When scientists have a will, there is always a way. In a shocking yet successful project, leftover hair from haircuts that is not suitable for wigs and would have gone to waste is now being used to prevent oil and other pollutants from getting into the water and the trees.In Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay,…
In August 1868, the Sun briefly became a laboratory for astronomers gathered in India to watch a total solar eclipse. Among them was the French astronomer Pierre Jules Janssen, who turned a spectroscope towards the bright prominences rising around the eclipsed solar disc. Their light contained a yellow spectral line that seemed to sit close…
A critically endangered female red handfish, Thymichthys politus. (Photo: Joel Sartore) For 20 years, photographer Joel Sartore has been building a huge visual record of the world’s animals. His project, called the Photo Ark, has now reached another major milestone with its 18,000th species- the critically endangered red handfish. The milestone photo was announced by…
Representative Image of bull sharks gathering at a coral reef and displaying social behavior (AI-generated image) Bull sharks have long been viewed as solitary hunters that cross paths mostly by chance, but a six-year study in Fiji suggests otherwise. Researchers observed adult bull sharks gathering repeatedly at a single reef site and found that individuals…
Representative Image of Australian magpies cooperating to remove tracking devices from one another (AI-generated image) Researchers in Queensland fitted five Australian magpies with tiny GPS trackers, hoping to map their movements and understand how age, sex or rank affected the way the flock behaved. The birds had other plans. Within about ten minutes, an untagged…
Archaeologists in China have uncovered an extraordinary alcoholic drink that remained remarkably well preserved for more than 2,000 years inside an ancient bronze bottle. The vessel, recovered from a Qin-period tomb at the Shanjiabao cemetery in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, contained about 3.74 litres of pale blue-green liquid, equivalent to nearly a gallon. Scientific…
A couple, Margaret and Arthur Thorsborne, travelled north from Queensland’s Gold Coast to Hinchinbrook Island, a place they knew largely through photographs. They would return many times, eventually making the Cardwell area their home and becoming closely associated with its forests, wetlands and wildlife. Among the animals that caught their attention were pied imperial-pigeons, which…
In September 2022, Nasa carried out a mission that had never been attempted before: deliberately crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid to change its path through space. The target was Dimorphos, a small moonlet orbiting a larger asteroid called Didymos. Neither object posed any danger to Earth, which made the pair an ideal testing ground…
Representative Image of water harvesting technology collecting and storing water (AI-generated image) Researchers at Kiel University in Germany have developed a highly porous material that can pull drinking water directly out of dry air, offering a possible lifeline for regions where rainfall is becoming less reliable. The material, known as CAU-10-H, behaves like a sponge,…
Benjamin Franklin (Image: Wikipedia) Two people can spend a lifetime accumulating whatever they consider valuable and end up with completely different kinds of wealth to show for it. One collects money, property, and possessions, each one clearly priced, each one able to be counted. The other spends that same effort building something that resists being…