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Scientists have long puzzled over the origins of eukaryotes, the domain of life defined by cells with a membrane-bound nucleus, which includes all animals, plants, fungi, and insects. If they unravel this, perhaps they could understand how complex life came to be. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

Mummification can happen in all sorts of ways. It can be slow and steady, or as rapid as a matter of days. It can result in pleasantly scented mummies, bound mummies, potentially hazardous mummies and, in very rare cases: green mummies. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe […]

Ask someone to name a maritime disaster and chances are they’ll say Titanic, but compared to the Vasa, it did quite well. It took a several-ton iceberg to end the doomed Atlantic crossing, but for the Vasa, all it took was a bit of wind. Thought to be the most expensive ship of its time, […]

It’s the holiday season, and houses across the world have been festooned with seasonal décor – including plants. But if you have pets in the house, it’s important to know about festive plants that might pose a health risk to them, so you can hopefully avoid interrupting your turkey dinner with a trip to the […]

In math, more than any other discipline, reputation is irrelevant. It’s not that it counts for nothing – but with vanishingly few exceptions, if you don’t have a valid proof, your proposition isn’t going to be accepted just on the strength of your name alone. Nobody believed in that tenet more than Richard Dedekind, a […]

Alaska is perhaps better known for snow and ice than it is fire. But new research shows the Last Frontier has been hit by more wildfires over the last century than at any other time since the rule of Ramses the Great. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

As we all learned in 2020, it does not take long for a disease outbreak to turn into a full-blown pandemic. Zoonotic diseases – such as COVID-19 or bird flu – are prime contenders for a future “Disease X” that could spark a global epidemic.  The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]

You would be forgiven for thinking this is a mushroom. It wears a cap, it lives in the undergrowth and it lacks chlorophyll, the pigment responsible for photosynthesis and for plants being green. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. But despite appearances, […]

On September 12, 1940, a dog in France made one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. Marcel Ravidat, an 18-year-old student, was exploring the woods in Montignac in Dordogne, southern France, when his dog named Robot began investigating a small hole next to an uprooted tree. According to some retellings of […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has assured the country that “time is not broken”, after a power outage in Boulder, Colorado, caused official US time to drift by around 4.8 milliseconds over the last week. From 2007 onwards, the official US time (known as NIST UTC) has been set by NIST. It […]

It’s a pretty sad indictment of the current state of things that “rage bait” was recently crowned the word of the year by the Oxford University Press. Referring to online content that is intentionally designed to make us mad, the term may in fact be a product of our evolutionary psychology, reflecting an innate tendency […]

Some species on Earth are exceptionally long-lived, from ancient trees to the untimely demise of Ming the clam. Whales also can possess lifespans well into the hundreds, but these have often been thought of as outliers for a few individuals and not a general rule for whale species. However, scientists have explored whether this is […]

What is magic? Rabbits out of hats? Card tricks? Someone in a sparkly outfit getting sawn in half? Well, yes, but it’s also about defying expectations. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. To psychologist and magician Dr Gustav Kuhn, founder of the […]

On August 4, 2014, a Pedi lamb named Lammie arrived at the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre (HESC) in South Africa with a mission: to become a companion animal for an orphan named Gertjie. Their friendship would capture the hearts of millions, but it was a bit of an odd one. Why? Well, because Gertjie was […]

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, we made it! We have passed the longest night and shortest day. The winter solstice was this weekend, and depending on where you were above the equator, you got the smallest amount of sunlight for the year. It might be surprising to know, though, that while the days […]

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 one made out of plastic. It’s not totally straightforward, but one seems to narrowly take the win. We’ve all heard about […]

A new study from an international team of researchers suggests that the universe may be “lopsided”, and it could be a huge challenge to our current understanding of the cosmos. The more we have learned about the world and the cosmos, the more we have had to let go of ideas of our own importance. […]

When it comes to love, loyalty, and long-term partnerships, humans may naively think we’re unique, but the animal kingdom is full of surprises and faintly familiar trends. Across species, monogamy is actually the exception rather than the rule, and our own patterns of fidelity are just as complex as the rest. Monogamy comes in many […]

In a world awash with AI slop, you’d be forgiven for thinking Rainbow Mountain was cooked up by an image generator. Rest assured, it isn’t. Vinicunca, also known as Rainbow Mountain or Montaña de Siete Colores, is part of the Andean mountain range in the Cusco region of Peru. This is the same part of […]

Salt crystals formed when a saline lake dried up 1.4 billion years ago trapped air inside, providing a sample of the atmosphere of the day, before photosynthesis was productive enough to make it oxygen-rich. New techniques have allowed that air to be analyzed accurately, providing insight into what to expect of an Earth-like planet’s atmosphere […]