Flora And Fauna
August 2026
Every article published in August 2026. 653 articles · Back to full archive
Science
Two habitable-zone planets now sit within 11 light-years of Earth: Proxima Centauri b at 4.24 light-years, confirmed years ago, and GJ 887 d at 10.7 light-years, confirmed only in 2026 — both orbiting red dwarfs, and both raising more questions than they answer
Science
ESA's Gaia telescope has mapped a giant wave rippling outward from the Milky Way's centre, pushing stars tens of thousands of light-years out of place — and scientists still don't know what set it in motion
Science
Saturn's moon Mimas looks like a dead, cratered rock — its surface is so inert that scientists assumed it was frozen solid — but in 2024 astronomers confirmed a global ocean hidden beneath the ice, formed just 5 to 15 million years ago
Culture
Step into an elevator in a Korean hospital or apartment block and the fourth-floor button may say F, and there is a reason. The Sino-Korean word for four sounds exactly like the word for death, so the number gets quietly avoided in floor and room numbers
Science
It takes more energy to slow a spacecraft into orbit around Mercury than it does to fly directly to Pluto, because the Sun's gravity accelerates anything falling toward the inner solar system — a counterintuitive physics problem that forced BepiColombo to loop around nine planets across eight years just to slow down enough to stop
Human Behaviour
Because Thailand was never colonized, it never had the anti-gay laws Britain imposed on its neighbors — which is part of the reason a visible 'third gender' identity took hold there far more openly than in much of the surrounding region
Science
Every textbook says Venus is Earth's nearest planetary neighbour, but a simulation run over thousands of years of orbital data found that Mercury holds that title on average — because it never strays as far as Venus does on the far side of its orbit
Science
Off the coast of Brazil sits an island so dangerous that the government has banned nearly everyone from ever setting foot on it: home to as many as four thousand of the most venomous vipers in the world, found nowhere else on Earth
Technology
There are around 18 million people in the Netherlands — and rather more bicycles than that. The latest estimate puts the tally at 24.4 million, about 1.34 for every person, after a gap that has widened sharply since 2010
Science
Nearly seven miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean lies a place so hostile that only a handful of human beings in all of history have ever seen it — total darkness, near-freezing water, and pressure equivalent to a jet's weight bearing down on a single postage stamp
Mind & Meaning
When you lock eyes with your dog, something happens in both your bodies: a real oxytocin rise, the same hormone that binds a parent to an infant — though how far that parallel holds is still being argued
Mind & Meaning
The Red Cross estimates that roughly three million Vietnamese people have been affected by Agent Orange's dioxin contamination, including more than 150,000 children born with serious birth defects, some in families who had no direct exposure to the chemical themselves
Science
The James Webb Space Telescope just found the same unidentified molecule on both Titan and Pluto — two worlds with almost nothing in common — and scientists say they cannot yet match it to any known substance in any existing database
Culture
By 2021, more than 98% of Korean homes had a refrigerator designed for one speficif, keeping it at a steadier temperature than an ordinary fridge. Early models appeared in 1984, but the appliance that opened the mass market arrived in 1995
Venusian Heat