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An ugly, misshapen blob of glassified soil could rewrite the story of humanity’s technological heritage, suggesting that we began experimenting with copper smelting while we were still hunter-gatherers. Dated to around 10,800 years ago, the greenish-yellow lump was discovered at a Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Türkiye and shows signs of deliberate exposure to extremely high […]

For the first time, a giant helical structure spanning millions of kilometers has been captured on camera as it emerged from the Sun. ADVERTISEMENT In 2020, the European Space Agency (ESA), with help from NASA, launched the Solar Orbiter on a mission to get the closest images of the Sun ever taken, as well as […]

Issue 33 (April 2025) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. Read Issue 33 of our digital magazine now by clicking below! Use the arrows to navigate or […]

Increasing numbers of people in central Africa are claiming to have seen a mysterious creature known as the Mokèlé-mbèmbé, the dinosaur of the Congo. But, are we about to discover a hitherto unknown species or is there something else going on? The dinosaur of the forest basin  ADVERTISEMENT Mokèlé-mbèmbé is a legendary creature said to […]

You can often hear people saying that a game, an album, a movie, or a TV series have altered their brain chemistry. Euphemistically that is something so good that radically alters how you actually think. Well, in some cases this might actually happen and the most famous example of this is probably Tetris. The capability […]

Life is full of big decisions, and making a choice between seemingly endless options can be – well, paralyzingly hard. Should you buy this apartment, or that one? Share with this housemate, or someone else? Settle for Mr Pretty-Damn-Great, or hold out to see if Mr Perfect comes along? ADVERTISEMENT It’s enough to make you despair […]

Cultivated or “lab-grown” meat and fish is often presented as a more eco and animal-friendly alternative to regular meat products, but new research suggests it might have another benefit too – it could one day see people who are allergic to seafood able to eat it again without a reaction being triggered. ADVERTISEMENT That research […]

Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake (and the largest tropical lake in the world), spreading into three countries and supporting over 47 million people. But it has a significant problem that threatens the future of that support – it’s turning green. Why is Lake Victoria turning green? ADVERTISEMENT Unfortunately, this isn’t because of a St […]

Much about aging feels like a gradual process – you don’t go to bed fresh-faced the day before your 60th birthday and then wake up looking saggier than a Shar Pei. But, when it comes to the brain, a recent study suggests that there’s a point where it begins to age much more rapidly, before […]

A physicist believes he may have solved the notorious “grandfather paradox”, suggesting that time travel to the past may not be ruled out by this particular branch of physics. ADVERTISEMENT First off, what is the grandfather paradox? Unlike the bootstrap paradox, which gets a little messy, the grandfather paradox is fairly simple to explain. Say […]

This week, a lost aurora on Neptune that was first hinted at 36 years ago has finally been captured by JWST, a newly discovered 90-million-year-old therizinosaur species has shocked scientists with one “unusual” trait, and, new evidence suggests the first giant land organism may have no living relatives, concluding they may be part of an […]

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The world needs more batteries. That’s what we keep hearing in the push for greener energy, and we can’t build enough to meet global demand without obtaining more battery metals.  ADVERTISEMENT Here we come across a bit of a sticking point, because getting more metal has historically called for more mining. Mine on land and […]

This week on Break It Down: a new study has become the first to document what sound a shark makes, Neptune has been confirmed to have an aurora thanks to the best telescope ever, a pipeline construction site turned up the terrifying claw of a new species of therizinosaur, why people are trying to prevent […]

Last weekend, on March 22, the Arctic Sea reached its maximum coverage of ice for the winter season and it is the lowest since satellite records began 47 years ago. The sea ice covered 14.33 million square kilometers  (5.53 million square miles), about 1.3 million square kilometers (506,000 square miles) below the 1981-2010 average. That […]

Spring has well and truly sprung in the Northern Hemisphere, and while that might see more of us reaching for the antihistamines as the blooms bring pollen, hay fever isn’t the only thing to be cautious of. In the US, some bears are beginning to come out of hibernation, and that means it’s time to […]

Imagine, if you will, two glasses of water, identical in all respects but one: their temperature. One contains hot water; the other, cold. You put both in the freezer. Which ices up first? ADVERTISEMENT The answer seems obvious, right? It’s gotta be the cold glass – the water inside has fewer degrees to drop. And […]

Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in February and made some bold predictions for the future and the role that artificial intelligence (AI) might play in it. The comments have recently making the rounds online – and there are a lot of feelings surrounding them. ADVERTISEMENT Gates […]

The animal world is always full of surprises. Even a long-studied species can hold a few secrets hidden between their fur or scales. From the sounds sharks make to the hunting habits of cuttlefish, there is always something new to discover. Now researchers may have stumbled upon a rare case of bird mimicry inside a […]

Humans are clever things. We’re inventors, artists, scientists, and so much more, but despite our incredible achievements, we’re still pretty dumb when we want to be. Our brains are evolutionarily and psychologically predisposed to make certain fallacies when it comes to our thinking, and a common one relates to the subtle difference between causation and […]