with heating so expensive right now, having it on all day isn’t really an affordable option. So what can we do to stay warm? In evolutionary terms, we […]

If you’ve been on the lookout for a really interesting and unique gift this holiday season, then you need to listen up. It’s hard to buy the perfect gift, particularly for the person on your list who either has everything or simply buys what they need in the moment. Finding a clever gift can be […]

China is the only major country which, until now, has continued to enforce a zero-COVID strategy. Other countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, also sought to eliminate COVID entirely earlier in the pandemic. But all eventually abandoned this approach because of the mounting social and economic costs and the realisation that local elimination of […]