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The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures that were put in place to control it had far-reaching consequences for humanity. This once-in-a-generation event affected education, the world economy, and – most obviously – physical and mental health. But there was one projected consequence that didn’t actually come to fruition, according to new analysis. With lockdowns and […]

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The Hektoria Glacier is disappearing at a rate that barely seems possible, losing almost half its area nearly 10 times as fast as any glacier ever observed. Although the Hektoria is small, with little direct impact on global sea levels, the processes that made this possible could happen on larger glaciers, making this a warning […]

A new species of Portuguese man o’ war has been discovered floating in the waters of northeast Japan. Spotted by a student-led research group, the discovery marks a species that has never been seen before in the area, raising questions about shifting distributions of marine creatures due to the effects of climate change.  The rest […]

In the Gulf Of California, a group of orcas have developed specialized shark-hunting skills that mean they can make short work of one of the ocean’s greatest predators. Known as Moctezuma’s pod, they ram great whites so they get flipped upside-down, and then take advantage of their immobilized state to suck out their liver. The […]

The Neolithic inhabitants of the South Pacific feasted on large, fast-moving marine predators, including multiple species of shark and tuna. By identifying the remains of these ancient meals at a 1,800-year-old site in Micronesia, researchers have begun to reveal the remarkable fishing strategies employed by these prehistoric hunter-gatherers. The rest of this article is behind […]

Supermassive black holes remain full of mysteries, from their formation to their behaviors. One of them might soon be solved, though this won’t be coming from some new space observations. The insights from a particle accelerator on Earth deliver a solution to a long-standing problem. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]

Chicken, whether Kentucky fried or simply buttered, is a large part of the human diet. The average American, for instance, eats around 45 kilograms (100 pounds) of chicken every year, according to the National Chicken Council. If you were so inclined, you could fashion that amount of chicken into a sculpture larger than a German […]

In what might be the coolest solution to “how to find fossils”, a new study has revealed how we can take to the skies when trying to find dinosaur remains all thanks to vibrant orange-colored lichens. Two species (Rusavskia elegans and Xanthomendoza trachyphylla) were found to grow across as much as 50 percent of exposed […]

Magnetic deposits laid down during the Ediacaran Period, 630 million years ago to 541 million years ago, are not inexplicable fluctuations, some researchers argue. Instead, there is a pattern encoded in the rocks of Morocco’s Anti-Atlas Mountains consistent with rapid shifts in the planet’s magnetic field. The Earth’s magnetic field is stable enough that people […]

Two weeks ago, interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was at conjunction, on the opposite side of the Sun with respect to Earth. Last week, it reached perihelion, the closest point it would ever get to the Sun. Now it is back from behind the Sun and we can see it again. In fact, Earth is moving towards […]

On November 2, 2000, astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev entered the International Space Station (ISS). That means that for the last 25 years, there have always been some humans in space – a quarter of a century in which a few members of our species have not been on the […]

People are ever so slightly horrified and a little grossed out after learning the foamy truth about how horses sweat.  Every now and then on the Internet, people rediscover something weird about animals that breaks their expectations. For instance, in 2020, people (including myself) were pretty shocked to find out what koalas sound like, while […]

The Maldives has become the first country in the world to successfully implement a generational tobacco ban, with the new law making it illegal for anyone born on or after January 1, 2007, to buy, use, or sell any form of tobacco. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or […]

History is full of crummy times. Flip to any chapter in the human story, and you’ll find that peace and prosperity are the exception, not the norm. Sure, periods of plenty and politeness have been enjoyed, but they often came crashing down in an outbreak of violence or, if you were lucky, they slowly rotted away into obscurity. However, of […]

There’s a curious tale that often circulates on internet forums and podcasts, a legend of a 15-meter (50-foot) snake said to lurk in the depths of Central Africa, known to lunge from the jungle and strike at passing helicopters when disturbed. Like most stories in cryptozoology, it’s almost certainly nonsense – but it’s one hell […]

In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager probes to explore the outer reaches of the Solar System and the interstellar space beyond. Eventually, both spacecraft encountered a blazing “wall of fire” at the system’s boundary, recording temperatures between 30,000 and 50,000 kelvin (about 54,000 to 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit) as they passed through. There are a few […]

This week, could the world’s first meteorite collision with a moving vehicle explain this Tesla’s melted windscreen? Of Earth’s 34 vital signs, 22 are now at record levels, and a 42,000-year-old sharp, yellow crayon suggests Neanderthals were creating art. Finally, we take a look at true crime; why it’s so widely enjoyed, and is consuming […]

Ice blankets about 98 percent of Antarctica, concealing nearly all of its land beneath a frozen shell. But thanks to remarkable advances in imaging technology, scientists can now reveal what the continent truly looks like beneath all that ice. The Bedmap2 was created back in 2013 using vast amounts of data on surface elevation, ice […]

Before a spacecraft is sent to another world, it is thoroughly sterilized. Space agencies take planetary protection very seriously. We do not want to spread Earthly life elsewhere or think we have discovered a possible life signal on another world, when we’ve actually simply caught a stowaway. It is possible, though, that some bacteria can […]