2026

A 187-foot-tall dipterocarp tree For decades, scientists believed that the tallest trees faced one of nature’s toughest challenges: Getting water from their roots to leaves hundreds of feet above the ground. Now, a study of towering trees in Southeast Asia suggests some of the world’s tallest flowering plants have evolved specialised systems to overcome that…

Albert Einstein (Image: Wikipedia) Albert Einstein wrote, “Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” The line is a straightforward claim about where genuinely original work actually comes from. Not from committees, not from rigid instruction, and not from people working under constant supervision, but from…

Strange Spheres Washed Ashore on an Australian Beach. Authorities Say They’re Probably ‘Space Balls’ What began as an ordinary day in a small Australian beach town turned into an unusual investigation after six large metallic spheres washed ashore. The discovery forced residents to evacuate and raised fears that the objects could be dangerous.The shiny objects…

Scientists have long relied on chemical traces locked inside ancient rocks to piece together the story of early life. Fossils from the deepest reaches of Earth’s history are rare, often fragmentary and difficult to interpret. Isotopes, by contrast, can survive for billions of years. Among the most informative are those linked to nitrogen, an element…

Innovation often begins with solving problems that others consider impossible. For Dr Robert Sola Okojie, a Nigerian-born engineer and inventor, that pursuit has led to a career spanning more than two decades at Nasa and groundbreaking contributions to space technology. After 21 years at Nasa and securing 21 US patents, he was inducted into the…

From hundreds of kilometres above Earth, a national celebration looked very different. While crowds gathered across the United States for the country’s 250th anniversary, astronauts aboard the International Space Station watched the evening lights spread across the planet below. On July 4, as fireworks filled the skies over Los Angeles, the display became part of…

Far beyond Pluto, where sunlight is faint and temperatures remain extremely low, countless icy bodies drift through the outer reaches of the Solar System. These distant objects, known as trans-Neptunian objects, have long been viewed as frozen relics left over from the Solar System’s formation. Most are thought to be too small to hold onto…