Science

Every winter, more than 100,000 giant Australian cuttlefish can be found mating along the rocky coastline of Point Lowly, northeast of Whyalla, South Australia. They put on shape-shifting, colourful displays in their attempts to attract a mate. This is the only cuttlefish aggregation in the world and thousands of enthusiastic fans travel to regional South…

For decades, quarries have been places where the landscape was deliberately cut, blasted and reshaped for industry. Rock was extracted, hillsides were carved away and deep pits were left behind once the material was no longer economically useful. But when the machinery finally stops, the story of a quarry does not necessarily end.Across the world,…

PC: Open Access Government On a warm day, a wall is usually something to escape from rather than something that helps cool a room. At Graz University of Technology in Austria, that assumption is being turned around with a ceramic structure that uses little more than water, porous clay and evaporation. The experimental cooling cubes…

A mosquito does not need to die for its role in malaria transmission to be interrupted. That idea sits at the centre of a 2025 study led by researchers associated with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who tested a different way of using bed nets: instead of relying entirely on insecticides to kill…

For most of human history, the atmosphere was something felt rather than measured. People knew that air moved, pushed against sails and filled the lungs, but its physical weight was harder to demonstrate. In 17th-century Italy, that began to change. Evangelista Torricelli, a mathematician and physicist from Faenza, was working on a problem that had…

For centuries, owning land has meant having a place that can be measured, divided and legally transferred. Dennis Hope thought he had found an exception. In the late 20th century, while considering how to make money from property, the unemployed American turned his attention away from land on Earth and towards the moon. He had…

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…

Total Solar Eclipse. Image Credit: Bob Linsdell/Wikipedia On 12 August 2026, a total solar eclipse will take place, which will cross the Northern Hemisphere from Siberia to the Mediterranean. This rare celestial event is expected to attract millions of observers from many continents. The path of totality (the narrow track or strip of land where…

The royals across the world are known to pull numerous extravagant moves with an aim to impress. While Cleopatra made guests dine on gold plates, King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France built temporary palaces of brick and glass for a meeting. But in modern times, such grand gestures have been…

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…