Astronomers have revealed new processes taking place in our sun’s atmosphere, thanks to exquisite new images of the star. Dirk Schmidt at the US National Solar Observatory and his colleagues used the Goode Solar Telescope in California to produce the images. They used a technique known as adaptive optics to remove the blur of Earth’s atmosphere…
It’s not looking good for the saola. If it still exists, it is one of the world’s rarest large mammals — a deerlike creature from the mountainous rainforests of Vietnam and Laos that’s been called “Asia’s unicorn” because of its scarcity. But the last living saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) was seen in 2013, in photographs from…
Starship’s ninth test flight took place on 27 May Joe Marino/UPI/Shutterstock Another launch, another failure? With the ninth flight of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket ending in the vehicle’s loss, questions are being asked about whether Elon Musk’s company can ever deliver on its promises to return people to the moon, launch new space stations and…
Dark chocolate is high in antioxidant compounds Gabi Musat/500px/Getty Images When in the depths of a YouTube rabbit hole, I find myself watching celebrity food diaries. After a day of avocadoes and green juices, the end-of-day treat is often a few squares of dark chocolate, and social media is awash with claims that the stuff…
This article is part of a special series exploring the radical potential of the human imagination. Read more here. Unlike more specialised kinds of mental processing, there is no dedicated “imagination cortex” that shows up on brain scans. Instead, imagination is the result of inputs from all corners of the brain and throughout the body….
Archaeologists excavate part of the medieval wall system in Mongolia Gideon Shelach-Lavi et al. 2025 Long before the Great Wall of China was constructed, other monumental walls were built across the Eurasian steppes – but they weren’t designed to defend against Mongol armies. Recent excavations reveal that they were erected to control movement of people…
The year was 2013, and the release of a hotly anticipated zombie-apocalypse video game was on the horizon. The game, called The Last of Us, invited players to explore what then seemed a fanciful scenario: a world devastated by a pandemic in which a pathogen kills millions of people. Unlike in many apocalypse fictions, the…
The Birch glacier caused an avalanche of ice, snow, water and rocks as the leading edge collapsed JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock A huge portion of a glacier in the Swiss Alps has broken off from the mountainside, sending rock, mud and ice crashing onto the village of Blatten. Authorities have been warning of a potential collapse of…
When a baby born in Philadelphia was announced as the first person to get a gene therapy designed just for him, many people hailed the achievement as a starting point to treat virtually any genetic disease. But there is a long road that researchers and regulators need to pave before other people with genetic disorders…
CLIMATEWIRE | It was a simple enough question. Is climate change an urgent threat to the planet? To most climate scientists, the answer is straightforward: Yes, rapid warming from fossil fuel burning is pushing Earth toward dangerous tipping points. On supporting science journalism If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing….
