What's up in
Science
Physics, climate, planetary science, and the research that shapes how we understand the universe and our place in it.
We tend to think Voyager 1 has already left the solar system, but it has only crossed beyond the Sun’s protective plasma bubble — NASA says it will take another 300 years to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, and perhaps 30,000 years to pass beyond the solar system’s outermost frontier
A T. rex unearthed in South Dakota could sell for up to $30 million at auction — and scientists fear that if a private collector buys it, one of Earth’s rarest records may disappear from research
Vitamin B12 is synthesised only by bacteria and archaea — and the human liver stores roughly a three-year supply before deficiency shows in the blood
The average human ingests roughly a credit card's worth of plastic every week — and the particles small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier measure under 300 nanometers
Antarctica is classified as a desert because it receives less precipitation than the Sahara, yet it holds about 70 per cent of the planet's fresh water, locked in an ice sheet averaging over two kilometres thick across the continent
Einstein’s relativity allows time travel into the future, and we have already measured it: atomic clocks flown around Earth on aeroplanes came home showing a different time from clocks left on the ground
A Mexican salamander that can regrow entire limbs does something stranger than healing — the axolotl reopens parts of its embryonic blueprint and uses it to rebuild what was lost
Birds are not descended from dinosaurs — they are dinosaurs, a living branch of the theropod family that survived the asteroid and now fills the world with more than 10,000 species
A 2012 University of Westminster study measured horror-film viewers burning about 113 calories on average, roughly a short walk, as fear and jump scares pushed their heart rates higher
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a metal sphere the size of a beach ball into orbit — and the panic it triggered across the country was so severe that within a year Congress poured federal money into science, maths, and foreign-language education
