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Science
Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe and our place in it.
Elephants are among the few animals shown to recognise themselves in a mirror, a test most species fail entirely — and when researchers painted a white X on one elephant’s forehead, she reached for herself, not the reflection
When scientists disrupted dopamine in hungry rats, the animals still showed pleasure when sweet food was placed in their mouths — they just lost the drive to work for it, suggesting dopamine governs wanting more than enjoyment
One set of simulations suggests Uranus may have been tipped over by at least two giant impacts rather than one: when researchers modelled a single abrupt collision acting on an existing moon-forming disk, the resulting moons orbited backward. Multiple impacts produced a prograde satellite system aligned with Uranus’s extraordinarily tilted equator—but newer models show that a single impact followed by moon formation remains possible.
A single army-ant colony can move like one creature made of hundreds of thousands of bodies — up to 700,000 workers with no leader, no central plan, and no ant understanding more than the neighbours around it, yet together solving problems no individual could even perceive
When scientists announced Webb’s first definitive detection of Neptune’s auroras in March 2025, they revealed another surprise: observations taken in 2023 showed that the planet’s upper atmosphere had cooled by several hundred degrees since Voyager 2 visited in 1989—and scientists still don’t know exactly why.
Biologists who necropsied 75 bats found dead under wind turbines in southern Alberta counted 32 with visible injuries and 69 with blood pooled in their chests, because the pressure drop behind a passing blade bursts a bat's lungs without the blade ever touching it
Surveys at the Ivanpah solar site in the Mojave predicted at most 32 desert tortoises, and crews then unearthed close to 1,000, halted construction for three months and spent 56 million dollars relocating them, with one juvenile carried off to an eagle nest, microchip still pinging
Trees are connected by fungal threads beneath the soil, trading carbon and chemical signals in ways scientists are still arguing over — including whether a dying tree can pass part of itself into the forest before it goes
A black fungus that thrives in damp bathrooms and has been found aboard the ISS was the toughest organism in NASA's new Moon-survival study — even outperforming a bacterium famous for being one of the most radiation-resistant lifeforms on Earth.
In 1997, scientists sent cameras down with sperm whales to find the monster hidden in their scars: the giant squid. The footage they wanted never came, but the failed hunt helped point science toward one of the deep ocean’s most elusive animals
