A mosquito lands on a blackbird’s wing. It pierces the skin, draws blood, and moves on. Somewhere in that moment, a parasite called Plasmodium slips into the bird’s bloodstream. Researchers have long known this happens across the UK, but they weren’t sure which mosquitoes do the transmitting. They finally have answers to that puzzle. A…
7,000-year-old fish traps show hunter-gatherers brought fish to Norway’s mountains centuries before farming Ancient hunter-gatherers carried live brown trout past steep waterfalls to stock empty mountain lakes in Norway 7,000 years ago, creating managed fisheries whose descendants are still being caught by local anglers today.Archaeologists at the University of Oslo discovered well-preserved wooden fish traps…
Sending humans to Mars is one of Nasa’s greatest ambitions, but the journey presents enormous challenges. A round trip could take well over a year, exposing astronauts to dangerous cosmic radiation, muscle and bone loss caused by microgravity, psychological stress and the need to carry vast amounts of food, water and supplies. To tackle these…
For decades, scientists have known that the Ontong Java Plateau, the world’s largest oceanic plateau, was created by an extraordinary burst of volcanic activity more than 100 million years ago. What remained uncertain was how enormous volumes of magma travelled through the Earth’s lithosphere during that event. According to the study published in Advancing Earth…
Scientists have discovered the deepest known animal ecosystem on Earth, thriving almost 10 kilometres beneath the Pacific Ocean where sunlight never reaches. At depths of up to 9,533 metres, researchers found dense colonies of blood-red tubeworms, white clams and other marine animals living around methane-rich cold seeps on the ocean floor. The discovery ‘Flourishing chemosynthetic…
Forest bathing sounds like an ancient tradition, but it is actually younger than the personal computer. The practice known as shinrin-yoku was coined in Japan in 1982, not passed down through centuries. It began as a public health idea rather than a spiritual one, aimed at a country that was mostly forest but rapidly urbanising,…
Thousands of people around the world are watching bald eagles Jackie and Shadow raise their two eaglets. Thousands of people around the world are once again following the lives of bald eagles Jackie and Shadow through a live nest camera in California’s Big Bear Valley. This year, the attention is on the couple’s two young…
This might be the closest humans have come to finding another planet that can support life. In a shocking discovery, astronomers have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like, rocky planet about 48 light-years away.The planet, called LHS 1140 b, is orbiting in the habitable zone around its star meaning that it is at the right…
A person demonstrates Japan’s TRUSCO Do Reimon Box, a walk-in cooling booth. As record-breaking heatwaves become more frequent around the world, keeping outdoor workers safe has become an increasingly urgent challenge. Japan may have come up with an unusual solution. A Japanese company has developed what many are calling a “human refrigerator”, a walk-in cooling…
Every invention begins with a simple question: “Can this be made better?” The world’s greatest innovators did not accept limitations as permanent or believe that existing solutions were the best possible ones. Instead, they looked at everyday problems as opportunities waiting to be solved. Alexander Graham Bell’s insightful observation, “The inventor is a man who…
