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The world’s population is currently around 8.2 billion. Wait, is it actually? A new study suggests that governments, international bodies, and researchers may have dramatically underestimated the number of humans currently living on Earth. ADVERTISEMENT The reason, they say, is that most datasets severely underestimate the number of people living in rural environments that are […]

A beautiful photograph of a cougar that met its end at the bottom of a lake shows the remarkably intact animal covered in a fluffy layer of algae and sediment. Look online and you’ll find many people debating the origins of the photograph, in some cases stating it shows the early stages of fossilization, while […]

Strange, tiny structures have been found in the rocks around the deserts of southern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Scientists are now confident that these unusual formations were not made by a geological process, but by a mysterious lifeform that remains unknown. ADVERTISEMENT The structures are known as micro-burrows, unusual tube-like tunnels – about half […]

ADVERTISEMENT Despite a relatively short history as a nation, going back just a couple of centuries, there is a precedent for such an ostrich policy. For over 60 years, the US banned the use of the word “tornado” in weather forecasts, forbidding potentially life-saving predictions of their formation. In 1877, Michigan-born John Park Finley enlisted […]

In its dying moments, the Blue Ghost lunar lander captured the first high-definition images of a sunset on the Moon. The lunar nightfall differs subtly from an Earthly sunset, and the images could help unravel a long-standing mystery surrounding an unusual haze first observed on the Moon in the 1960s. ADVERTISEMENT Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based […]

Things are getting a bit spicy at Mount Spurr in Alaska, where geologists have been reporting an increase in seismic activity for almost a year. Based on the latest developments, officials are now bracing themselves for what could be an imminent eruption. ADVERTISEMENT Located in the Aleutian Arc, Mount Spurr is an ice-covered stratovolcano complex […]

A man in Australia who received a titanium heart has achieved a double world-first, after becoming the only person to survive with the artificial heart for more than 100 days, and to be discharged from hospital with the implant still in place. ADVERTISEMENT The patient, who was in his 40s, had been experiencing severe heart […]

We all enjoy a nice hot cup of joe to perk us up in the morning – or at least, around three out of four of us do, which is close enough. But it makes you think, doesn’t it: if we drink it to wake up, then when should we stop drinking it? ADVERTISEMENT It’s […]

Images have been securely transmitted by satellite using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) between ground stations in China and South Africa, a record-breaking distance of 12,900 kilometers (8,000 miles). More important than the distance is the drastic reduction in weight, and therefore ultimately of cost, in the transmission and reception technology. ADVERTISEMENT The weirdness of quantum […]

A NASA spacecraft far from Earth has made an unexpected discovery, after turning its instruments towards a dark patch of sky at the galactic poles for over 200 hours. ADVERTISEMENT Studying the background light that is illuminating its journey, the New Horizons team discovered it is much brighter than expected, and they don’t know why. […]

It was a Monday morning like any other in mid-March 1995. But then again, that’s always how these things go, isn’t it?  ADVERTISEMENT As people rushed through the city streets on their way to work, five men stepped onto the packed trains of the Tokyo underground. Although the trains were on separate lines, each had […]

When Howard Carter famously discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, he found the pharaoh’s body covered in the petals of a type of water lily known as the blue lotus. Containing two psychoactive alkaloids, the flower produces hallucinatory effects and is thought to have been ingested during erotic ancient rituals in which participants sought […]

If there’s one thing you should know about Yellowstone National Park, it’s that it’s always changing – and that can mean the appearance of a brand-new hydrothermal feature, which is exactly what happened last summer. ADVERTISEMENT The feature in question was discovered on August 5, 2024, when a park scientist driving through the Roadside Springs […]

Vaccines do not, cannot, and have not ever caused autism. There is not a shred of scientific evidence to support the belief that they do. Unfortunately, fears around vaccines were so stoked by this myth that vaccine hesitancy got a new boost in the late 1990s, which hasn’t really gone away. The result? Diseases that […]

The velvet worm is pretty cute as invertebrate predators go. A leathery rope of an animal with a fuzzy, velvet-like texture. It has two antennae making it look a bit like Zuul, but when it’s time to fight, it takes inspiration from Spiderman. ADVERTISEMENT Velvet worms are sensitive to air currents, so despite being almost […]

It’s easy to blindly accept that clocks move clockwise, sweeping left to right on the upper half of the face and right to left on the lower half. But have you ever wondered why this is the case? It isn’t dictated by some fundamental law of physics, nor our psychological perception of time, but rather […]

Lightning is just one of the many spectacular luminous events that occur in Earth’s atmosphere. A particularly sought-after and mysterious one is red sprites, flashes of red-orange light that happen at altitudes of 50 to 90 kilometers (31 to 56 miles). They are very difficult to capture as despite being huge – up to 40 […]

Keeping a close eye on your blood glucose levels is part and parcel of life for people living with diabetes. The last few years, however, have seen a sharp rise in health-conscious people without the condition wanting to monitor their blood sugar, too – but is there actually a need to? How are people tracking […]

Antarctica isn’t a floating chunk of ice like the Arctic. Beneath its frozen surface sits a solid continent of mountains, rocky terrain, and gold-spewing volcanoes. This hidden world has now been revealed in stunning detail thanks to a groundbreaking map developed by international scientists led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). ADVERTISEMENT Called Bedmap3, it […]

Half a century or so ago, the world was facing a nightmare made real. A mystery monster had taken root – it was in the lakes around us and the clouds in the sky, embedded in the Earth, and infecting the very air we breathed.  ADVERTISEMENT It killed forests in Europe and wiped out marine […]